Cyberbullying

Learning Outcomes:

By the end of this unit, learners should be able to:

• describe what cyberbullying is

• provide examples of cyberbullying

• identify how learners' various personalities can affect cyberbullying

• recognise the effects of cyberbullying on males and females.

What is Cyberbullying?

Cyberbullying is a form of bullying which involves acts or behaviours intended to cause harm to victims who are unable to defend themselves easily using ICT devices such as mobile phones, tablets, and computers. Cyberbullying is also referred to as Internet aggression, Internet bullying, electronic aggression, and online bullying (Kim & Faith, 2019).

Effect of Learners' Personality on Cyberbullying

The personality trait 'openness' is positively related to cyberbullying and being cyberbullied. In other words, learners with a high level of openness are more prone to cyberbullying others or being cyberbullied. This is consistent or partially consistent, indicating that these learners are curious about the outside world, fond of trying new things and are therefore more likely to engage in Internet events or comment on others' opinions, which may lead to online conflicts. Furthermore, learners with a high level of openness have more interactions on a wider range of topics and are therefore more likely to be exposed to misinformation or disinformation. During the process, they fully expose their own information on the Internet, making them more vulnerable to cyberbullying. (Zhong et al., 2021). Learners who possess the personality trait of openness should therefore try decreasing their usage of the Internet so that they can avoid cyberbullying others or being cyberbullied. They should also avoid sharing personal information and work towards learning how to identify misinformation so that they are further protected from being cyberbullied or cyberbullying others.  

Effect of Learners' Emotions on Cyberbullying

Learners' life satisfaction is negatively related to cyberbullying and being cyberbullied. This implies that the higher the learners' life satisfaction, the less likely they are to bully others or be bullied. These inconsistencies are possibly due to the different types of learners in different countries when perceiving joviality and the different assessment scales being focused on. When considering empathy, personal stress, and empathic concern, they are positively correlated with cyberbullying and being cyberbullied among female students. However, this correlation is not prevalent among male students, indicating that gender plays a mediating role in the effect of empathy on cyberbullying, which is consistent with the results of some early studies but opposes other studies. These volatile results may be caused by the differences in active areas of male and female brains with regard to displaying empathy. The emotional awareness of females is stronger, making them more likely to sympathise with others' stress and understand others by taking the position of others. This ultimately causes an involvement which is too intense to withdraw from, making them more prone to cyberbullying. In turn, empathy may be turned into vengeance, and they may criticise those whom they consider to be the offenders through inappropriate ways, such as breaching privacy, verbal abuse and insults, turning a self-righteous act into cyberbullying, and so forth  (Zhong et al., 2021).

NOTE:

The above two points that were focused on in this website are two critical focus areas of the article. To access the full article with more points, hypotheses, and figures obtained from researchers, CLICK HERE. Alternatively, click this link: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.621418/full