Evidence for the need to support adolescents dealing with harassment and cyber-harassment: Prevalence, progression, and impact

Abstract

The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of harassment in high school and into university, and the impact of one particular form of harassment: cyber-harassment. Participants were 1,368 students at one US and two Canadian universities (mean age ¼ 21.1 years, 676 female students). They responded on five-point scales to questions about the frequency and impact of harassment. A total of 33.6% of students stated they had been cyber-harassed and 28.4% had been harassed off-line when in high school. Also, 8.6% were cyber-harassed and 6.4% were harassed off-line while in university. Hierarchical logistic regression analyses show that the type of harassment experienced in high school is associated with the type of harassment experienced in university. Various negative outcomes of cyber-harassment were also identified.

Factors Affecting Adolescents' Involvement in Cyberbullying: What Divides the 20% from the 80%?

“…40 Research studies show that parents' intervention has a positive impact on decreasing children's engagement in gaming 41 and in cyberbullying victimization. 36 Another noteworthy point about media factors is the prevalence of mobile phones, including smartphones, as the most popular medium used for cyberbullying 33,42 or cyber harassment 43 among adolescents. The current study found that only the level of mobile activities was included in the prediction model, leaving out the Internet and SNS activities.…”

A review of cyberbullying and suggestions for online psychological therapy

“…A range of other terms has been used to describe the phenomenon including: cyberharassment, cybervictimisation, online harassment and electronic bullying (Beran et al, 2012;Brown et al, 2014;Fenaughty and Harré, 2013;Ybarra, 2004;Ybarra et al, 2007;Ybarra and Mitchell, 2004), while others have labelled these as types or forms in which to bully (Notar et al, 2013). In addition, some studies consider a cyberbullying incident as any action that happens once and does not consider the repetitive aspect that is essential to the definition (Grigg, 2010).…”

“…For example, when investigating Facebook only, Kwan and Skoric (2013) found that more than half of a sample of secondary school students in Singapore experienced at least one incidence of cyberbullying in the previous year. In terms of devices, the most commonly used means of harassment was with a cell phone (Beran et al, 2012). Furthermore, other moderators of prevalence rates have been noted in the literature.…”

“…Furthermore, the roles of age and gender have been extensively researched in the literature (Kiriakidis and Kavoura, 2010). For example, there is evidence to suggest that victimisation during adolescence continues into early adulthood (Beran et al, 2012). In addition, some studies have reported a gender divide for cyberbullying behaviour.…”

Bullying Intervention in Adolescence: The Intersection of Legislation, Policies, and Behavioral Change

“…Of those students, approximately 33 % indicated they were bullied at least once or twice per month during the school year, and approximately 27 % of students reported that they were cyber-bullied at least once or twice per month. Research has also examined the prevalence of cyber-harassment among college students and found that 33.6 % of student had experience cyber-harassment in college and 28.4 % had experienced in-person harassment while in high school (Beran et al 2012). While it is difficult to draw conclusions across the sometimes conflicting research on bullying and harassment in adolescence, it appears that bullying and harassment affect approximate one in four adolescents.…”