JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Cyberbullying affects approximately one-third of Thai secondary school students and has been linked to adverse emotional outcomes and mental health vulnerabilities. Strengthening digital resilience, along with critical thinking, empathy, and help-seeking skills, is essential to empower youth to cope with online risks and promote safer digital behavior.

Objective:

This study aimed to develop a youth-centered, theory-informed intervention using a design thinking framework to foster digital resilience in addressing cyberbullying. The research repositioned youth with lived cyberbullying experiences from passive victims to active co-creators of the intervention. Grounded in empowerment principles, nudge theory, and the concept of digital resilience, this approach reimagined cyberbullying prevention through empathy-driven innovation and participatory engagement, generating a contextually grounded model for designing cyberbullying interventions in a Global South context.

Methods:

We applied a five-phase design thinking framework: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. Twelve participants, including LGBTQI+ students aged 15–17 with lived experience of cyberbullying, teacher counselors, a psychologist, and experts, engaged in focus group–based co-design workshops. Qualitative data from the workshops were analyzed thematically to identify user needs and inform prototype development. A low-fidelity mobile-based prototype was iteratively refined through user testing and expert consultation to ensure theoretical alignment and contextual relevance.

Results:

The co-creation process identified key challenges, including emotional distress, lack of support, and the rapid spread of harmful content. Youth participants collaboratively designed a virtual community platform featuring peer support spaces, confidential expert consultation, skill-building workshops, a knowledge hub, gamified engagement tools, and AI-assisted support. Iterative refinement strengthened usability, personalization, and theoretical coherence. Importantly, the process fostered youth agency by transforming participants into co-designers who actively shaped solutions grounded in their lived experiences.

Conclusions:

This study demonstrates the feasibility of a theory-driven, participatory design thinking approach to developing digital prevention and intervention for cyberbullying. By integrating behavioral theory with youth co-creation, the findings contribute to the growing field of digital mental health interventions addressing cyberbullying by illustrating how empowerment-oriented and theoretically grounded design processes can reposition vulnerable youth as agents of solution development.