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Traditional bullying, cyber-bullying, and

tackling strategies

Paper presented at Hong Kong Child Safety Conference 2012, organized by Department of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine,

The University of Hong Kong, 11 Feb, 2012

Dr. Dennis Sing-wing Wong Associate Professor,

City University of Hong Kong

The Problems of Bullying

• Bullying among school children is certainly not a

new phenomenon.

• There is considerable evidence now that continued

or severe bullying can contribute to immediate

problems such as depression, sleeping difficulties,

playing truant, low concentration in problem-solving,

and long-term problems such as permanent anxiety,

low self-esteem or study difficulties.

• The worst possible outcome is that a severely

bullied child takes his/her own life.

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What is bullying?

Definition

Bullying is a negative and often aggressive or

manipulative act or series of acts by one or more

people against another person or people usually

over a period of time.

Bullying is defined as repeated oppression,

physical or mental, of a less powerful person by a

more powerful person or group of persons. It

occurs where there is an imbalance in power

between people, and it is a repeated or continued

behavior.

Subtype of aggression

Bullying can be regarded as a subtype of

aggressive behavior and shares the main

elements of most forms of aggressive

behavior, yet it has certain characteristics

which are not necessarily shared by other

forms of aggressive behavior.

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Common Categories of Bullying Behavior

Physical bullying

Pushing, hitting, purposely hitting someone violently

Verbal bullying

Calling names, making fun of others’ names, backgrounds or physical appearance making others feel embarrassed or sad.

Common Categories of Bullying Behavior

Exclusive bullying

Ignoring someone’s presence or

threatening others not to play with

somebody

Extortion bullying

Taking somebody’s things violently and

threatening somebody to do something for

oneself

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Bullying contains the following elements

The person doing the bullying has more power than the one being victimized,

Bullying is often organized, systematic, and hidden.

Bullying is sometimes opportunistic, but once its starts is likely to continue.

It usually occurs over a period of time, although those who regularly bully may also carry out one-off incidents.

A victim of bullying can be hurt physically, emotionally, or psychologically.

All acts of bullying have an emotional or psychological dimension.

What is Cyber-bullying?

• A covert form of bullying

• Psychologically devastating social cruelty

• Due to proliferation of electronic communications technologies

• Medium: cell-phones, websites, webcams, chat rooms, and email

• Examples:

– Sending harassing text messages

– Posting embarrassing pictures of someone else online without their permission

– Threatening someone on Facebook or other social network sites.

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What is Cyber-bullying?

Cyber-bullying is defined as “an individual or a

group willfully using information and

communication involving electronic technologies

to facilitate deliberate and repeated harassment or

threat to another individual or group by sending

or posting cruel text and/or graphics using

technological means”

It can also be defined as “willful and repeated

harm inflicted through medium of electronic text”.

Prevalence of Cyber-bullying

• In American, studies estimated that the lifetime self-reported cyber victimization in adolescence ranges from 6% to 72%.

•

• In Canada, one in every 17 adolescents is threatened on the Internet, and one in four youth aged 11 to 19 is threatened through personal computer or mobile phone.

• British studies estimated that 6% to 25% of adolescents had been harassed or threatened via Internet Communication Channels over the past 12 months

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A Study on Cyber Bullying among

middle school students in Calgary,

Alberta

Sources % (Can choose more

than one answer)

By emails 23%

In chat rooms 35%

By SMS 41%

By known schoolmates 32%

By people outside school 11%

Multiple sources including

schoolmates

16%

S Shariff (2005). Cyber-dilemmas in the New Millennium: School Obligations to Provide Student Safety in a Virtual School Environment.

Research on traditional bullying

and cyber-bullying in Hong Kong

(Wong, 2010)

A total of 1,411 Secondary 1 to Secondary 2

students from 5 different Hong Kong schools

filled in a self-administered questionnaire in

late 2010.

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Physical bullying %

Deliberately shove someone.

30.9%

Throw things at others. 38.4%

Kick or trip others. 23.1%

Verbal bullying %

Verbally threaten others. 37.7%

Give/call people nicknames.

67.5%

Laugh at others’ looks or body features.

41.5%

Exclusion bullying %

Boycott someone. 35.5%

Tell a schoolmate not to play with a particular person.

31.9%

Stop others from playing with one particular person.

19.1%

Extortion bullying %

Take away or hide someone else’s belongings.

24.6%

Force someone to lend you their belongings.

31.1%

Force someone to let you copy their homework.

26.1%

Experience of bullying others in traditional

ways

%

Login to others’ account and changing their personal information without their permission.

7.6%

Editing others’ photos to humiliate them. 8.6%

Start or participate in searching for a person online (Using the power internet users to find out information about a particular person).

10.3%

Use multimedia forms (E.g. Photos, videos etc.) to play a joke, insult, tease or edge out someone.

10.8%

Maliciously spread fictitious or slanderous rumors about others. 11.5%

Open an account using fake information to play a joke on someone.

12.1%

Continuously use different tools (E.g. SMS/Email/MSN etc.) to send annoying or vulgar messages.

12.3%

Use online texts to play a joke, insult, tease or edge out someone. 14.4%

Join in groups which purpose is to personally attack someone. 16.1%

Experience of cyber-bullying others

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When you are bullied, how would you respond?

%

Call the police 11.5%

Join up with my friends and fight back. 15.6%

Cancel the registered account. 17.4%

Fight back myself. 17.8%

Pretend I could not see and ignore it. 19.9%

Seek help from my family, teachers or social workers.

22.8%

I can tolerate, although I am not happy. 24.4%

Delete the webpage or related messages. 26.2%

Blacklist the attacker. 31.0%

Characteristics of cyber-bullies

Cyber-bullies, in general, are heavy Internet

users and attach great importance to the

Internet.

Aftab (2010) divided cyber-bullies into three

distinct categories:

“vengeful angels”

“power hungry”

“revenge of the nerds”

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Traditional bullying vs. Cyber-bullying

1. Anonymity

2. No time constraint

3. Accessibility

4. An infinite audience

5. Power imbalance

Impacts of Cyber-bullying

Cyber bullying occurs typically outside

supervision boundaries

This presents schools and parents an

unprecedented legal and educational

concern:

“To what extent can schools intervene

when their students cyber bully off-

campus, outside school hour, and/or

from home computers?”

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Impacts of Cyber-bullying

1. Victims report feeling depressed, sad, angry and frustrated.

A teenage discloses “It is exactly a traumatic experience. It makes me hurt both physically and mentally. It scares me and takes away all my confidence. It makes me feel sick and worthless.”

2. Victims are afraid or embarrassed to go to school.

3. Victims may have suicidal thoughts.

Impacts of Cyber-bullying

4. Victims are harassed by someone that they know.

Research suggests that the relationships between victim and bully :

Friend (21.1%), Ex-friend ( 20.0%), someone else from school (26.5%). Only 6.5% victims states that the offender is a stranger (Hinduja, & Patchin, 2009).

Studies have shown that a vast majority of cyber-bullies (as high as 84%) knew their victims (Ybarra & Mitchell, 2004).

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Prevention of Cyber-bullying

Google yourself Searching for your personal information like full

name via Google, Yahoo to see what information may be out there on the Internet about you.

Protect your information Avoid to put your personal information online. For

example, Name, Age, Address or photos. Sometimes, other people will put your information

online (like tagging you in a photo and including your full name).

You want to make sure that there is no information online that could be used to find you and harm your safety.

You must take advantage of the privacy settings within Facebook, other websites, and social software that they use.

Tactics for facing cyber-bullying

(Personal)

Rationality To keep control over your emotions and behaviors,

so that you do not do anything that might get you into trouble or that you might later regret.

Call police when someone threatens your safety or forces you to do something illegal.

Save any evidence (Print screen, printout, etc.)

Adolescents should be encouraged to save the harassing message and report the incident to an adult.

It can help prove what was going on and who started it.

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Tactics for facing cyber-bullying

(Personal)

Don’t retaliate.

Don’t fight back.

Don’t think that it is your fault.

Don’t keep it to yourself.

Don’t skip school.

Don’t commit suicide.

Tactics for facing cyber-bullying

(Personal)

Stop, block and tell

Stop Victims are advised to take time to stop and calm

down rather than responding to a cyberbullying in an adverse way.

Block Blocking the cyberbullies, limiting all

communication on a buddy list.

Tell Telling a trusted adult or friends for emotional

support.

(Stop Cyberbullying, n.d.)

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Role of Bystanders

Bystanders should not encourage or directly

involve in bullying:

by forwarding hurtful messages, laughing at

inappropriate jokes or content, condoning the

act just to “fit in”, or otherwise silently

allowing it to continue.

Standing by: To Stand up for the victims who

feel helpless and hopeless and need someone to

come to the rescue.

Tactics for facing cyber-bullying

(Parents)

1. Parents or caregivers should be proactive in

discussing cyber-bullying with their children.

Kowalski and Limber (2007) showed that

adolescents are more reluctant to report their cyber-

bullying experience with their parents.

Because of the fear their parents will restrict their

time on the Internet or mobile phones, or discover

information that the adolescents themselves have

involved in cyber-bullying.

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Tactics for facing cyber-bullying

(Parents)

2. Parents should cultivate and maintain open

communication with their children regarding their

use. 2.

Such open dialogue between parents and

adolescents may encourage the adolescents to

recognize and to report cyber-bullying incidents.

Studies proved that positive caregiver-child

relationship has shown to decrease the likelihood of

online offending.

Tactics for facing cyber-bullying

(Parents)

3. Parents must also regularly monitor their

children’s online activities. If your child feels

their privacy has been violated, this could

cause more harm than goods.

4. Parents must teach and reinforce positive

morals and values and empathy as well.

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Tactics for facing cyber-bullying

(School)

1. Cultivate a harmonious school culture.

In essence, many scholars support the call for the inclusion of cyber-bullying prevention in traditional anti-bullying programs such as the widely-acclaimed Whole-school Approach Anti-bullying Prevention Program.

Prevention efforts should be directed at helping adolescents to develop pro-social attitudes and behaviors in lieu to foster and maintain healthy relationships both within and beyond the school setting

Tactics for facing cyber-bullying

(School)

2. Teach student that cyber-bullying is unacceptable and

that will result in discipline.

3. Post signs or posters in school to remind students to

use technology in a right way.

4. Encourage senior students to share experience to

junior about the importance of using technology and

to promote positive online interaction and attitudes.

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References Aftab, P. (2007). What methods work for different types of cyberbullying? Accessed July 1, 2010, from

http://www.stopcyberbullying.org/parents/howdoyouhandleacyberbully.html

Beran, T., & Li, Q. (2005). Cyber-harassment: A study of a new method for an old behavior. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 32(3), 265-277.

Diamanduros, T., Downs, E., & Jenkins, S. J. (2008). The role of school psychologists in the assessment, prevention, and intervention of cyberbullying. Psychology in the Schools, 45(8), 693-704.

Erdur-Baker, Ö . (2010). Cyberbullying and its correlation to traditional bullying, gender and frequent and risky usage of internet-mediated communication tools. New Media & Society, 12(1), 109-125.

Hinduja, S., & Patchin, J. W. (2009). Bullying beyond the school yard: Preventing and responding to cyberbullying. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Kowalski, R.M. & Limber, S.P. (2007). Electronic bullying among middle school students, Journal of Adolescent Health, 41, 22-30.

Li, Q. (2005). New bottle but old wine: A research of cyberbullying in schools. Computers in Human Behavior, 23, 1777-1791.

Patchin, J. W., & Hinduja, S. (2006). Bullies move beyond the schoolyard: A preliminary look at cyberbullying. Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, 4(2), 148-169.

Shariff, S. (2008). Cyber-bullying: Issues and solutions for the school, the classroom, and the home. New York: Routledge.

Smith, P., Mahdavi, J., Carvalho, M., & Tippett, N. (2005). An investigation into cyberbullying, its forms, awareness and impact, and the relationship between age and gender in cyberbullying. London: University of London.

Vandebosch, H., & Van Cleemput, K. (2009). Cyberbullying among youngsters: Profiles of bullies and victims. New Media & Society, 11(8), 1349-1371.

Williams, K. R., & Guerra, N. G. (2007). Prevalence and predictors of internet bullying. Journal of Adolescent Health, 41(6), S14-S21.

Wolak, J., Mitchell, J. M., & Finkelhor, D. (2007). Does online harassment constitute bullying? An exploration of online harassment by known peers and online-only contacts. Journal of Adolescent Health, 41, S51-S58.

Wong, D.S.W. (2004). School bullying and tackling strategies in Hong Kong, International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 48(5), 537-553.

Wong, D.S.W., Cheng, C.H.K., Ngan, R.M.H., & Ma, S.K. (2011). Program effectiveness of a restorative whole-school approach for tackling school bullying in Hong Kong. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 55(6), 846-862.

Wong, D.S.W (2010), The phenomenon of cyberbullying and tackling strategies in Hong Kong, paper presented at International Symposium on Juvenile Crime and Justice, Nanjing, China, October 2010.

Ybarra, M. L., & Mitchell, K. J. (2004a). Online aggressor/targets, aggressors, and targets: A comparison of associated youth characteristics. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 45(7), 1308-1316.

Managing bullying proactively with wisdom

Thank you