Introduction

This chapter will set the stage for the remainder of the chapters in the book. Although our focus is on evidence-based solutions to problems associated with cyberbullying, and programs designed to prevent or reduce cyberbullying, we think it is necessary to first provide an overview of what we have learned from cyberbullying research in the last two decades. Although cyberbullying is often described to as a recent phenomenon, a large and growing body of literature has investigated the problem: a Google Scholar search yielded 36,600 hits on the term “cyberbullying” (15,400 having been published since 2013).

Although there is now a sizable body of research on many aspects of cyberbullying, what is missing is investigations of promising programs designed to reduce it. This book is an attempt to remedy that deficit and provide readers with information about programs that have at least preliminary evidence of efficacy or effectiveness. While the study of the motivations, mechanisms, and dynamics of cyberbullying is ongoing, we want to bring attention here to successful efforts to do something about the problem. We also want to be sure that adults have accurate information about cyberbullying. Adults often think that there is an epidemic of cyberbullying and believe it is more common than data show it to be. In fact, cyberbullying occurs much less frequently than traditional forms. Furthermore, adults may also mistakenly believe the students are more upset by incidents of cyberbullying than students report being (Compton, Campbell, & Mergler, 2014).

Cyberbullying definition

Cyberbullying has been defined as intentional harmful behavior carried out by a group or individuals, repeated over time, using modern digital technology to aggress against a victim who is unable to defend him/herself (Juvonen & Gross, 2008; Konig, Gollwitzer, & Steffgen, 2010; Smith et al., 2008). Smith, del Barrio, and Tokunaga (2013) add that the aggressor is more powerful in some way than the target. This definition parallels the definition of traditional bullying, essentially adding “digital technology” as the mechanism by which the harm is inflicted.

In addition to the traditional criteria of intention, repetition, and power imbalance, some researchers have suggested that “anonymity” and “publicity” are additional features that define cyberbullying (Nocentini et al., 2010). For example, Sticca and Perren (2013) found that middle-school children rated public and anonymous cyberbullying as worse than incidents that were private or when the perpetrator was known. While we know these features are important, we disagree with making these qualities defining attributes because anonymity, while definitely easier to accomplish when cyberbullying, is not always the case, and cyberbullies can use private as well as public channels. However, it is important to keep in mind that other unique features of the digital environment may increase risks for cyberbullying. These are: the huge size of the potential audience; the continuous access; the permanence of online content; the ease of copying material and distributing it widely; and the lack of oversight of online behavior. In addition, the inability to view the emotional reactions of the target keeps perpetrators from having empathy for the target. The advent of sexting—sending explicit images or text using digital channels—has created a particularly dangerous opportunity for perpetrators to take images intended for an intimate relationship and broadcast them (without the knowledge or the consent of the target) in order to humiliate the target and damage his/her social relationships.

Historically, cyberbullying was first noticed late last century. Bill Belsey, a Canadian, is widely credited with coining the term cyberbullying on his website, although the earliest use was actually in 1995 in a New York Times article (Bauman, 2011). Although there is still some debate about the definition and whether it is the best term to use to describe the behaviors of interest (cf. Bauman, Underwood, & Card, 2013), the term is so widely accepted in both scholarly and public contexts that we continue to use it here. Since the term is an extension of the term “bullying,” we include a discussion of that definition next.

Bullying definition

Smith and Slonje (2010) define bullying as “an aggressive, intentional act or behaviour that is carried out by a group or an individual repeatedly over time against a victim who cannot easily defend him or herself” (p. 147). This definition is based on Olweus' (1993) original premise that bullying is a subset of aggression with three main characteristics. These are the intention of the perpetrator to hurt, that the behavior is repeated, and the defining characteristic, that there is a power imbalance in the relationship. Three main types of bullying have been identified: physical (hitting, kicking, etc.), verbal (malicious teasing, threatening), and relational (social exclusion, rumor spreading). One of the points of contention is that it is impossible to unambiguously know someone’s intent. In an effort to resolve differences about this, a consensus view has been proposed by Langos (2012), who suggested that bullying should be considered as intentional harm if a “reasonable person” thinks it would be harmful. This is a standard often used in legal cases to determine culpability for an action.

The concept of repetition in defining bullying is probably the most widely debated. Most bullying is low in severity but relentless, meeting that criterion. However, some have argued that one serious incident of aggression may be sufficient to call it bullying (Naylor, Cowie, Cossin, Bettencourt, & Lemme, 2006). Most researchers agree that if the definition says usually repeated that it captures both of these views. Recently, the American organization, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) revised its official definition to say that the action must either be repeated or be “highly likely to be repeated” (Center for Disease Control (CDC), 2016).

The third characteristic—the imbalance of power, the key defining feature, is also the most contentious. The debate about this concept is more divided along European and North American lines. European scholars see the imbalance of power as integral in distinguishing this subset of aggression from fighting and other forms of aggression. Many studies have tried to operationalize the imbalance of power by physical size, psychological strength, or the number of students involved in bullying one person. Researchers in the USA, such as Justin Patchin and Sameer Hinduja (Hinduja & Patchin, 2015, p. 11) do not see the imbalance of power as a key concept in bullying, especially in cyberbullying, mainly because it is difficult to define this concept precisely enough that laws can be clear, i.e., that the legal, school community, and research definitions may vary according to the contexts and requirements. No single definition of bullying is currently able to meet all needs, and it is for this reason that academic, education, and wider community members engaged in these discussions are encouraged to clearly detail the definition they are referring to or drawing from when making comments or claims about these matters (Department of Education & Training, 2015).

However, we believe that using Olweus' (1993) original explanation of the imbalance of power, which is that the student being victimized feels powerless as s/he cannot get the bullying to stop or cannot escape the damage (Menesini, Nocentini, & Camodeca, 2013) is helpful to clarify what is meant by that criterion. Some consensus has now been reached by the United States Center for Disease Control defining bullying as “any unwanted aggressive behaviour(s) by another youth or group of youths who are not siblings or current dating partners that involves an observed or perceived power imbalance and is repeated multiple times or is highly likely to be repeated” (Gladden, Vivolo-Kantor, Hamburger, & Lumpkin, 2014, p. 7). The Australian Research Alliance for Children & Youth (ARACY) also proposed a definition of school-based bullying as “a systematic abuse of power in a relationship formed at school characterized by: (1) Aggressive acts directed (by one or more individuals) towards victims that a reasonable person would avoid; (2) Acts which usually occur repeatedly over a period of time; and (3) Acts in which there is an actual or perceived power imbalance between perpetrators and victims, with victims often being unable to defend themselves effectively from perpetrators” (Hemphill, Heerde, & Gomo, 2014, p. 3). In a study of preservice teachers in the US, Bauman and Del Rio (2006) found that only 6 percent of participants, asked to provide a definition of bullying mentioned repetition, and 28 percent alluded to the imbalance of power.

Is cyberbullying a form of bullying, or something different entirely?

The initial response to the proliferation of cyberbullying from the media and scholars was that this was an entirely new and distinct form of bullying. However, there has been vigorous debate over the last ten years as to whether cyberbullying is a form of bullying or a discrete form of aggression (Dooley, Pyżalski, & Cross, 2009). This matters to practitioners because if cyberbullying is a form of bullying, then antibullying programs designed for traditional bullying should have an effect, whereas if it is a unique phenomenon, then it is likely that unique and new programs will have to be developed.

The argument for considering cyberbullying to be a type of bullying is that most victimized students are both traditionally and cyberbullied (as high as 93% according to Hase, Goldberg, Smith, Stuck, & Campain, 2015) and that common predictors have been identified for both forms (e.g., strain, low self-esteem, negative relationships with family and peers; Kim, Song, & Jennings, 2016); that cyberbullying meets the criteria of bullying but is manifested in different ways and has similar outcomes to face-to-face bullying (Thomas, Connor, & Scott, 2015). Recent research has found that both forms lead to negative consequences for involved youth, and both are associated with low self-control on the part of the cyberbullies (Kim et al., 2016). However, the proportion of bully-victims (those who both bully and are bullied) is much greater for cyberbullying than for traditional bullying (Festl, Vogelgesang, Scharkow, & Quandt, 2017). Furthermore, very few adolescents report only being cyberbullied; of those who reported victimization in a large US study, only about 5% were only cyberbullied while more than half said they were victimized in physical, verbal, relational, and cyber ways (Waasdorp & Bradshaw, 2015). Those who contend that cyberbullying is not a form of bullying point to studies that show that negative outcomes are more severe than those found for traditional bullying (e.g., Bonanno & Hymel, 2013; Campbell, Spears, Slee, Butler, & Kift, 2012; Perren, Dooley, Shaw, & Cross, 2010), although other studies have not found this additional degree of harm. Moreover, imbalance of power is not necessarily obvious in cyberbullying (although some believe that technological advantage may be just that); that it may happen only once (although it can be distributed many times after the initial event) and that it can be anonymous (Dooley et al., 2009). There are also features, noted earlier, of cyberbullying that distinguish this phenomenon from bullying (24/7 access, enormous audience, permanence of content, perception of anonymity, tendency for more vicious attacks due to the online disinhibition effect (Suler, 2004). On balance most people now think that cyberbullying is a form of bullying.

Why is the meaning of the word cyberbullying important?

Words mean different things to different people. We live in a society, which appropriates words that describe psychological disorders and applies them in our everyday speech. For instance, we often say we are “depressed” when we are sad; that we have the “flu” and not just a cold; that someone who is neat and tidy has OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder). The words bullying and cyberbullying seem to be so carelessly used now, so broadly defined that they can refer to anybody being mean, or even a supervisor using legitimate power, to appropriately reprimand a supervisee, being called a bully.

Studies have shown that different people understand the word bullying differently. In one study teachers, parents, and students said it was an imbalance of power that distinguished bullying from fighting, but none mentioned repetition. Parents disagreed with teachers about the intention to harm, with parents saying that students who bully might not know they are harming, while teachers said students who bullied always knew they were harming (Compton et al., 2014). Younger children also understand bullying differently from older children (Currie, Zanotti, Morgan, & Currie, 2012; Smith, Cowie, Olafsson, & Liefooghe, 2002) with people from different cultures also having varying ways of interpreting the term (Jacobson, Hood, & van Buren, 2014).

Practitioners cannot prevent and intervene in a behavior without a common understanding of what the behavior is. This is especially true of managing any form of bullying. If two students are fighting, then we usually punish them and teach them to solve their differences more constructively. If one student is bullying the other, it would be unfair to punish both, as the victimized student was already suffering unjustified aggression from a peer. Mediation is also not appropriate to encourage the two students to solve their differences when one does not want to stop and the other feels powerless. We all experience conflict in our lives, which can be functional or dysfunctional, but bullying is always dysfunctional for all involved. Schools are likely to have explicit policies for bullying and cyberbullying, spelling out consequences (but often lacking a definition of the behaviors). This leads to complaints that other forms of aggression are ignored or that someone is being unfairly punished.

Some researchers, tired of trying to tease out what cyberbullying is, call for all forms of aggression using technology to be investigated using the term cyberaggression (Bauman et al., 2013). However, there are two reasons to disagree with this view. First, students who are cyberbullied have more negative consequences than those who are involved in cyber fighting (Ybarra, Boyd, Korchmaros, & Oppenheim, 2012). This could be because of the fear engendered by the imbalance of power and the worry about repetition in cyberbullying as opposed to cyber fighting. Second, as in the playground, cyberbullying needs a different solution from cyber fighting because cyberbullying implies the victim is unable to make it stop, whereas with cyber fighting both parties are equally powerful.

Types of cyberbullying

While all cyberbullying uses digital technology, there are various actions than can be employed to hurt a target. Youth report that the distress they experience varies among the types. Some perpetrators find ways to obtain the passwords of the target, and then send or post messages or content that the target would never actually send, embarrassing the target and forcing them to convince those who received the message that they had not been the sender. Sending anonymous texts or posting anonymously on a website can generate considerable fear on the part of the recipient because they do not know who the source is. They can find themselves suspecting everyone, thus damaging relationships. Of course, sometimes cyberbullying is quite direct: mean, insulting, rude, or offensive content can be sent or posted directly to the target. A more indirect strategy is to spread rumors or slander the target, usually distributing the information widely. The target often learns what has happened only after many people have seen it, and someone alerts him or her. Sending or distributing sexual images was the most upsetting type of cyberbullying experienced by college students (Bauman & Newman, 2013). Other researchers found that denigration, outing and trickery (getting someone to reveal secrets and then sharing those with others), exclusion, and impersonation were the most distressing (Staude-Müller, Hansen, & Voss, 2012). Using the Cyber Experiences Survey, Bauman and Baldasare (2015) found that college students were most distressed by unwanted contact, followed by malice (mean and hurtful content) and humiliation.

Prevalence of cyberbullying

There are extremely wide variations in the reported prevalence of cyberbullying among youth. Although prevalence is generally measured by student self-report (Frisen et al., 2013) the wide range in findings is due to many differences in the way participants are recruited, how the data are collected, and the kind of measures used (Espinoza & Juvonen, 2013). Several differences are important to note. The first issue is whether a survey provides a researcher’s definition of bullying or not. Providing a definition of the word bully results in a more accurate response (Ybarra et al., 2012). The second issue is whether cyberbullying is measured by global questions such as “Have you been cyber bullied?” or behavioral questions such as “Have you been sent a mean text message?” Behavioral questions elicit more bullying responses than global questions (Huang & Cornell, 2015) mainly because students do not consider some of the specific behaviors to be bullying. The third issue is how often the behavior has to occur for it to be considered cyberbullying; some researchers consider two or three times a month to constitute bullying, while others may consider anything other than “never” as evidence of cyberbullying, while others use the same cutoff for both. Kubiszewski, Fontaine, Potard, and Auzoult (2015) studied both traditional and cyberbullying in their study, but used different cutoffs for classifying bullying. For traditional bullying, participants were considered a bully or victim if they reported being involved at least two to three times a month, while the cutoff for cyberbullying was once. The researchers argued that even one instance of cyberbullying can be seen multiple times by multiple people, and that the number of viewers can increase the longer the item remains accessible to others. The fourth issue is the reference time period selected: whether the cyberbullying happened in the last couple of months (about a school term), or the past year, or ever. The age range of the students has also varied, as are the different countries in which the studies are conducted. Furthermore, how the students are recruited (schools vs. websites) also influences the findings. In one US study, differences were found by ethnicity, with White students being more involved in cyberbullying as both perpetrators and victims than Hispanic students (Kupczynski, Mundy, & Green, 2013).

These differences of course make it extremely difficult to compare studies to ascertain prevalence rates. Spears, Keeley, Bates, and Katz (2014) in their report to the Australian government, reviewed eight major studies, which had collectively surveyed over 50,000 young people in Australia between the years 2007–2013, about their experiences of cyberbullying, drawing attention to the difficulty in synthesizing an accurate picture of the prevalence of cyberbullying because of the different ways each study collected and organized its data, and how the definition of bullying and/or cyberbullying was operationalized for measurement. A conservative estimate, extrapolated from all frequencies, timeframes, methodological approaches and definitions, was that approximately 20% of Australian minors had experienced cyberbullying over the course of a year.

To address that problem, one study included both bullying and cyberbullying at the same time, and found that almost half of the sample of 1225 secondary students in the US had been traditionally bullied at least two or three times in the previous month, compared to about 16% were victimized by cyberbullying (Hase et al., 2015). Ninety-three percent of those who had experienced traditional victimization also reported being cyberbullied; the correlation between bullying and cyberbullying was quite high. There were also gender differences in the findings: cyberbullying was associated with psychological symptoms more strongly for males than females. Reviewing the literature on cyberbullying, Kowalski, Giumetti, Schroeder, and Lattanner (2014) estimate that the majority of studies have found cybervictimization rates to be between 10% and 40%, with higher rates reported in the US than in Australia and Europe.

In a recent meta-analysis of 80 international studies in English, the researchers found that 15% of students admitted to cyberbullying others, compared to 35% who reported bullying using traditional means. For victimization, the rates were similar (15% and 36%, respectively). The two forms of bullying were strongly correlated for both perpetration and victimization (Modecki, Minchin, Harbaugh, Guerra, & Runions, 2014). In Australia 10% of students in grades 4–9 reported being cyberbullied in the previous term (Cross et al., 2009). In a more recent Australian longitudinal study, there were 21% of traditional victims, 15% of cyber victims, and 7% of students victimized in both ways (Hemphill et al., 2012). Student reports of being a cyber perpetrator are much lower than those reporting victimization. In the US, a meta-analysis of 81 papers found a range of perpetration from 1% to 41%, of cybervictimization from 3% to 72%, and both perpetration and victimization from 2.3% to 16.7%. These ranges reflect the concern regarding the wide variation in how the studies are conducted (Selkie, Fales, & Moreno, 2016). These researchers also performed a quality assessment of the 81 studies included in their analysis, and found that out of a possible 42 points, the range of scores was from 12 to 37, so we must always consider findings, even in scholarly journals, with a critical lens.

Consequences of cyberbullying

The experiences of students who have been cyberbullied are frequently associated with increased depression, anxiety, and social difficulties (Campbell et al., 2012), substance abuse (Mitchell, Ybarra, & Finkelhor, 2007), conduct, and peer problems (Dooley et al., 2009), and decreased self-esteem (Chang et al., 2013). Large-scale studies have also illustrated that cyberbullying perpetration by students is linked with higher levels of stress symptoms (Cross et al., 2009), social difficulties, depression, and anxiety (Campbell, Slee, Spears, Butler, & Kift, 2013), and also aggression and rule-breaking behavior (Ybarra & Mitchell, 2007). Compared to the negative outcomes of traditional bullying, those associated with cyberbullying are thought to be more negative, with higher levels of anxiety, depression, and social difficulties reported by students who have been cyberbullied (Perren et al., 2010; Sticca & Perren, 2013). Cyberbullying has also been more strongly association with suicidal behavior (thoughts, plans, and attempts) than traditional bullying in some studies (Bonanno & Hymel, 2013; Klomek, Sourander, & Gould, 2011). Kowalski and Limber (2013) found that those who were both cyberbullies and cybervictims had the worst scores on measures of physical and psychological health and academic performance. Spears et al. (2016) reported that across four studies (2011–2015), cyberbully-victims were consistently less socially connected, demonstrated lower levels of respect for others, and were more anxious, depressed, and stressed than those with no experience of cyberbullying.

A theory that attempts to explain why online bullying seems to often be more cruel and damaging has been proposed. Suler (2004) suggested that online disinhibition occurs when people get behind the screen and ignore the usual social conventions about how we treat one another. Perpetrators often say things online they would never say to the target in person. Cyberbullying can reach much larger and more distant audiences with perpetrators remaining anonymous, as bullying through electronic means has no geographic boundaries and can expand beyond the school into the family home (Mishna, Saini, & Solomon, 2009) and indeed into one’s pocket. These characteristics are considered by some to account for the increased psychological harm that has been detected with cyberbullying.

Overlap of forms of bullying

While we refer to physical, verbal, social/relational, and cyberbullying, as if they were separate, it has been found that most students (87%) who are victimized by technological means are also bullied in other ways (Cross et al., 2009; Kubiszewski et al., 2015). Additionally, those students who bullied others (77%) by technology also bullied face-to-face (Cross et al., 2009). In a study of 28,104 teens in US high schools, 25.6% reported they had been victimized. Of those, about half said they had been victimized by physical, verbal, relational, and cyber methods, while only 4.6% reported being bullied only by cyber methods. Those who were cyberbullied had greater reported psychological symptoms than those who were bullied in other ways (Waasdorp & Bradshaw, 2015). These findings are similar to those from a Canadian study of 2186 students in an urban area, in which 49.5% reported being bullied online and 33.7% acknowledged bullying others online (Mishna, Cook, Gadalla, Daciuk, & Solomon, 2010). This study also found that only 11% of participants did not know who did the online bullying; 36% of respondents said the perpetrator was a friend. Half of participants said the most common experience was being called names online.

Some researchers believe that victims of school bullying may retaliate against their traditional bullies using cybermethods (Kubiszewski et al., 2015). This phenomenon has been reported in other studies as well (Dehue, Bolman, Vollink, & Pouwelse, 2012; Klomek et al., 2011; Olweus, 2012; Sourander et al., 2010; Smith, 2011; Smith & Slonje, 2010; Sticca, Ruggieri, Alsaker, & Perren, 2013; Waasdorp & Bradshaw, 2015). Holfeld and Grabe (2012) found that those middle-school students who were traditional victims were nearly 10 times as likely to be cybervictims, while being a traditional bully increased the chances of being a cyberbully by seven times (Monks, Robinson, & Worlidge, 2012).

An interesting study conducted in Spain found that while involvement in cyberbullying could be predicted by previous involvement in traditional bullying, the reverse was not the case. That is, cyberbullying involvement did not predict involvement in traditional bullying (Del Rey, Elipe, & Ortega-Ruiz, 2012).

Another type of overlap is also important, which is the overlap between cyberbullying and cybervictimization. In traditional bullying, young people who are both perpetrators and victims are called bully/victims, and usually represent a small proportion of the sample. In cyberbullying, however, we find that the overlap is significantly higher (e.g., Bauman, 2010; Bauman & Pero, 2011; Del Rey et al., 2012).

The implication is that no matter what form bullying takes, prevention efforts need to focus on all forms, including cyberbullying. Teaching strategies for preventing cyberbullying need to include not only technological means, but need to address it as part of the relationship problem which is bullying. As shown later in the book, prevention programs addressing traditional bullying also reduce cyberbullying.

Readers should keep this general information about cyberbullying in mind as they read about the various programs that have shown some success in addressing this global problem that affects youth. It is important to realize that the technology is continually changing, with new devices and applications being developed at an astonishing rate. We cannot create programs for each individual innovation, because we will always be behind, and trends are in constant flux. The focus of prevention needs to be on more underlying commonalities in the technology and in the relationship dynamics that are involved.