Although social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and YouTube offer unparalleled opportunities for this generation to communicate and share details of their lives in real-time, the same technology also opens users up to the risk of online bullying.  

 

Harassing emails, texts and online comments meant to spread rumors about a person or insult an alienated significant other can take form as cyberbullying, while more extreme cases featuring regular harassment can manifest as cyberstalking.

In the latest issue of theInternational Journal of Technoethics, two Richard Stockton College of New Jersey professors discuss how their new research shows that cyberbullying and cyberstalking can extend beyond K-12 and into higher education. Ellen M. Kraft and Jinchang Wang surveyed 471 students at a public liberal arts college and found a 10% prevalence of cyberbullying and a 9% prevalence of cyberstalking.

 

The authors define cyberbullying as “occurring when someone uses technology such as e-mail, cell phones, web cameras, or pagers to offend or embarrass others” and cyberstalking as “a repeated harassment through electronic communication that causes the victim to fear for his/her safety.” The latter definition is modified from a 2000 Report of the U.S. President’s Working Group on Unlawful Conduct on the Internet, “The Electronic Frontier: The Challenge of Unlawful Conduct Involving the Use of the Internet.”

 

“When asked if cyberbullying was a problem for college students, 57% of the [survey] respondents said yes,” write Dr. Kraft and Dr. Wang.

 

“Victims of cyberstalking are at risk of physical stalking and physical harm or homicide (United States Department of Justice, 2000),” they write.  Their study found that nearly two-thirds of those who said they had been cyberbullied knew who the bully was, and that one in five chose not to tell anyone about the incident.

 

“The results in this study indicate that cell phone calls, text messages, and web postings are becoming more frequently used media for cyberbullying,” write Dr. Kraft and Dr. Wang.

 

Three quarters of those who responded to the survey were female.

 

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