ABSTRACT
Cyberbullying victims fear that parents or other authority figures will remove their technology, the means by which victimisation is occurring. To understand the importance of studying cyberbullying, it is important to first be cognisant of the wired culture in which youth today are developing. According to N. E. Willard, cyberbullying includes flaming, denigration, impersonation, outing and trickery, exclusion, and cyberstalking. Prevalence rates of cyberbullying are highly variable across studies for a number of different reasons including: the general versus specific method by which cyberbullying victimisation is determined; the time parameter used to assess cyberbullying; and the liberal versus conservative criteria used to determine that the behaviour occurred. Most of the research examining cyberbullying prevalence rates has focused on samples of middle and high school age youth. Similar to race, sexual orientation’s relationship to cyberbullying victimisation and perpetration has received significantly less attention than age or gender.
