Understanding Cyberbullying and Where We Go From Here

Introduction

Cyberbullying is a phenomenon that began to gain attention at the turn of the 21^st century with online messaging programs. According to Hinduja and Patchin (2014), approximately 34% of students have reported the experience of cyberbullying. Additionally, 90% of students have found that cyberbullying is a common problem among young people (Hinduja, 2018a). Continued research has provided the understanding that cyberbullying is a behavior that mainly affects school-age individuals and therefore, will be the focus of this chapter. Although some adults experience cyberbullying, the research in that area is limited and workplace bullying is a stronger focus for adults rather than those under the age of 18 (Piotrowski & King, 2016). Unfortunately, bullying is another behavior that school-age individuals experience with nearly 1 in 5 (21%) students reporting this information (NCEC, 2018). Both bullying and cyberbullying can lead to increased anxiety, sleep difficulties, depression, lower grades, self-harm and suicide (Center for Disease Control, 2018). It is useful to clearly understand the differences between bullying and cyberbullying.

Although bullying and cyberbullying are topics that have both received increased attention over the past decade, both are different, and the distinction highlights how cyberbullying tends to impact youth more. There is a difference between what adults experience and how they are protected and what the youth are experiencing and how they are protected. Andrea Adams (1992), from Great Britain, was one of the first pioneers to address that bullying is a problem in the workplace and bring it to the forefront for the nation and world to notice. According to Adams (1992), bullying in the workplace has to do with repeated mistreatment that leads to psychological, emotional, and physical distress. Although workplace bullying has been defined differently by many researchers, after extensive research, it is defined here as repeated mistreatment of an employee that includes social exclusion, isolation, not greeting, ignoring the victim’s presence, humiliation, demeaning, belittling, excessive deadlines, excessive monitoring of work, few or no tasks, threats, insults, and criticisms, all which may lead to high levels of stress and other health-endangering factors (Ricks, 2015). This definition does not include physical abuse, which includes behaviors that have escalated beyond workplace bullying and into workplace violence such as hitting, punching, shoving, and the like (Vickers, 2002). Although workplace bullying is a serious infraction that has been more widely researched since the turn of the 21^st century, there has been even more attention focused on cyberbullying, which has been affecting school-age children and some adults in the workplace. Seeing as though cyberbullying impacts both youth and adults, the attention to this topic has received even greater attention.

Although, workplace bullying is not the focus of this chapter, this foundation provides the groundwork for how cyberbullying could also be threatening and dangerous to many. The remainder of this chapter will focus on these themes: 1) defining cyberbullying, 2) history, 3) the main focus of the chapter, 4) law, and 5) solutions, recommendations, and the future.