Every third student Internet bullying victim

Study on Cyberbullying: Every third student is Internet Bullying Victim

07/28/2013

The anonymous internet is an ideal place for youthful bully. According to a recent survey, every third student has already been the victim of an online blasphemy. One third of the perpetrators are also victims.

Most offensive messages
According to a recent survey, every third student was already victim of Internet bullying. However, the study published on Friday by the Universities of Münster and Hohenheim near Stuttgart also shows that particularly damaging forms of cyberbullying are comparatively rare. Thus offensive messages were therefore the most widespread. Of the more than 5,600 students interviewed at 33 schools in southern Germany, 14.5 percent said they write insulting messages. Confidential information would be shared with third parties in 7.9 percent of the time. Hard bullying cases, such as uploading embarrassing pictures or videos, so that they are accessible to a broad public, are rather rare.

Victim and perpetrator at the same time
A clear distinction between perpetrators and victims is not always possible according to the study. About one third of the respondents said that they had become victims and that they were harassing themselves over the internet. At Hauptschulen lie the proportion of these „Perpetrators / victims“ even at over 45 percent. Half of the rest of the victims split up into victims and perpetrators.

Older students bully more
Although younger students are aware of the phenomenon of cyberbullying, it seems, above all, a problem of higher grades. If around eight percent of the pupils are perpetrators during the seventh grade, then the percentage increases significantly, to over 14 percent in the tenth grade. Ruth Festl from the University of Hohenheim, co-author of the current study, says: „Older people have a higher level of media literacy. "They would be safer on the web and less likely to be monitored by their parents. „That could be an explanation. "She also suspects a media-related effect: „Generally, our results show that cyberbullying tends to take place between older students.“ This is not the case with traditional bullying.

Internet is good for revenge actions
According to Thorsten Quandt, Professor of Communication Science in Münster, the first results point to this, „that the Internet is particularly well-suited to retaliation if you were a victim yourself. "This pattern is particularly noticeable in secondary schools: „The mainstream students use the web more often as a platform to retaliate and strike back virtually after a bullying attack. "According to Festl, further surveys and in-depth analysis will follow in the months and years to come, as part of the research done by the German Research Foundation (DFG) funded project „Cyberbullying in schools ".

Not representative
For the whole of Germany, the study was not representative, also because the selected schools are located mainly in southern Germany. So far, the number of bullying victims has been reported to be much lower in the determination of internet bullying rates. However, according to a study a few years ago, the Techniker Krankenkasse (TK) came to similar conclusions as the current study from Münster and Hohenheim and also said that one in every three adolescents were victims of cyberbullying. Gritli Bertram, a social worker from Hanover, said at the time that many young people were working, „it's just a joke.“ The acting students are mostly unaware of the significance of their act. Such a procedure is criminally relevant. (Ad)

Picture: Angela Parszyk