Cyberbullying has received a lot of press in the last several years due to the tragic suicide of some teenage people due to cyberbullying. The fact is that no group has investigated the differences between in-person bullying and cyberbullying. Dr. Kimberly J. Mitchell and colleagues from the Crimes against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire are the first to make a direct comparison of the effects of different types of bullying on teens.
The study found that in-person or traditional bullying was more emotionally and physically traumatic to teens. Technology-only harassment including cyberbullying was less likely to involve physical harm to the individual that was bullied. Trauma was found to be more of a function of race hate, the threat of sexual violence, the threat of physical violence, bullying by multiple perpetrators, and long-term harassment regardless of the form bullying took.
The study was based on interviews with 791 people between the ages of 10 and 20 from the Technology Harassment Victimization Study. Thirty-four percent of the people interviewed reported at least one incidence of harassment in the year of the study (2013 to 2014). The majority of incidents of harassment (54 percent) were the in-person variety, 31 percent were technology based only, and 15 percent involved both types of abuse.
All of the money and time governments and people have spent to prevent cyberbullying may have been wasted. Back in the day (a scant 35 years ago), one dealt with a bully by beating them with a ball bat. Bullying was not the problem that it is today because people were taught to fight back. We may have raised a generation of victims through misplaced sentiment and mistaken ideals.
