Introduction

Compared to even 20 years ago, technology has transformed both the pace of our daily lives and the way parents interact with others and the wider world. It has advanced and expanded parents’ horizons, enhancing their access to knowledge and allowing them to communicate and “interact” with others well beyond their personal, social, and community networks. Nowhere is this more clearly demonstrated than among children and adolescents, whose home, educational, and social lives are saturated with technological resources. With each passing year, as Internet access becomes increasingly ubiquitous across the globe, parents and their children are more and more heavily involved in the online and social networking world. This world can convey great educational and social benefits but, unless properly prepared, can also leave the user potentially more exposed to the kinds of negative behaviors that can arise online, including cyberbullying (Patchin & Hinduja, 2010).

Cyberbullying is often an extension of traditional forms of bullying that make their way from the classroom and school yard to cyberspace (Gleeson, 2014; Li, 2007). However, despite this link to traditional forms of bullying, it is also a significantly different and insidious way to abuse others (O’Moore, 2012) that is ultimately linked to issues of personal development, self-esteem, and gender identity (Ging & O’Higgins Norman, 2016; Patchin & Hinduja, 2010). With cyberbullying, parents’ role in creating safe spaces is under renewed pressure to adapt to the digital world.

A multisystemic issue

Bronfenbrenner’s theory of human development (1977) is valuable in framing the complex interactions of individuals with the world around them in relation to bullying and cyberbullying (Cross et al., 2015). The theory recognizes that risks to individuals from bullying behaviors are not direct, linear outcomes of individual behaviors, but result instead from the multisystemic interactions between an individual and the environment in which they live (Espelage et al., 2012).

This bioecological approach contextualizes human emotional, cognitive, and social development into five nested environmental systems surrounding the individual with bidirectional influences within and among the systems, all of which influence the individual’s relationship with the outside world. These are:

1. The Microsystem—the immediate environment surrounding the child, e.g., parents, siblings, peers, and school, who can influence and reinforce attitudes and behaviors.

2. The Mesosystem—e.g., two microsystems interact (e.g., a parent interacts with a child’s school and teachers

3. The Exosystem—social/environmental settings that indirectly influences the individual, e.g., a parent’s experience at work influencing the child at home.

4. The Macrosystem—the culture the individual lives in, and the larger societal values and identity they share.

5. The Chronosystem—time-oriented events over an individual’s lifespan that affect development, e.g., deaths, divorce, upswing in economy over time providing greater opportunity for employment (Bronfenbrenner, 1994)

Espelage’s review of bullying research (2014) lays out both the protective and risk factors in each of these five systems that impact the development of or protection against bullying behavior. But with the advent of the Internet, a further complex set of overarching interactions has come into play.

The pervasive influence of the Internet across all systems underlines the challenge that faces society in dealing with cyberbullying. Easy access to and influence of the Internet in all of these areas beyond the individual’s control makes challenging and reducing risk itself a complex task (Hasebrink et al., 2011). For example (at macrosystemic level), it is no longer just the culture of the society in which the individual lives that impact the individual, but the culture and norms of whatever society or group they are encountering on the Internet from anywhere around the world.

However, at child/adolescent level within Bronfenbrenner’s model, there is arguably one factor, which holds greater influence than any other in relation to cyberbullying and online risk—parents.

Parents—a unique role

According to Espelage (2014), protective/risk factors involving parents and their children in regards to the prevention or enabling of bullying include the levels of parental monitoring in a child’s life; the presence of active/supportive parental involvement in a child’s life; and the amount of exposure children have to parents’ aggressive or retaliatory behaviors. When it comes to examining cyberbullying, we must add two more protective/risk factors.

Firstly, parents are overwhelmingly both the most prominent enablers of and safeguards against children being exposed to cyberbullying, through the simple provision of access to technology and the Internet itself (Merrill & Hanson, 2016). Children rely on the use of technological hardware such as computers, iPads, and phones and, in general, privately funded phone or Internet accounts in order to access the online world. These are almost universally provided by parents who as a result retain a greater degree of control over their use than any other group in a child’s life.

Parents therefore, for the most part, retain the right to monitor and restrict usage as they deem fit. They also bear more of the responsibility for this monitoring and usage of their children. Coupled with the way previously “safe” spaces like home are invaded via online bullying behavior, this means much more of the onus in discovering a child being bullied, or being a bully, is placed on parents than in traditional bullying situations. Far more often in cyberbullying situations, parents find that they must be the initiator in alerting schools. Often they must deal with it entirely themselves if the schools feel the issue does not involve them, or in cases of cyberbullying incidents that do not involve children from the same schools or even locality (Perren et al., 2012).

This brings us to the second protective/risk factor. As a result of this increased onus, parents’ own complex experience with the Internet has a significant impact on the child/adolescent in relation to cyberbullying. For example, what parents understand of cyberbullying coupled with their knowledge/ability with computers/cyberspace (microsystemic influence), their (exosystemic) experiences or lack thereof in dealing with Internet/phone providers, as well as their (mesosystemic) relationship with their child’s schools/teachers will affect how they choose to approach or deal with cyberbullying.

Parents then have even more of a key role to play in dealing with cyberbullying than in traditional forms. Their Internet usage/facility, perceptions of their own ability, and awareness of online dangers including cyberbullying are absolutely crucial in influencing the education of their children about interactions with others on the Internet, and informing their own confidence as parents in coping with cyberbullying issues as they arise (McGuire, 2016). And their perceptions, correct or incorrect, of their child’s technological ability may influence how much and in what way they may be willing to interact and intervene with them.

This in turn can have profound implications for what a child may be exposed online as well as what might be done to better guide parents in protecting their children. Yet while there is a growing body of data on children’s Internet use, experiences, and perceptions of online dangers like cyberbullying (e.g., Hamm et al., 2015), there is a relative paucity of international research literature focusing directly on parent’s perceived competence with and perceptions of dangers.

A digital divide?

The most commonly accepted perception of adult technological/Internet competence, and one that has often been the starting point for practitioners dealing with parents, is that parents are less technologically sophisticated than their children and are lax in educating their children in keeping safe (Ey & Cupit, 2011; Mishna et al., 2009; NetRatings, 2005; Perren et al., 2012; Stacey, 2009). However, the corroboration of this digital divide is garnered chiefly from research on students, and as Smith et al. (2008) point out in their study on cyberbullying and middle/high schools, this perception is in effect as yet unsubstantiated by parental research. And even without research into parent’s capability online, the notion of the digital divide neglects the bioecological effect of the passing of time, and the increasing familiarity each subsequent generation of parents may have with the Internet.

Given the central role and increased responsibility of parents in cyberbullying, it seems to be essential that we know more about parent’s Internet experience and practice, in order to better facilitate their approach to their children in regards to cyberbullying. Yet what research exists on parent Internet facility and their competency in dealing with cyberbullying risk is in general drawn from studies of parent-child pairs. Such studies tend to gather more information from students than parents.

Mesch’s (2009) US study of teens aged 12-17 years, evaluated parental restrictive mediation use (e.g., limits placed on the child’s use of the Internet including imposed time limits, installing filters, monitoring websites), vs educative mediation (e.g., discussion of online risks, joint creation of rules around Internet use, and the placing of computers in common areas) and found that restrictive parental mediation was used far more than educative mediation unless a child had experienced cyberbullying. However, educative mediation actions were found to be far more effective than restrictive measures in reducing a child’s risk of victimization online.

This pronounced preference of parents for setting rules rather than engaging in educative mediation was also found in Dehue et al.’s study (2008) of Dutch teens who found that more than half of the parents always or usually set restrictive rules for their children in regards to their use of the Internet but did not frequently engage in educative evaluative mediation.

Dehue et al.’s (2008) study also found a disparity between child reports on their engagement in risky online behavior and parent’s reports, with parents consistently underestimating their child’s involvement, a result echoed in the Byrne et al. (2014) study of 456 parent-child pairs in the US Byrne et al.’s results showed that a variety of variables including a permissive parenting style, difficulty communicating about online risks, and allowing prolonged access to the Internet were associated with an underestimation of risky social interactions that their children encountered and experienced online.

The propensity for parents to overestimate the safety of their children online and underestimate their child’s Internet interactions involvement highlights possible limitations to joint parent-child studies. These are discussed by Livingstone and Haddon (2009) in the EU Kids Online Study. They point out parents in studies using parent-child pairs may be influenced by the parent’s knowledge that their child is also being surveyed, which may lead them to a more socially acceptable style of answering. These type of studies neglect to take into account the adult’s skills in supervision and coping. As a result, the second E.U. Kids Online Study (Hasebrink et al., 2011), though also a child-parent study, attempted to collect some data on parent’s confidence in regards to the Internet. Results countered previous perceptions about parents with 85% saying they are confident about their role in helping a child if they have problems on the Internet and 79% indicate they were confident in their child’s ability to cope.

With the limited, fragmented, and somewhat contradictory evidence available on parents, it was apparent that more research needed to be done on parental facility and confidence levels in regards to the Internet, as well the nature of their knowledge of their child’s Internet facility and coping skills, and the manner in which parents understand and approach preventing and intervening in online bullying.

ParentNets’ study

As part of an E.U. Erasmus + project, ParentNets, the Anti-Bullying Centre in Dublin City University (ABC), undertook an evaluation of 908 Irish parents’ experiences of the Internet. The aim was to analyze parental online facility, perceived confidence, and interactions with their children in regards to Internet use and cyberbullying. Specifically, it wanted to examine how parents approach cyberbullying and cyber safety, and how that might inform future practice of helping to better guide and educate parents (O’Higgins Norman & McGuire, 2016).

The study also looked at usage and understanding of social networks, as a prime conduit for cyberbullying. Only the parents of children with an age range of 9-16 years were asked to participate, both in accordance with prevailing knowledge on the more widespread use of the Internet among children from the age of 9 years, and also to meet the age demographic of the wider European project. The survey was distributed through a number of online contacts and national networks resulting in a total of 908 parents completing the online questionnaire (O’Higgins Norman & McGuire, 2016).

The majority of respondent parents were between 41 – 45 years of age (40%, n = 362), followed by those between 46 and 50 years of age (26%, n = 237), with the third highest grouping being 36–40 year olds (18%, n = 163). Those over 50 comprised just 7% (n = 61), and those between 31 – 35 years, 6% (n = 58). Those identifying as between 25 and 30 years of age (.8%) and those under 25 years of age (1.3%) made up just 2% of respondents combined (n = 19). Of the 908 respondents, 802 (88.6%) were identified as female. This would tend to corroborate the prevailing view of the mother as the primary caregiver in the home and in dealing with the school in relation to their children’s safety in school and in relation to bullying issues (O’Higgins Norman & McGuire, 2016).

Parents’ internet facility & new digital divide

A previous study on adult Internet use reported parent’s Internet use in general to be significantly higher than the general adult population (Duggan et al., 2015). This is reflected in the ABC study, which found that Internet use by Irish parents in the home was 94%, This was an increase from the 83% previously reported usage by Irish parents in another study by O’Neill and Dinh (2011), and a strong increase from the 56% of Irish adults reported at the start of the century in a report by the European Commission (2002).

This increase in use relates to a number of factors such as a demand for access from their children, accompanied by the individual parent’s need to nurture/monitor their children, in conjunction with exosystemic factors such as the rise of the Internet in the parent’s workplace and their own social lives. Furthermore, devices have become more widely available and less expensive over this time period. This steady rise in online usage among parents seems to perfectly illustrate the chronosystemic changes that are outlined here within Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory.

This gradual increase of parental usage over time appears to be reflected in increasing confidence, with almost 80% of respondents in the ABC study stating they felt confident in coping with an online risk to their children and 75% feeling they were sufficiently engaged in preventing online dangers to their children. There was also a strong degree of parental confidence in their children’s knowledge about/ability to detect risky situations, though only 30% in the ABC study felt that their children would know how to protect themselves from online dangers.

These findings more closely match the high confidence levels of perceived parental facility suggested in Hasebrink et al. (2011) than they do the “weak parent” of Briggs and Hawkins (1997) and other studies. And they are supported by research on Irish children’s perceptions of their parent’s confidence with the Internet, with children reporting their parents growing ability to help them online (O’Briain & Nitting-Fulin, 2009).

Any “Digital Divide” then in regards to parent’s confidence and facility with computers and the Internet vs their children’s seems to be dwindling with each passing year. Instead, the ABC study highlighted that the divide appears now to occur in regards to where both groups are active on the Internet.

The parents reported a high level of familiarity/usage in regards to texting and certain social networks (SNS) such as Facebook but quite low levels of familiarity/usage in regards to other networks such as Instagram and Twitter. The usage level of Irish parents is very much in line with that found in the Pew Research Centre’s studies on Parents & Social Media (Duggan et al., 2015), and yet (as can be seen in Fig. 5.1) when compared with Pew’s teen SNS usage studies (Lenhart, 2015) it highlights a significant disparity in regards to the use of apps and networks between parents and children.

As illustrated in Fig. 5.1, types of social networks and online communication (i.e., Facebook, WhatsApp) favored by parents indicate that they do not always frequent the same networks and websites more widely favored by their children, e.g., Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat. In fact, further research shows a very different pattern of use of networks by children, and a constant migration of children away from where their parents are on the net (Cassada-Lohman, 2016).

Discussion and conclusion

Despite the increase in parental confidence and online facility, results of the ABC study appear to mirror the findings of Byrne et al.’s (2014) earlier study, which found that a main risk for parents was their inclination to underestimate the dangers in their child’s interactions online. A permissive parenting style leads to difficulty in effectively communicating about online risks such as cyberbullying, and allowing children prolonged access to the Internet (O’Higgins Norman & McGuire, 2016). This type of permissive parenting does not always reflect how parents interact with their children in offline life. Consequently, we would argue that parents need to transfer some conventional parenting practices to their approach to online environments.

Within a bioecological framework, it may be that as parent confidence in their knowledge of the Internet has grown, they are better able to understand and rate the facility of their children’s Internet use, but may be mistaking effective and confident utilization for safe interaction or knowledge for wisdom. This may result in parent’s overestimation of their knowledge of their child’s Internet interactions, which impacts at the microsystemic level by reducing their perceived need to directly monitor and interact with their children in regards to the net. This may inadvertently result in exposing their children to risks.

It could also be the case that parents do not wish to be seen to be directly “interfering” with their children or doubting them, This reluctance to be seen to be as intrusive would certainly be reflected in the low use of many direct measures, e.g., timetabling, blocking apps, use of passwords.

If increased Internet facility is feeding into a sense of confidence and hands off approach to monitoring or if it cannot overcome a reluctance on the part of some parents to be seen as intrusive in their interventions, then it is apparent that a perceived knowledge of the Internet alone on the part of parents is not enough to reduce risk.

It is also seems likely that in many cases it is merely perceived knowledge on the part of parents. There are definite gaps in parent’s knowledge in regards to the use or even existence of certain preventative tools such as the use of privacy filters, website certificates, and blocking apps and downloads, and perhaps more alarmingly from a practitioner perspective in their lack of knowledge about what constitutes cyberbullying itself.

As the ABC study drew from a predefined European survey on online risk, there was also no way to discover if a parent’s child had ever been exposed to any risk. It may be that the extent of their child’s exposure influenced their responses, especially in regard to educative vs restrictive intervention, and the utilization of preventative measures.

Moreover, there is disproportionate representation of women in comparison to men in the samples, with 89% (n = 808) of the parents being female in the ABC study. This could be indicative of women as the traditional point of initial contact with their children (and subsequently with schools, etc.) when it comes to difficulties, and research indicates children perceive mothers to know more about Internet than fathers and are the ones they speak to about what they do online (O’Briain & Nitting-Fulin, 2009).

In dealing with bullying and cyberbullying, as with other issues, research informs practice. This is all the more essential in cyberbullying, as it is often parents who have to educate and model good behavior to their children in regards to the Internet. They often handle a cyberbullying situation alone once it is brought to their attention. It is obvious that more comprehensive and focused research into parental knowledge and experience of cyberbullying, the Internet, and facility with preventative tools, is still necessary to more fully assess parent’s strengths, weaknesses, and needs in coping with the issue, in order to more effectively help them on a practical level.

With that in mind, the provision of specific information pages/courses on the types of preventative tools (e.g., filters) available to should, be a focused outcome for practitioners.

In establishing areas of difficulties parents have (which may vary from region to region, and alter over time), practitioners can work with ICT partners (i.e., ISP providers, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.) as well as Internet safety experts to create the kind of specific, up-to-date, organic, and interactive (and therefore supportive) help sites for parents. In taking actions like this, one may see bioecological theory continuously at work. Practitioners working with and better educating themselves as to the actual needs of parents at the mesosystemic level, and working with ICT organizations at the exosystemic level, could potentially influence these organizations’ approach to better safety/learning and working with parents around cyberbullying, which will over time return to influence parents at the microsystemic level, with their learning passed on to their children.

Going forward it seems crucial for practitioners working in the area of anticyberbullying and/or inclusion to embark on a campaign that highlight the risks of the permissive style of parenting. Such a campaign should advocate and provides means toward parental self-education in the area of ICT, and concentrate on teaching parents the value of educative mediation techniques of talking and listening to their child. Such an approach has demonstrated to be both a more effective tool for reducing risk and a method that is overall less intrusive.

Taking part in bidirectional communication, parents can not only advise from their own life skills but also listen to what their child thinks; then work with them to make rules, set boundaries on both sides, while making the child more responsible for their actions.

For ultimately, within that crucial microsystem surrounding parent and child, where the parents’ own experiences and knowledge are key to what they impart, the child can only learn from the parent as much as the parent themselves know.