Prevalence and Correlates of Cyberbullying Perpetration. Findings from a German Representative Student Survey.

Marie Bergmann,Dirk Baier

doi:10.3390/ijerph15020274

Abstract

Based on a survey of 9512 ninth-grade students conducted in Lower Saxony in 2013, this paper examines the prevalence of cyberbullying perpetration and the correlates of this behavior. Binary logistic multilevel regression was used in order to analyze correlates of sexual and psychological cyberbully perpetration. In the preceding semester, 2.4% of the adolescents were perpetrators of psychological cyberbullying and 0.4% bullied someone online sexually. Low levels of empathy, frequent consumption of violent media, and being victims of aggressive online behaviors are correlated with the risk that a child will become a bully. Female adolescents are less likely than boys to engage in sexual cyberbullying perpetration, but they are more likely to engage in psychological cyberbullying perpetration. Only a small share of adolescents engage in sexual and psychological cyberbullying perpetration. Both behaviors differ in their correlates, however being a victim of aggressive online behaviors increase the risk for perpetration of both behaviors, respectively.

Highlights

Almost all young people have a mobile phone or other form of internet access
Saxony shows that online aggressive behavior is a relevant problem
The analyses show that aggressive behavior is even more widespread in the school setting, where 58.9% of the respondents indicated that they had engaged in such behavior in the past semester

Summary

Introduction

Almost all young people have a mobile phone or other form of internet access. The high availability of modern communication technologies in adolescence seems desirable because it ensures access to knowledge, which is a central resource in today’s society. Teenagers, like all other age groups, use these communication technologies for more than mere knowledge acquisition and learning. There are other functions that these technologies enable and that make their use interesting. The communication technologies offer new opportunities for the exercise of aggression namely, cyberbullying

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion