There is no disagreement that cyberbullying is a serious global problem, and that strategies to combat the problem are sorely needed. Without evidence-based interventions readily available, practitioners are left to their own devices to create programs, sometimes in collaboration with researchers. In this book, we have provided the most current information available on efforts to reduce cyberbullying in schools. The reader will notice that the strength of the evidence of effectiveness varies among the programs, but all at least show preliminary findings that hold promise. Readers will need to weigh the results of these evaluations with care, and note whether the context for the interventions will make it possible to adapt the program for their own setting. For example, in some countries, students remain together as a class throughout the day, while in others, secondary students change classes (and classmates) multiple times each day. This means that programs based on a cohort will be difficult to apply where classes are not as cohesive.

To facilitate understanding of the program-specific chapters, we included several introductory chapters that provided important background information. In this final chapter, we summarize what we have learned from the contributors.

In Chapter 1, we reviewed basic information, including definitions of both bullying and cyberbullying, and discussed the available data on prevalence of the problem. We pointed out that there are still disagreements about definitions and measures, and that reported prevalence rates vary widely across studies as a result. We talked about ways in which cyberbullying differs from traditional bullying, and pointed out the significant overlap in the two forms of bullying. It is important to note that studies have found a large proportion of cyberbullying-involved youth are both cyberbullies and cybervictims, whereas with traditional bullying, the bully-victim group is usually quite small. Although there are still many unknowns on the topic, we do know that in some cases, the consequences of being cyberbullied have been severe, and efforts to curtail it are imperative.

In Chapter 2, Rigby and Griffiths discussed how schools approach traditional bullying, and propose that many of the same strategies can be relevant for cyberbullying. Schools may employ proactive approaches, designed to prevent cyberbullying before it happens, or reactive responses to situation that have occurred. Within those broad categories of responses, several different approaches are described so that readers are able to consider, which might be best for their context, and how those approaches have fared in evaluations. Olweus (1993) whole-school approach is reviewed; despite its popularity and longevity, the effectiveness of the program is not clearly established. More recent emphasis on programs targeting bystander empowerment (e.g., the KiVa antibullying program from Finland), the growth of interest in social-emotional learning programs, and the application of circle time to address bullying make this review very relevant for readers. The chapter also discusses reactive strategies such as punishing the perpetrator(s), intervening to strengthen the victim, applying mediation programs to bullying and cyberbullying. These authors also cover important nonpunitive strategies (e.g., restorative practices, the support group method, the Method of Shared Concern, and more recently, Motivational Interviewing), as they can be applied to cyberbullying in the school context. These approaches are all suitable for the school setting, but all require a commitment from all stakeholders to be effective. What is clear in this chapter is that many of the approaches that have been successful with traditional bullying are also applicable to cases of cyberbullying, but that evidence for how well these approaches fare with cyberbullying is lacking.

Chapter 3 looks at what is known about technological solutions. After all, if cyberbullying is uniquely tied to the digital world, perhaps digital approaches are most consistent with the method. This chapter looks at what various sectors can provide to assist in reining in this problem by focusing on ISPs, e-mail service providers (e.g., Yahoo and Gmail), messaging apps, and software designed to allow users (and parents of users) to exert control over what happens online. The rapidity with which new platforms and types of social media emerges makes it impossible to be up to date on every development, but understanding the role each of these technological solutions can play will help practitioners and their clients make more informed decisions.

The legal aspect of cyberbullying, or how the law might assist in reducing cyberbullying, is reviewed in Chapter 4. Professor Butler focuses on three English-speaking countries with similar legal foundations, Australia, the U.K., and the U.S. He particularly analyzes what legal basis might be for school interventions, and provides a cogent analysis of what legal limits and recourses are available when cyberbullying can be tied to educational settings. The news is that laws are not likely to be the intervention of choice for either prevention or intervention. In addition, laws vary widely by country, and within countries among smaller administrative units (e.g., states or provinces), so it is always necessary to familiarize oneself with local statutes. Ultimately, when someone suffers harm from cyberbullying, it is likely for the foreseeable future that existing laws (against slander, or stalking, or threats to life, etc.) will be invoked rather that new legislation designed specifically to combat cyberbullying.

The final chapter (5) of the background section of the book focuses on the role of parents in combating cyberbullying. These authors contend that since parents are typically the source of technological access for their children (purchasing devices), they bear ultimate responsibility for their child’s digital behaviors. They do so by direct monitoring of the child’s online world (e.g., using parental monitoring software), engaging in conversations with their children about online behavior, and their modeling of appropriate internet behavior. Parental actions are classified as either restrictive mediation or educative mediation, with the authors clearly favoring the latter. A study of 908 Irish parents on their own Internet experiences found that a large majority of their sample felt confident in their ability to manage their children’s online activities, and three-quarters of the parents reported they felt sufficiently involved and able to protect their child from digital harm. However, only a third of parents thought their children knew how to protect themselves in cyberspace. Despite the parental confidence, these authors pointed out that youth use very different social media platforms from their parents, and as a consequence were likely to underestimate the dangers of the currently popular sites. The authors express the need for available parent training so they are better prepared to support their children’s online safety.

The interventions covered in Part II of this volume can be grouped by the way the interventions were developed and how they are delivered. First, there are two strategies that use digital technology to deliver the programs. These approaches utilize the same technology that is such an essential part of the lives of this digital generation, and may appeal to youth who are accustomed to accomplishing many of their life tasks online. Another group of strategies were developed to tackle traditional bullying, but were found to have an impact on cyberbullying behaviors as well, showing that although the medium is different, perhaps the underlying motivations are similar enough that well-designed interventions are useful for all kinds of peer victimization. Several other chapters describe programs that were originally developed to address traditional bullying but which have been adapted in some way to explicitly include cyberbullying. Others describe short-term interventions, whose evaluative approaches generally utilized feedback about the content from those who received the interventions. A number of the projects are built upon a model designed and implemented by youth themselves, with one of these designed to extend into the larger community and one working within the school system. So the readers have a variety of approaches to consider, keeping their own context in mind.

Online social marketing is the domain of advertisers, and as anyone who uses social media and the internet knows, it can be very effective. We do some shopping for a new purse online, and lo and behold there are ads for purses everywhere we look online. And they seem to know what kind of purses are of interest. That is not surprising, since marketing researchers are experts in selling things to consumers. In Chapter 6, Spears and her colleagues consider harnessing those strategies to “sell” attitudes and beliefs that underlie behaviors related to cyberbullying, much as is done in the field of public health. Knowing that the target audience for such marketing messages (youth and adolescents) are far more aware of their needs related to cyberbullying, the team of researchers included young people in the design of the media campaigns. Four different but related media campaigns were created, piloted, and studied. Although the statistical results were not exceptional, the contribution of this study is that we must include youth in the design of programs designed for youth, and that in the case of cyberbullying, the perspectives of youth are particularly salient. Further, this initial foray into the land of social media marketing was ground breaking and opens the door to digital solutions to the uniquely digital problem of cyberbullying, especially since cyberbullying is not restricted to schools or schoolmates. The chapter left us thinking about teams of educators, researchers, marketing specialists, and public health experts putting their heads together, informed by youth, continuing this line of work.

Since Olweus’ (1993) ground-breaking work, the field has embraced whole-school approaches to bullying prevention, and this notion has been utilized in cyberbullying prevention as well. An example is the Cyber-Friendly Schools’ project (Cross and her colleagues, Chapter 7), which incorporates a whole-school approach and youth as collaborators in a multilevel multicomponent platform, with a wealth of online resources. Although many programs could be described as “whole-school” approaches, the design of this project was unique in that a school team of adults and a leadership team of youth (10th grade students) collaborated to plan and deliver a curriculum to students in 8th and 9th grades. The teachers deliver the curriculum, and the students implement whole-school activities that they develop using program resources. The program includes a wealth of resources for the teams to draw upon, and the curriculum for each grade is sequential. The school teams, both teachers and students, receive training via workshops. Parents are included via online resources and a parent workshop presented by the staff and student cyberleaders. The evaluation of this project was extensive, involving large samples and multiple methods (surveys, interviews, etc.). The findings were positive in terms of reductions in perpetration and victimization by cyberbullying in grade 9 from grade 8 levels. In reviewing the results, the biggest barrier to success in the program was the difficulty finding time for delivery of the curriculum. This is a common struggle; schools are pressured to ensure that their academic curriculum is challenging and meets high expectations, leaving little time for other activities, regardless of the merit of those activities. It seems that it will require a major shift in educational policy for schools to embrace the notion that education involves more than just academic knowledge. We must prepare graduates to enter the world with skills they need to survive and thrive, and managing the online world respectfully is one of those skills.

In Chapter 8, we learned about the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center’s commitment to a whole-school approach in a US state that mandates antibullying training for educators and students. A unique aspect of the cyberbullying prevention program described here (McCoy & Englander) is the use of university students, considered high-status peer models, to educate K-12 students. The center provides training for teachers, and also conducts Train the Trainer faculty programs to equip participating faculty with more information and skills. Parent workshops are also offered. The training for students, which is conducted by the university students, is offered in a variety of formats, from assemblies to small groups. A unique aspect of this program is the development of activities designed specifically for advisory periods, which are 20–30 min daily blocks of time when students meet in smaller groups with a faculty advisor. This time is allocated for activities outside the curriculum, such as advising, career planning, social-emotional learning, and others. In most schools, the faculty advisor is responsible for planning for that time, and many are not comfortable planning outside their academic areas, and the time can easily revert to being a study hall. This program offers a curriculum specifically designed for those periods. Evaluations focused on participant satisfaction with the program, and their self-assessment of increased knowledge or skills derived, although there are data from a pre-post questionnaire about bullying and cyberbullying knowledge, taken by teachers, that showed a significant increase. A student survey showed increase in willingness to talk to adults at schools if they were targeted by bullying following an assembly. There were also positive ratings by students who had participated in the Advisory Period programming and those who had completed the CyberSkills Curriculum.

The KiVa Antibullying program (Chapter 9), developed in Finland and translated for use in several other countries, is a well-known whole-school approach with curriculum and online games that support the classroom activities. It is based on Salmivalli’s work on participant roles in bullying situations; the program focuses on empowering bystanders to take an active role in stopping bullying. KiVa includes lessons for all students and a process for intervention when serious cases of bullying occur. The actual lessons are not prescribed; the teacher material includes a variety of activities from which the teacher selects those most suited to her class. The approach has been rigorously evaluated, and found to reduce bullying and victimization in KiVa schools. Although cyberbullying is given attention in topics covered in the program, it is not the focus because the developers do not view cyberbullying as a separate phenomenon. However, the evaluation research found a significant reduction in cyberbullying and cybervictimization in KiVa schools compared to control schools. Age was a factor in the effects with middle-school youth: significant differences were found for younger students, almost significant for students at the mean age for the sample, and nonsignificant for older students. Follow-up data (no control schools) showed continued reductions in cybervictimization over time. This program is worthy of consideration by schools who have the commitment to invest the time for lessons and other activities, as evaluations using rigorous methods, have demonstrated the positive effects of KiVa on cyberbullying.

Like the KiVa program, the NoTrap! program (Menesini and her colleagues, Chapter 10) is directed toward both bullying and cyberbullying and has been subjected to rigorous evaluation procedures. Readers should attend closely to the section of the chapter that describes the series of studies undertaken to assess the effectiveness of the program, as they could be a model for others seeking to evaluate a program. NoTrap! is based on an ecological approach that considers the various levels of influence that extend beyond the school. This program targets secondary students in grades 7–10, and is designed to encourage bystanders to take action to stop bullying or cyberbullying. It has demonstrated reductions in victimization and increases in defending behavior. The program, delivered over about four months, engages students and peer educators, and has an online component. The effort to increase bystander action involves increasing empathy toward victims and teaching effective coping strategies. It is important for readers to keep in mind that the structure of Italian schools is such that students remain with their classmates throughout the day and over multiple years. Training is provided to teachers and students; those who become peer educators receive eight hours of training to learn listening skills, emotional competence and empathy, and problem solving and coping strategies for both bullying and cyberbullying. They also have a role in responding to requests for help from adolescents on the program website. The peer educators also lead two workshops for their classmates. In addition to reductions in all forms of bullying, which were sustained six months after the intervention concluded, the researchers found that for cybervictimization, participants had a significant reduction in internalizing symptoms.

Chapter 11 describes a program specifically designed to prevent cyberbullying. Media Heroes was developed in Germany for German schools, and is currently undergoing a trial of a Spanish version. It targets students in grades 7–10, along with their teachers and parents, and aims to impart online self-protection skills. The model is a Train the Trainer model, providing information and skills to school personnel who then are provided with resources to deliver the program in their usual context. The program focuses on developing skills in empathy and perspective taking, as research links the absence of these skills to increases in bullying and cyberbullying behaviors. Two versions of the program are available: a 10-week program that includes 90 minutes per week of lessons and activities, and a one-day workshop with four sections of 90 min each. Although the developers of the program prefer the longer format, they acknowledge the difficulties that have been encountered finding time for weekly lessons, and want to ensure that at least some prevention activities occur in each school. The program targets individuals, classes, and parents, so as to provide different perspectives and include important environmental contexts. The parent component is a workshop for parents planned and delivered by students, reinforcing the skills they have learned. This program does not provide a component to deal with serious cyberbullying when it occurs. The program evaluation utilized a pre- post- follow-up design with a waitlist control group that did not receive the intervention. The data showed that almost half the students liked the program either a lot, or very much and that the teachers were very satisfied. The perceptions of students and teachers were that cyberbullying decreased as a result of the program. Results also showed positive effects on empathy, perspective taking, cyberbullying perpetration and victimization, and self-esteem and health. The positive effects were maintained at the six-month postintervention time point. The authors also note that the 10-week program had, as expected, greater effects than the single-day workshop.

In Chapter 12, a technological project—an app for mobile phones—was developed and tested. It has an overall goal of teaching more effective strategies to respond to bullying. The password-protected app first provides accurate information about bullying, and uses short videos of celebrities popular with youth. The figures in the videos take an active role in combating bullying, modeling better coping strategies than many youth are known to use. The app collects data about bullying experiences on a regular basis (daily to weekly) and presents the information in graphic form. The app offers a large number of strategies and resources that are believed more effective than the typical responses made by victimized youth. The app encourages youth to experiment with, and evaluate new strategies in a quest to find the most effective ones for each user. It could be used as an adjunct to other interventions, or as a standalone app. It has only recently been released, and is currently only available in French. Qualitative data were very positive about the program, and a very small quantitative study reduced victimization in participants. Another quantitative study found that victims showed greater reductions in victimization than controls. Because the analyses were conducted with small groups, the evidence, although positive, is hardly definitive. However, we agree with the authors that this strategy has promise and look forward to reading about further studies with larger samples. We also acknowledge that although cyberbullying was not specifically addressed in the app, the skills and resources would likely be helpful, as was found with other programs. We hope the authors will add a cyberbullying component, and find resources to make the program available in other languages.

One might argue that school-based interventions do not reach all youth, and perhaps are likely to exclude many vulnerable groups. In Chapter 13, Dehue and her colleagues describe a Dutch standalone intervention designed for low-academically achieving students who are 12–15 years old and who have been cybervictimized. Because many youth are victimized in traditional ways in addition to cyberforms, the intervention targets both kinds of peer victimization. The program is online, and was developed using an Intervention Mapping Protocol to ensure a rigorous model is followed. After conducting an exhaustive literature review, the research team conducted focus groups with representatives of the target audience. This was followed by applying the principles of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) to the intervention design, which included three topics, accessed via the Internet, that were delivered monthly for three months. The amount of text was minimal and more appealing delivery used video clips, images, comics, animations, and digital guides. Each student had a personal page that included exercises and information summaries. Approximately 18% of students in recruited programs were considered to cybervictims. The study experienced high rates of attrition, so that the planned effectiveness study could not be conducted. The participants who did complete measures rated the website quite positively, found the first topic to be the most understandable, the second most useful for stopping cyberbullying, and the third topic was rated as the most unique. The personal page was not utilized much. The authors conclude that the target population may have had difficulty using the website independently, and perhaps a feature connecting the youth to assistance would be a good addition. They also concluded that such standalone intervention should be short, and measures used to assess the program also be as short as possible while retaining good psychometric properties.

The social ecological framework was along the theoretical basis for the development of the ViSC program in Austria (Chapter 14). Like Kiva, this program was developed to address traditional bullying, and the researchers examined the effects on cyberbullying as well. It is a whole-school program that includes teacher training and a class project completed by students in grades 5–8. The key person in each school is the ViSC coach, who is trained by the researchers and who then conducts teacher training at the school level. Two trainings are conducted, one at the beginning of first semester and the other at the beginning of the second semester. The program includes four sequential modules: in the first, teachers learn to define and recognize bullying. Scientific evidence is presented to ensure the teachers’ information is factual and accurate. The second module involves training in how to address serious cases of bullying when they occur. A manualized best practice is conveyed to the teachers, and in module three, the teachers discuss what preventive measures already exist in the school. It is in this module that the specific procedures and logistics for program implementation are determined. The last module is the class project, in which students first receive social skills’ training, and then work together as a group to achieve a class-determined goal. The collaborative effort is believed to create a more positive class climate in which bullying and other forms of aggression are less likely. The program has been evaluated using the most rigorous methods of analysis, and has also been disseminated to three other countries (Cyprus, Romania, and Turkey). The findings show strong support for the effectiveness of the intervention on cyberbullying and cybervictimization, with results showing a decrease in cyberbullying and victimization in the months following the end of the intervention.

Convivencia is a national model that promotes positive interpersonal relationships in Spanish schools (Ortega-Ruiz and her colleagues, Chapter 15). The goal is to create more positive and accepting social climates in which aggression is rare. With the advent of cyberbullying, the concept was expanded to include cyberbullying, and is known is cyberconvivencia. The program uses training and workshops for teachers, students, and parents in its effort to reduce interpersonal problems associated with the digital world. The program uses short lessons to teach about the Internet and social networks, the benefits of digital media, and information about risks. There are eight sessions that promote knowledge of digital technology and the various media, the safe ways to use digital tools, and to generate an action plan for the school. The content of each session is described in the chapter. Schools are obligated to expand their convivencia programs to address cyberbullying and other digital behaviors. The authors cite their previously published work regarding effectiveness, noting that participants gained awareness of the lack of control over information that is on the Internet. Importantly, both cyberbullying and cybervictimization decreased after the intervention. Note that the program to date has been delivered by the researchers; the next step is to evaluate the program when delivered by teachers in the schools.

Chapter 16 turns to a child-directed program used with youth in Japan (Takeuchi and his colleagues). It began in one school, and has expanded to include young people in a wider geographical area. The model is based on a cross age structure, with children disseminating their ideas to other children. Students involved represented a cross-section of the school in terms of age, popularity, status, etc. and all had a desire to participate. The Smartphone Summits, as they are called, involve youth from multiple schools, and the crossfertilization of ideas is a valuable benefit of the model. In addition, the plan is cross age, with university faculty supervising university students, who facilitate group discussion among the high-school and junior high-school students. Many of the projects created in the summits involve educating elementary children about safe ways to use smartphones. Adults assist in generating media coverage of events, and by inviting local officials to the summits in which the children describe their projects. Logistically, each summit involves a series of meetings: an introductory session to generate ideas. One group decided to survey students in their school, and adults helped them distribute their questionnaire. At the next meeting, the students actually work on their project plans and give a presentation to the entire group. The final activity occurs six months later, when the projects have been implemented. Each group shares what they have accomplished. After one summit, a group, supervised by university students, created a minitextbook for elementary children, and presented lessons in elementary classrooms. The chapter mentions a variety of products that came out of the summits. Evaluation of a sample of participants using a researcher-developed questionnaire revealed positive beliefs on the part of participants on their own and their classmates improved behavior with smartphones. The Smartphone Summit has grown in Japan and received favorable publicity in local press, generating even more interest. The model could be applied in other countries and settings to take advantage of youth’s desire to have a voice and an impact on their lives and those of their peers.

The Information-Motivation-Behavioral Skills’ (IMB) model was the approach to intervention development taken by Popovac and Fine (Chapter 17) whose workshops were piloted with adolescent girls in South Africa. The approach, best known in health behavior programs, aims to impart increased information, motivation, and behavioral skills to reduce problem behaviors and promote positive change. An essential target in this program is risk perception; adolescents are often described as believing in their own invulnerability, which decreases their responses to what others might perceive as dangerous. To make the program relevant to a given group of youth, an anonymous baseline questionnaire is administered to gather data on their digital behaviors and beliefs. The authors recommend free programs such as Survey Monkey to quickly obtain basic analyses that can be used to tailor the content of the single 50-minute workshop. In addition to the information about the prevalence of cyberbullying and other digital behaviors in the school, the workshop should be interactive and engage the participants in discussions of potential consequences of involvement in cyberbullying. The authors recommend using a variety of media to engage the students, including video, articles from recent news, etc. After the presentation of information, students work with scenarios of situations developed by the researchers, and discuss how they would feel if they were the target, and how they would respond. These are first shared in pairs, and then presented for discussion by the whole group. To evaluate the program, the researchers used a risk-perception scale administered before the intervention for the control group and after the intervention for intervention groups. Analysis revealed that the intervention group had significantly higher risk perception than the control, and risk perception decreased with the increase in grade. Since increased risk perception was a goal of the program, authors considered this to be evidence of effectiveness.

The final chapter describing interventions, Chapter 18, describes a single-session intervention that is based on the Extended Parallel Process Model (EPPM), which conveys messages directed toward factors believed to have an impact on an individual’s behavior: susceptibility (to victimization), perceived severity of the threat, response efficacy to control cyberbullying behaviors, and general self-efficacy for employing constructive behaviors to reduce cyberbullying. The program uses “fear appeals” to increase the sense of susceptibility of the youth. The intervention was a 45-minute presentation to middle-school students that utilized information gathered about students via their school Facebook profiles, demonstrating that it is easy for someone to obtain personal information. The presentation included high-profile examples of tragic outcomes of cyberbullying. Then the presentation offered constructive behaviors that would prevent cyberbullying if students would use them. The intervention was also modified and presented to parents. The authors present the findings of a study of effectiveness, citing earlier papers, but the reader is not given the statistical information in this chapter, so must rely on the authors’ reports. This intervention is unique in that it is very brief, relies on generating fear, which is then allayed if the speaker’s recommendations are followed.

Peter Smith’s commentary brings all the major points of the book into sharp focus, pointing out how the interventions are considered along three dimensions of technical vs. relationship; general bullying or a specific focus on cyberbullying and which levels of the ecological model are targeted. He also mentions how age, gender, culture, and disability are considered. There is a discussion of student voice and what role theory does and should play in reducing cyberbullying. Finally, Peter discusses issues about how the programs are implemented and evaluated considering factors such as feasibility, fidelity, follow-up, and efficacy.

Well, congratulations to you the reader for getting through the whole book (or just reading this chapter or even if you only turned to this last page!☺). This feat actually shows that as a practitioner you want to make a difference for young people and reduce the harm of cyberbullying. And that motivation is crucial in changing young people’s perceptions and attitudes about cyberbullying which hopefully will lead to a change in behavior. You as a teacher or adult working with young people can make a difference in influencing their attitudes and behaviors. Although many of the programs in this book are aimed at secondary school students many studies have shown that elementary and middle-school students’ attitudes and behaviors are more easily influenced by adults than older students. So start early. Most of these programs also show evidence of reduction of both traditional and cyberbullying whether the program targeted one of the other or both, giving credence to the notion that the underlying mechanisms and motivations for all forms of bullying are similar. As with any learning also once is not enough. If it takes us as parents about ten years to instill an automatic “please” and “thank you” in our children, we must continually be teaching them about civility and kindness, not to resort to or join in any form of bullying and to stand up for anyone who is victimized.