DESIGNING EFFECTIVE INTERVENTION PROGRAMS TO PREVENT CYBER-BULLYING
Social media is understood as the “different
forms of online communications used by people to create networks and
communities, and collectives to share information, ideas, messages, and other
content, such as videos.”
Since the creation of the first social media website in
1997- Six degrees- it has made world a smaller place by being able to connect people
and building a community. Currently,
Facebook is the leading Social Network Site (SNS) and almost 71 per cent of adolescents
in North American have some form of social media.However, one of the biggest backlogs of social
media is cyber-bullying. Cyber bullying refers to the use of computers, mobile
phones, and other devices to engage in deliberate, repeated, aggressive acts to
harm others. Considering anyone can create profiles, account and make posts on
them without being traced, it has become a common phenomenon to bully on Social
Networking Sites. According to statistics, 57 percent of students reportedly
engage in or have become a victim of some form of cyberbullying, that is, more
than half of school-ages children are either a victim or a perpetrator of
cyberbullying.
Cyber-bullying
on Social Network Sites include:
1. Posting intentionally hurtful,
offensive, or intimidating messages, comments, or status updates
2. Creating hate groups
3. Sharing humiliating images
4. Excluding someone from events,
networks, or conversation.
The biggest challenge to eliminating cyber bullying
is the fact that cyberbullying is not limited by time or location. These acts
tend to be anonymous, follow a repetitive trend and can be shared. Moreover,
the un-monitored nature of these platforms provides methods to make posts without
being held accountable for. Additionally, both the victims and those committing
this are at a high risk for suicide. Therefore, it is necessary to develop
intervention programs for prevention of cyber-bullying.
In a
study by Hood &Duffy (2018), which assessed the extent to which personality
factors, demographic factors and situational factors affect the relationship between
victimization and bullying on Social Networking sites in school-aged children.
- · Personality traits include:
o cognitive empathy (the ability to understand and experience and share others’ emotional state)
o affective empathy (the ability to understand another person’s emotional state).
- · Demographic factors include sex and age
- · Situational factors that were assessed time adolescents spend on the internet and parental monitoring of internet use
The results of the study found that those who are high on moral disengagement i.e are more easily able to convince themselves that ethical standards do not apply to them were more likely to engage in cyber-bullying. Additionally, parental monitoring weakens the
relationship between cyber-bullying and cyber-victimization, in the sense that
both cyber-victimization and cyber- bullying are lower when children perceive that
their activity on the internet is being monitored.The implication of this study is that intervention
programs designed to reduce and prevent cyber-bullying should emphasize the
importance of parents monitoring the activity of their children. This will not
only discourage the bullies from performing such acts but also encourage the
victims of such acts to reach out for help.
- Hood, M., & Duffy, A. L. (2018). Understanding the relationship between cyber-victimisation and cyber-bullying on social network sites: The role of moderating factors. Personality and Individual Differences, 133, 103-108. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2017.04.004
