Abstract
Background: Bullying through social media, known as cyberbullying, is increasingly prevalent amongst today's youth. There is little research on a wide range of internalizing symptoms in conjunction with a measure of selfconcept in relationship to cyberbullying. Methods: This prospective research study examined the cross-sectional relationship between cyberbullying victims in children and adolescents 10-17 years of age within an acute inpatient psychiatric unit. Participants completed four separate measurements of anxiety and depression (the Modified Cyberbullying Questionnaire, the Children's Depression Inventory, the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED), and the Piers-Harris Children's Self Concept Scale). Results: 51 subjects completed the study. Twenty-four of the 51 participants reported some form of bullying (47.1%.) Of the 24 bullied participants, bullying via Facebook was most commonly reported (63% of bullied participants), followed by text messaging (50% of bullied participants). The mean total score on the Children's Depressive Inventory for the group in which social media bullying was reported was significantly higher than those in which no bullying was reported (14.00 (±3.56) versus 9.07 (±2.34), (p=0.020)). The mean total score on the SCARED for the group in which social media bullying was reported was statistically significant (26.83 (±6.52) versus 14.33 (±3.98), (p=0.0015)). The mean total T-score on the Piers-Harris Children's Self Concept Scale (2nd ed) for the group in which social media bullying was reported was significant (42.75 (±5.20) versus 49.26 (±3.97), (p=0.043)). The Behavioral Adjustment domain was the only individual domain in which statistical significance was not achieved (bullied versus nonbullied (43.18 ± 4.21 vs. 44.41 ± 3.49), p=0.61)). Discussion: Results indicated significant differences between mean total depression scores, mean total anxiety scores, and mean total T-score for the self-concept scale. These findings indicate an association between depression, anxiety, and self-esteem/self-concept and the presence of cyberbullying.
Highlights
Bullying through social media, known as cyberbullying, is increasingly prevalent amongst today's youth
An additional 12 patients were excluded due to an invalid response profile on at least one of the four questionnaires/scales. Of these 12 patient excluded on basis of invalid responses, two were deemed invalid due to inconsistent responses on the Modified Cyberbullying Questionnaire; eight (5 males, 3 females) were considered invalid due to the number of nonresponses on the Children’s Depression Inventory, the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders, or the Piers-Harris Children’s Self-Concept Scale 2nd Edition; and the remaining 2 patients were excluded due to high scores on either the Response Bias index or the Inconsistent Responding index of the Piers-Harris Children’s Self-Concept Scale 2nd Edition (1 male, 1 female.)
There was no statistical difference between gender, race/ethnicity, or internet accessibility via phone and/or computer amongst the participants who reported any method of social media bullying and the non-bullied participants (Table 1)
Summary
Known as cyberbullying, is increasingly prevalent amongst today's youth. Technology-based bullying, either through internet-based applications or cellular phones, is the newest form of peer victimization or has been receiving a growing amount of attention over recent years. The prevalence of this type of victimization varies, from 4 to 35% in adolescent samples [1,2]. A study conducted in 2008 on 1,200 randomly selected middle-schoolers demonstrated about 23% of youth had been victims of cyberbullying, and 16% engaged in bullying via the Internet and text message [3]. In a five year old study, 75% of teenagers reported owning a cellular phone; 25% reported using the phones for social media, 54% of them for texting, and 24% of them for instant messaging [6]. These numbers have likely increased over the last five years
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