ABSTRACT
Adolescent bullying, both online and offline, has been a social issue in recent years around the world. Since online and offline bullying occur in different contexts, many scholars have debated whether theories explaining deviant behaviour of adolescents in face-to-face form can be applied to the Internet. Based on Johnson's sequential attachment model, this chapter aims to examine how parent-adolescent attachment has indirect association with online and offline bullying mediated through school-adolescent attachment, and how the sequential attachment model is relevant to online and offline bullying among Taiwanese adolescents. Seven hundred and four 7th graders from three junior high schools in Taipei city participated in the survey. Our results showed that parental attachment has non-significant direct association with face-to-face and online bullying, but has a significant association with cyberbullying completely mediated through school attachment. These findings indicated that Johnson's model is only applicable to explaining cyberbullying rather than face-to-face bullying in Taiwan. These findings also indicated that potential intervention programs to reduce cyberbullying may target on enhancing adolescents’ parental attachment and school attachment. However, such intervention may not show expected effectiveness on reducing face-to-face bullying among adolescents in Taiwan.
