ABSTRACT
Recent empirical research has found that the psychological consequences for young people involved in cyberbullying are more severe than in the case of traditional bullying (Campbell, Spears, Slee, Butler, & Kift, 2012; Perren, Dooley, Shaw, & Cross, 2010). Cybervictimization has been found to be a significant predictor of depressive symptoms over and above that of being victimized by traditional bullying (Perren et al., 2010). Targets of cyberbullying also have reported higher anxiety scores and social difficulties than traditional victims, with those students who had been bullied by both forms showing similar anxiety and depression scores to targets of cyberbullying (Campbell et al., 2012). This is supported by the subjective views of many young people, not involved in bullying, who believed that cyberbullying is far more harmful than traditional bullying (Cross et al., 2009). However, students who were traditionally bullied thought the consequences of this kind of bullying were harsher than did those students who were cyberbullied (Campbell, et al., 2012). In Slonje and Smith’s study (2008), students reported that text messaging and e-mail bullying had less of an impact than traditional bullying, but that bullying by pictures or video clips had more negative impact than traditional bullying.
