DESIGNING EFFECTIVE INTERVENTION PROGRAMS TO PREVENT CYBER-BULLYING

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   moral disengagement (which refers to the process of convincing oneself that ethical standards do not apply to them)
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