Cyberbullying: improving awareness of perpetrators, adults, and bystanders

Abstract

Differences in perceptions concerning cyberbullying of perpetrators, bystanders, victims, teachers, parents and researchers makes it difficult to intervene at the right moment: when a child needs help to stop cyberbullying. Not all children that have been cyberbullied (as measured by researchers) are in need of help. On the other hand most perpetrators think unjust that their bullying behavior was ‘just a joke’. This leads to an overestimation (by some researchers) as well as an underestimation (parents, bystanders, perpetrators and teachers) of the problem. In this presentation differences in perception and difficulties of improving awareness of adults and young people in different roles will be presented, as well as methods to improve awareness and effective parental monitoring. In the literature it is shown that cyber victimization is associated with lower levels of parental control. So parental control or parental monitoring can be considered as a determinant of (cyber)bullying. On the other hand, parental control can also be a risk factor. Based on the literature, in the presentation several parental risk factors will be discussed as well as methods to improve awareness, signals to detect victimization of cyberbullying, and possibilities for parents and teachers to provide interventions. The presentation will be based on new empirical findings as well as available studies on cyberbullying