Loneliness, personal and social well-being: towards a conceptualization of the effects of cyberbullying / Soledad, bienestar social e individual: hacia una conceptualización de los efectos del cyberbullying

Abstract

This paper examines the effects of cyberbullying using a mixed method approach, by combining interviews, focus groups and a survey of 7,000 students. In the inductive stage, and following an axial coding analysis, we identified 153 concepts related to conflicts, which were divided into three thematic units to explain the greater impact of cyberbullying: (1) social distance; (2) privacy exposure; and (3) range of the material. The survey concluded that: (1) the victims of bullying and cyberbullying present higher levels of loneliness and lower levels of social well-being compared to non-bullied students, and those who were bullied in both channels presented higher levels of loneliness and lower levels of social well-being than those who were bullied in only one of them; (2) the victims of cyberbullying showed lower levels of individual well-being compared with those who had never been bullied, as with those who suffered face-to-face bullying. This difference was explained by testimonies indicating that most of the cyberbullying was related to intimate content, which has a higher impact on image perception.