Search Results (210)

Cyberbullying victimization is a public health concern associated with adolescents’ psychological distress symptoms. This cross-sectional study examined whether relative deprivation and moral disengagement were statistically associated with the relationship between cyberbullying victimization and psychological distress symptoms among victim-only five-year higher vocational college students. Among 4290 valid respondents, 1419 students reported at least one cyberbullying victimization experience. Because the present study focused on victimization without concurrent perpetration, 1107 victim-only students were included in the primary analysis. Participants completed self-report measures of cyberbullying victimization, relative deprivation, moral disengagement, and psychological distress symptoms. After controlling for gender and age, cyberbullying victimization was positively associated with psychological distress symptoms. The bootstrap results indicated significant indirect associations through relative deprivation, through moral disengagement, and through the serial pathway from relative deprivation to moral disengagement. These findings suggest that relative deprivation and moral disengagement are statistically linked to the association between cyberbullying victimization and psychological distress symptoms among victim-only vocational students. Given the cross-sectional self-report design, the mediation findings should be interpreted as evidence of statistical associations rather than temporal ordering or causal mechanisms. Full article

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly increased adolescent digital engagement, but whether the rise in cyberbullying persists beyond the crisis is not well understood, especially in Southeast Asia. This study examined social media addiction, perceived stress, emotional intelligence, and cyberbullying among 416 Thai secondary students (grades 7–12) during the pandemic-to-endemic transition (June–October 2023). Participants completed validated Thai-language instruments assessing cyberbullying, social media addiction, perceived stress, and emotional intelligence. Results showed 66.4% of adolescents were involved in cyberbullying, with 32.2% as bully-victims. Social media addiction correlated with cyberbullying perpetration (r_s = 0.33, p < 0.001) and victimization (r_s = 0.22, p < 0.001), as did perceived stress (r_s = 0.20 and 0.29; p < 0.001). Emotional intelligence showed negative correlations with cyberbullying perpetration (r_s = −0.15, p = 0.002) and victimization (r_s = −0.10, p = 0.048). Over one-third (34.4%) were at high risk for social media addiction. These findings indicate that during the pandemic-to-endemic transition, Thai adolescents showed elevated cyberbullying involvement, high social media addiction, and moderate-to-high stress—a profile consistent with sustained digital risk. These results highlight the need for integrated interventions that address digital wellness, stress management, and the development of emotional intelligence among Thai adolescents. Full article

Backgrounds: Cyberbullying represents a major concern for students, yet most studies rely on quantitative and adult-centered perspectives. Understanding adolescents’ views on cyberbullying is crucial for prevention. Method: We conducted sixteen focus groups with 220 Italian middle school students (ages 11–13). Transcripts were inductively analyzed to identify domains, core ideas, and the occurrence of categories (general, typical, variant) using the Consensual Qualitative Research method. Results: Four main domains emerged: definitions, behaviors, roles, and coping strategies. Adolescents defined cyberbullying as a hostile online interaction marked by publicity, often followed by anonymity; few mentioned repetition. Direct acts such as insults, threats, and non-consensual image sharing were viewed as the most harmful behaviors, followed by impersonation and identity theft, while online challenges and other forms were less mentioned. Students mainly perceived cyberbullying as a dyadic interaction between bully and victim, showing limited awareness of pro-bullies, few references to bystanders, and no mention of defenders. Finally, participants focused on victims’ responses with little attention to bystanders’ coping strategies. Conclusions: By revealing a nuanced understanding of cyberbullying, adolescents emphasize the need for prevention programs that not only address online risks but also build on their own language, perspectives, and experiences. Full article

Cyberbullying behaviors manifest uniquely in different regions, shaped strongly by local slang, dialectal expressions, and cultural context. Code-mixed Chinese–English colloquial language (Cantonese) is commonly used in Hong Kong, Macau, and parts of southern China. Code-mixing is the use of multiple languages concurrently, and Cantonese text includes distinct phonetic, lexical, and syntactic features that are not exhibited in datasets developed for either Chinese or English applications. In this study, a privacy-aware code-mixed cyberbullying dataset (PCCD), containing 14,115 annotated tweets organized into 1668 sessions, was developed. Personally identifiable information and well-known identifiers, such as the names of famous celebrities, politicians, and organizations, were replaced with randomly generated dummy names. The anonymized data empirically demonstrated improved performance in terms of precision, recall, and F₁ score, indicating a greater generalization ability when handling unseen participants. To the best of our knowledge, the PCCD is the first code-mixed Chinese–English dataset that includes abuser and victim identity annotation. Our dataset facilitates the development of robust cyberbullying detection tools that researchers and developers can use to accurately measure aggressiveness, attack frequency, and abuser–victim power imbalance in a dialogue session. Full article

Background: Cyberbullying has emerged as a major public health concern with profound psychological repercussions on the adolescent population. The shift toward virtual communication has fundamentally altered interpersonal dynamics, removing the spatio-temporal barriers of aggression and creating new challenges for mental health. Methods: A systematic review was conducted following PRISMA 2020 guidelines, including a comprehensive update executed in February 2026. Searches were performed across PubMed, EBSCO, Web of Science, and Scopus. The review included observational and experimental studies involving adolescents (aged 10–19 years) reporting clinical mental health outcomes. Methodological quality was assessed using the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) critical appraisal tools. Results: Forty-two high-quality articles were selected. Key findings include the following: Prevalence: A median cyber-victimization prevalence of 19.1% was identified, although significant methodological heterogeneity exists with ranges between 2.1% and 88.0%. Clinical Impact: Victims exhibited significantly elevated rates of depression (90%) and anxiety (87%) compared to uninvolved peers. Suicidality: Victimization is a critical risk factor, with suicide attempts reported in 19.0% of victims, compared to 3.0% in aggressors. Vulnerable Groups: Adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) demonstrated extreme vulnerability, with victimization rates between 64.1% and 68.9%. Additionally, females and LGBTQ+ youth showed a higher risk of symptom internalization and post-traumatic stress. The Role of the Bystander: Observers experienced fear, moral frustration, and helplessness, acting as either passive reinforcers or active upstanders depending on the school climate. Conclusions and Implications: Effective prevention requires a socio-ecological approach that transcends the classroom, integrating families, healthcare centers, and technological platforms. A transition toward modernized cyber-education is recommended, utilizing interactive tools and “serious games” to foster empathy. Full article

Background/Objectives: Although cyberbullying among adolescents has been widely studied, relatively little attention has been paid to the overlapping roles through which cyberbullying is experienced. This study reconceptualizes cyberbullying involvement by classifying perpetration, victimization, and witnessing into eight mutually exclusive involvement types, enabling systematic and non-overlapping comparison of adolescents’ experiences. The study further examines how engagement in individual-level cyber-risk indicators is associated with different patterns of cyberbullying involvement. Methods: The study analyzed nationally representative data from the 2022 Cyberbullying Survey conducted by the Korea National Information Society Agency, including 9693 students from elementary, middle, and high schools across South Korea. Individual-level cyber-risk indicators were assessed through multiple dimensions, including risky online behaviors, intensity of digital activity, peer environments, and awareness of harmful online behaviors. Multinomial logistic regression analyses were conducted to examine associations between individual-level cyber-risk indicators and the eight types of cyberbullying involvement. Results: Engagement in individual-level cyber-risk indicators was associated with increased odds of involvement in at least one cyberbullying type. Risky online behaviors and exposure to peers engaging in cyberbullying were linked to higher likelihood of both single and overlapping involvement patterns, whereas greater acceptance of harmful online behaviors was consistently associated with lower odds of victimization. Conclusions: These findings underscore cyberbullying as a relational and context-dependent phenomenon shaped by everyday digital practices and peer norms rather than isolated individual behavior. From a school social work perspective, the results support preventive, environment-focused interventions, including school-based media literacy education and institutionalized cyberbullying response systems, as promising strategies for reducing cyberbullying involvement among adolescents. Full article

This study examined the association between bullying and cyberbullying, both in victims and aggressors, and students’ perceived competence in English as a foreign language. A cross-sectional study was conducted with 444 Spanish students (50.00% boys, mean age = 13.27 ± 1.64 years). Perceived English competence was assessed using the Questionnaire of English Self-Efficacy (QESE), while involvement in bullying and cyberbullying was measured with the European Bullying Intervention Project Questionnaire (EBIP-Q) and the European Cyberbullying Intervention Project Questionnaire (ECIP-Q). Associations were analyzed using ANCOVA and binary logistic regression, controlling for age, BMI, maternal education level, and weekly physical activity. The results showed that cyberbullying victimization was consistently associated with lower self-perceived competence in all English skills, particularly among boys, who reported scores up to 12.1% lower and were up to 6.3 times more likely to report low self-efficacy in writing. Girls also showed a higher risk, with up to 5.6 times more likelihood of low scores in oral expression. As for aggression, boys involved in both traditional and cyberbullying showed significant reductions in all language domains, especially in writing and reading. Girls demonstrated a more specific pattern, with negative associations mainly in cyberaggression, showing significantly lower self-efficacy competence in all four skills. These findings highlight the need for gender-sensitive interventions that promote emotional safety and reinforce students’ self-efficacy in language learning. Educational programs involving students, teachers, and families are recommended to foster confidence, reduce fear of errors, and create supportive environments for communicative practice. Full article

Background/Objectives: Cyber bystanders can choose from several different strategies during cyberbullying incidents and have a significant effect on the situation. Hence, cyber bystanders are specifically targeted by prevention programmes and research investigating variables influencing cyber bystander responses is crucial for such programmes. The aim of our study was (1) to explore contextual factors’ effect on cyberbullying incidents’ perceived severity and (2) the most frequent cyber bystander responses. We also aimed (3) to learn how the context of cyberbullying incidents affects cyber bystander responses and the joint effect of individual and contextual variables on cyber bystander responses. Methods: In total, 314 Hungarian high school students participated in our online survey (mean age = 16.15, SD = 3.28). The respondents filled in self-administered questionnaires that measured cyber bystander responses, severity of different cyberbullying incidents, empathy, moral disengagement, social desirability, and cyberbullying engagement. Results: First, our results showed that the respondents perceived public and visual cyberbullying, and when the victim was upset by it the most severe incidents. Second, in almost every condition, the two most likely cyber bystander responses were ignorance and emotional support for the victim. Third, the individual and contextual variables had a joint effect influencing cyber bystander responses except for emotional support to the victim that was only influenced by individual variables, i.e., empathy, moral disengagement, and social desirability. Conclusions: All in all, our results showed that all cyberbullying contexts were associated with cyber bystander responses and the prominent association between moral disengagement, social desirability, empathy, and prosocial cyber bystander responses. Moreover, these results could guide cyberbullying prevention to focus on cyber bystanders’ empathy training, decreasing their moral disengagement, and educating them about the effects of online contextual variables. Full article

Cyberbullying generally reveals two leading players: the attacker side (perpetrator) and the victim side; each side has its distinctive social and psychological dynamics. In most prior empirical studies, the victim side is pivotal, as it bears the direct psychological and emotional consequences of online aggression. Recently, cyberbullying victimisation has been elevated as a main psychological concern among university students. Nevertheless, the moderating role of family support remained untested, particularly in a collectivist cultural context such as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). This study tested the impacts of cyberbullying victimisation on mental health consequences (anxiety, stress, and depression) among KSA university students. The study further tested family support as a moderator in these relationships. Data was collected from 650 students employing a self-structured survey. The data obtained was analyzed using “Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling” (PLS-SEM). The findings revealed that cyberbullying-victimization can significantly raise students’ anxiety, stress, and depressive signs, supporting its place as a critical psychological risk factor. Contrary to the “traditional stress-buffering theory”, family support failed to alleviate the influence of cyberbullying-victimization on anxiety and stress, and unexpectedly, higher levels of family support were related to higher depressive levels, suggesting a reverse-buffering impact. These results highlighted the complicated relationships between family support and emotional outcomes in the context of digital threats. The study stressed the urgent need for culturally delicate mediations, such as training sessions for digital resilience, and colleague-based supportive systems to successfully deal with the mental health consequences of cybervictimization. Full article

Background: The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on temporal trends in peer violence and bullying deserves closer scrutiny. The aim of the present study was to examine temporal trends in peer violence and bullying among school-aged children before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: Data from the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) surveys (2013/2014–2021/2022) were analyzed to track changes in peer violence and bullying over time. The sample encompassed over 700,000 students aged 11, 13, and 15 from more than 40 countries across Asia, Europe, and North America. Results: Traditional (school) bullying perpetration and victimization did not change significantly over time. A significant decreasing trend in engagement in physical fighting between the 2013/2014 and 2021/2022 surveys was observed among male participants aged 15. In contrast, a significant increasing trend in engagement in physical fighting was observed among female participants aged 11 and 13 years. Following the pandemic, increases in cyberbullying perpetration and victimization were observed among students aged 11 and 13, a trend not evident among 15-year-olds. Conclusion: Except for cyberbullying, the pandemic did not appear to influence trends in peer violence and bullying, which remained largely stable or reflected trajectories that had begun prior to the pandemic. Full article

Although bullying behavior is widespread and has long-lasting adverse effects, the existing literature lacks strong evidence regarding the influence of bullying on students’ mathematics anxiety, as well as on their domain-specific cognitive appraisals. The purpose of this study is to estimate causal estimates of bullying/cyberbullying on mathematics anxiety, perceived control, and perceived value. Data of the eighth-grade cohort of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2019 datasets (N = 46,256; 49.86% female; M(age) = 14.37) from Chile, Singapore, Sweden, South Africa, Turkey, and the United States were analyzed using the propensity score matching method, which yields causal inference estimates conditional on balanced covariates. The results showed that bullying victimization uniformly increased students’ mathematics anxiety across the countries. The effect of bullying victimization on students’ mathematics-related control appraisal was significant for the countries, except for Chile. This effect was more divergent on value appraisals towards mathematics. Sensitivity analyses corroborated the results. The findings suggest that cognitive appraisals may not fully capture the emotional consequences of bullying, contrary to cognitive appraisal-mediated pathways of control–value theory. Multi-country findings position bullying as an antecedent of mathematics anxiety, highlighting the need for interventions grounded in psychological, sociocultural, and educational policy factors to protect victims from its harmful effects. Full article

Cyberbullying victimization (CBV) is widely linked to adolescent depression, but most studies collapse depression into a single score. Far less is known about which specific depressive symptoms track with CBV—and whether those patterns differ by gender—especially in Brazilian youth. We surveyed 268 public-school students in southern Brazil (M_age 13.4 years; 50.7% girls) using the Children’s Depression Inventory and the victimization subscale of the Revised Cyberbullying Inventory. Girls reported higher depressive symptoms overall (p < 0.05), although CBV did not differ by gender (p = 0.11). In gender-stratified analyses, CBV among girls was tied to every depression domain (anhedonia, ineffectiveness, interpersonal problems, negative mood, and negative self-esteem) as well as the total score; among boys, CBV was related only to overall depression. When domains were entered together, anhedonia and interpersonal problems uniquely signaled greater odds of any CBV for girls, whereas no single domain stood out for boys (ineffectiveness showed a modest, nonsignificant trend). Taken together, these results suggest that CBV travels with a distinct emotional–interpersonal profile for girls but aligns with general depressive burden for boys. Practically, schools and clinicians should pair universal digital-safety efforts with targeted supports—behavioral activation and peer-skills work for girls, and broad depression screening and stepped care for boys. Full article

Background/Objectives: Although parental mediation has been widely recognized as a protective factor against cyberbullying, evidence regarding restrictive mediation remains inconsistent and sometimes contradictory. This inconsistency underscores the need to identify potential moderators. The present study examines whether parent–child relationship qualities (trust and alienation) and child gender moderate the associations between restrictive mediation and both cyber-aggression and cyber-victimization. Methods: Participants included 2075 adolescents (M_age = 16.50, SD = 3.11; 926 boys) from Grades 7–12 in urban China. Self-report measures assessed restrictive mediation, parent–child trust and alienation, and adolescents’ involvement in cyber-aggression and cyber-victimization. Results: Parental restrictive mediation and parent–child alienation were positively associated with adolescents’ cyber-aggression and cyber-victimization, whereas parent–child trust was negatively associated with both outcomes. Moreover, parent–child alienation significantly moderated the associations between parental restrictive mediation and cyberbullying, such that restrictive mediation predicted higher levels of cyber-aggression and cyber-victimization under conditions of greater alienation. These moderating effects were particularly pronounced among boys, whereas for girls, the association was weaker or non-significant. Conclusions: These findings suggest that inconsistencies in prior research may be explained by variations in parent–child alienation and gender. The results highlight the need to foster trust and reduce alienation in parent–child relationships, rather than relying solely on restrictive Internet control, to prevent adolescents’ involvement in cyberbullying. Full article

The rapid digitalization of children’s lives has created both opportunities and serious online risks. This study examines how parents and children perceive digital violence—a broad concept encompassing non-physical but harmful online behaviors such as cyberbullying, online harassment, impersonation, and social exclusion. Although these acts lack physical force, they are conceptualized as forms of violence because they may cause psychological harm and social exclusion, consistent with internationally recognized definitions of violence that include physical, psychological, and social dimensions occurring both offline and online. The research involved 5054 students (grades 5–8) and 6309 parents from elementary schools in Vojvodina. Quantitative data were collected through parallel questionnaires exploring experiences, perceptions, and protective responses related to digital violence. Findings show that children report greater exposure than parents recognize, revealing a gap in parental awareness of online risks. Only a small proportion of parents reported incidents to schools or institutions; however, this refers to all respondents, not only those whose children experienced victimization. Thus, the data indicate limited exposure rather than parental inaction. The results highlight the need to strengthen digital literacy, parent–child communication, and school–family cooperation for safer online environments. Full article

A significant body of research has documented the aggressive and antisocial tendencies of individuals with dark triad personality traits. Although the prevalence of dark personalities in online environments is often criticized, there is a need to explore effective strategies to mitigate or stop such behaviors. This study aims to shed light on the intriguing phenomenon of “Giants on the Internet, cowards in real life” by examining the longitudinal relationship between dark triad traits, bullying victimization, and cyberbullying. Study 1 revealed that adolescents tend to display heightened tendencies towards cyberbullying after experiencing real-life victimization. Study 2, on the other hand, showed a reduction in cyberbullying behaviors among those with dark triad traits following experiences of bullying. These findings highlight the paradoxical mechanisms underlying the relationship between bullying victimization, dark triad traits, and cyberbullying. Consequently, this study introduces the new label, “From Online Aggression to Offline Silence,” to describe this dynamic. Full article