Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Dec 23, 2024
Open Peer Review Period: Dec 23, 2024 - Feb 17, 2025
Date Accepted: Jan 10, 2025
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Adolescent Cyberbullying and Cyber Victimization: A Longitudinal Study Before and During COVID-19
ABSTRACT
Adolescent cyberbullying has been a persistent issue, but the onset of COVID-19 — with its shift to remote learning and increased screen time — has sparked concerns about its potential rise. Leveraging a Panel dataset, we examine the same group of adolescents both before and during the pandemic, exploring how factors such as age, exposure to violent media, parental communication quality, internet access, gender, and sibling relationships influence cyberbullying behavior at school. We also investigate how the COVID-19 pandemic may have altered these dynamics. We conclude that the perceived quality of parental communication reduces the risk of both cyberbullying perpetration and victimization, the former effect becoming more pronounced during COVID-19. In comparison, exposure to violent media increases both cyber perpetration and victimization, but the former effect decreased during COVID-19. Our study also confirmed the well-established correlation between internet access and both cyber perpetration and victimization, a relationship unaffected by COVID-19. Independently of the COVID-19 impact, our study revealed a surprising insight: adolescents with siblings were less prone to becoming either victims or perpetrators of cyberbullying at school.
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