Introduction
Bullying has been a constant problem in schools, however over the past three decades or so, a wealth of academic research and effective policy implementation by schools has meant that the problems associated with bullying has decreased. The rapid growth of Internet Communication Technology (ICT) in the lives of young people today has created a host of new ways of communicating with peers and provided students with exciting new ways of learning. Unfortunately, this technology explosion has also created a dangerous new form of bullying called cyber-bullying that, until very recently had gone largely unchecked in schools and the community. Recently however, educators, policy makers and academics have started to grasp the enormity of the problems associated with online behaviour and how cyber-bullying differs from traditional face-to-face bullying, and have started to put measures in place to counter the issue (Cassidy, Jackson & Brown, 2009). This paper will define what cyber-bullying is, who is involved in it, and the common tools and forums that are used by cyber-bullies to target their victims. It will also discuss the differences between cyber-bullying and traditional face-to-face bullying, and why current bullying policies need to be reviewed. Furthermore the impact that cyber-bullying has on young people will be analysed as will the role that parents and teachers have in regulating this new threat. Finally a list of resources will be outlined that teachers will find useful in learning about and helping to educate others in the dangers of cyber-bullying.
What is Cyber-Bullying and where does it happen?
Bullying is a longstanding problem that has a negative impact on the school and the school lives of countless young people. Saddock and Saddock (2007) define bullying as the use of one’s strength or status to intimidate, injure, or humiliate another person of lesser strength or status and can be physical, verbal or social in nature. Traditionally, bullying has been viewed as a face-to-face encounter between a bully and a victim, usually in view of an audience of peers (Beran & Li, 2005). However, as technology becomes an ever increasing part of our lives, and provides invaluable tools to enhance students learning, it also opens the door for a dangerous new type of bullying, commonly referred to as cyber-bullying (Li, 2007.). In his website , Bill Besley defines cyber-bullying as:
…involving the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to support deliberate, repeated, and hostile behaviour by an individual or group that is intended to harm others.
This multitude of new mediums for social interaction outside of the traditional face-to-face meetings give today’s youth a wide range of tools to engage in anti- and pro-social behaviour with their peers. It must be noted that a majority of young people will use these tools in a pro-social way to develop and sustain friendships, romantic relationships, and enter into new hobbies (Livingston, 2003). Therefore, as Juvonen and Gross (2008) state, bullying may therefore be just as inevitable in these online forums as it would be in other social contexts, however as this paper will discuss, the different forms that cyber-bullying can take mean that victims often suffer in silence, with even those closest to them unaware of their victimisation, which can have devastating consequences.
As with traditional bullying, cyber-bullying can take on many different forms. Nancy Willard (cited in Li, 2007, p 436) identified seven different types of cyber-bullying action, which have been supplemented so that it encompasses new forms of internet social interaction. They are:
Flaming – Sending angry, rude, vulgar messages about a person to an online group or to that person via email, text messaging or social networking sites.
Online harassment –Repeatedly sending offensive messages via email, text messaging or social networking sites.
Cyber Stalking – Online harassment that includes threats of harm or is excessively intimidating.
Denigration – Sending harmful, untrue, or cruel statements about a person to other people or posting such material online.
Masquerade –Pretending to be someone else and sending or posting material that makes that person look bad.
Outing – Sending or posting material about a person that contains sensitive, private or embarrassing information, including forwarding private messages or images.
Exclusion – Cruelly excluding someone from on online group.
A wide range of studies have found that cyber-bullying occurs most through instant messaging, chat rooms and social networking sites (Cassidy et al, 2009, Baht, 2008, Li, 2007). Other devices such as mobile phone text messages and web blogs were found to be used also, but not nearly as frequently according to Cassidy et. al (2009) who found that only 7% of respondents reported being cyber-bullied through text messaging.
School yard bullying vs cyber-bullying
While the basic motive of the intent to ‘victimise their peers by the repeated use of negative actions’ (Pellegrini & Bartini, 2000) is common to both forms of bullying, there are many differences which must be considered. One difference is the much larger potential audience that will witness the victim’s humiliation. With social networking sites and the ability to forward emails to a very large audience very quickly there is the potential for thousands, even millions of people to know of the humiliation of the target (Campbell, 2005). Also, as Campbell (2005) states:
…there is the power of the written word. When bullies abuse verbally, the victim might not remember every word, but with emails and text, chat rooms and websites, the targeted student can read what the bully is saying again and again. It may even seem more concrete and ‘real’ than spoken words.
As cyber-bullying is a relatively new term with most studies into it being within the last five years, it is also important to investigate the relationship between schoolyard bullying and cyber-bullying as well as examining what the implications of cyber-bullying could be compared to schoolyard bullying. Generally, students that are cyber-bullied are found to be victimised at school, with Beran and Li (2005) citing that this was the case in a majority respondents in their survey, while Cassidy et al (2009) found that two thirds of those students that reported being cyber-bullied were also bullied at school. It has also been found that victims that are bullied within the school grounds will often retaliate at home through the use of ICT (Brown, Jackson & Cassidy, 2006). This point highlights perhaps the most dangerous aspect of cyber-bullying, that it allows bullying now to occur anywhere, even the supposed ‘safe-haven’ that was the home 24-hours a day, 7 days a week. The ramifications of this constant exposure to bullying will be discussed further later in the paper.
In schoolyard bullying it would almost always occur that the bully is known to the victim, however in the online world it is easy for bullies to remain anonymous behind chat handles or fake social networking profiles. This anonymity can not only compound the distress caused by the victim, but it can also lead to students bullying when they would not do so face to face (Campbell, 2005).
While the base motive for cyber-bullying and schoolyard bullying remain the same, the explosion of ICT use, especially among young people means that cyber-bullying has the ability to harm young people of today more so than traditional schoolyard bullying ever did.
Impact on Young People
Chanelle Rae was a 14 year old girl that was described as being happy and beautiful and loved by everybody. In July this year however, after receiving a nasty instant message about some troubles she was having with her friends she took her own life.
It is tragically becoming a more frequent occurrence that we see news reports in which a young person, like Chanelle has taken their own life as a result of cyber-bullying.
It is widely known that bullying can negatively impact on social adjustment and mental health, with victims of bullying often displaying symptoms of depression, high anxiety, loneliness and low self-esteem (Hawker & Boulton, 2000). The impact of these psychosocial issues and mental illness has been known to result in detrimental patterns of sleep deprivation, anger, social isolation, skipping school, increased susceptibility to illness, and decreased school performance. This social withdrawal, outbursts of anger and poor school performance will often lead to the student being further victimised and as such end up being caught in a vicious cycle. It is from this cycle that students can feel there is no way out, and spiral into severe depression or even suicide (Hawker & Boulton, 2000). Although the literature on the effects that cyber-bullying alone can have is still in its infancy, it is safe to assume that victims of cyber-bullying also suffer from these same effects among others (Beran & Li, 2007).
To any child, even a single episode of cyber-bullying has been shown to relate to increases in emotional distress, and there alarming studies that have found that students displaying symptoms of depression were three times more likely to report being cyber-bullied (Ybarra, 2004). When these factors are combined with the fact that ICT allows people to be victimised in their home at any time, the potential for a large audience to their humiliation, and that these victims are likely to confront these cyber-bullying incidents alone, at home can mean that the impact on the adjustment and mental health of the victims have the potential to deteriorate very quickly. Furthermore, some studies such as Ybarra, Mitchell, Wolak & Finkelhor (2006) suggest that being a victim of cyber-bullying can often lead to becoming a cyber-bully themselves. This is in keeping with the literature on traditional bullying, where it is believed that bullying begets bullying. This is especially alarming in the cyber-bullying arena, as it is believed that it is creating a range of bullies who would not have taken these types of actions in the schoolyard, but the false power and potential anonymity of cyber space allows them to do so. This supposed anonymity can also have a negative impact on the bully as well as the victim. As Willard (cited in Brown, Cassidy & Jackson, 2008) suggests, in terms of legal ramifications, these youths hiding behind their fake screen names or profiles can feel that they are impervious to any illegal acts that they are performing online.
It is for this reason that special care and guidance from parents, teachers and indeed students themselves must be given to young people today to help minimize the impact that cyber-bullying has.
Role of Parents, Teachers and the Community
Two of the biggest issues with cyber-bullying are that victims are often reluctant to report the incidents to people in positions of authority, and that it is a topic that can appear frightening to many parents and teachers as they are not familiar with the online technologies that are commonly used by young people today (Baht, 2008). The main reasons that students are reluctant to report cyber-bullying to parents and/or teachers are; feeling that no action will be taken to stop the bullying, fear of reprisal by the bully or others, and fear that they will have restrictions placed on their use of ICT (Baht, 2008). These problems suggest the need for systematic education on all aspects of cyber-bullying for children, parents and teachers (Li, 2007), and the need for a review of bullying policies within all schools (Brown et al, 2008).
Policy review and implementation regarding cyber-bullying should be considered a task for all teachers to be involved with in some capacity, whether it be assisting in the policy design or just being aware of the changes that are occurring. All NSW schools will have an anti-bullying policy in place as outlined by the NSW Department of Education and Training in its ‘Anti-bullying Policy for schools’ ( which states that schools must:
develop an Anti-bullying Plan through consultation with parents,
caregivers, students and the community, which clearly identifies both
the behaviours that are unacceptable and the strategies for dealing with
bullying in the classroom and playground.
In many cases however, these policies focus primarily on traditional forms of bullying. This leads to a policy vacuum on how to effectively deal with cyber-bullying which can leave teachers unsure on how to proceed with cyber-bullying incidents (Shariff, 2005). Hence, students will often feel that the incident of cyber-bullying has not been effectively dealt with, which will result in the unwillingness of students reporting future incidents (Bhat, 2008). Schools therefore need to do one of two things; develop and implement a cyber-bullying policy that will run alongside the current anti-bullying policy, or review and re-design the current policy to include cyber-bullying. As Campbell (2005) states, in the last thirty years there has been considerable research into face-to-face bullying which has found that the most effective way to combat bullying is with a whole school approach (WSA). Although there are many differences between traditional bullying and cyber-bullying, it is widely acknowledged that taking a WSA to cyber-bullying would also be the most effective course of action. It must be noted however that in developing this policy within the framework of the DET anti-bullying policy, each school must adopt their own polices and guidelines that are relevant to their school values and context and that are designed with input from parents and members of the wider community. Also it is vitally important that our policies are dynamic so that as these technologies evolve and new tools and modes for cyber-bullying become available, school’s anti-bullying policies have the scope to develop (Beran & Li, 2007)
Aside from developing effective policies relating to cyber-bullying, we as teachers need to be responsible for educating the students, parents and our colleagues on the issue of cyber-bullying. The education of the students on this issue must start as early as possible. It is imperative that student education programs are designed as part of any effective policy implementation such as those outlined above. These education programs must have a wide range of goals that will empower students to become assertive in situations where they find themselves victimised, recognise the need to report incidents of cyber-bullying happening to themselves or others. These students must also be made aware of avenues available to report these incidents, recognise the possible consequences of being a cyber-bully and how cyber-bullying affects victims. It is hoped that by educating students on cyber-bullying, it will create empathy in students so that they will be less likely to stand silently as others are cyber-bullied and will not become bullies themselves (Noble, 2003). Also, it is important to educate students on the consequences of cyber-bullying, both those that are outlined in the schools anti-bullying policy and possible legal consequences. For example, Baht (2008) points out that students must be made aware that their identities can be traced even if they are using an online alias, and that there are actually criminal charges that can be laid in extreme cases of cyber-bullying under the Commonwealth Crimes Act 1914, part VIIB, section 85ZE.
Studies have found that between 25% and 50% of students that are victims of cyber-bullying will fail report the incident to a trusted adult or their peers (Li, 2007, Juvonen & Gross, 2008, Cassidy et al, 2009, Baht, 2008). Hence it is of vital importance that students are provided with the tools and resources, to report these incidents whether it be to a person within the school or outside. By educating students on the school’s anti-bullying policy with regards to cyber-bullying it is hoped that they will see the school as being an effective combatant of cyber-bullying. The feeling that the issue will be addressed will hopefully more comfortable and confident in reporting cases involving themselves or others. Outside the school environment, informing students of the many mentoring programs that are availableover the phone and the internet will encourage them to confide their issues with someone who is specially trained to assist them in dealing with cyber-bullying. One such site which provides over 700 ‘cybermentors’, who are secondary school age people that are specially trained in assisting victims. People who are being bullied simply log onto the website and leave their details and are contacted by a ‘cybermentor’ who will help them deal with the issue. The measure of the success of this site and possibly the willingness of young people to disclose to their peers rather than adults is that there were over 23,000 users in its first three weeks of operation. (Lambert, 2009, p23).
There are a number of other useful website resources that teachers can use to help students understand and guide them through any cyber-bullying experiences, these will be outlined in the following section.