Effects of Traditional In-Person Harassment Amplified by Cyberbullying

by Monica Joshi

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me. Seems like, however, a combination of both physical- and technology-based harassment can cause the most damage. According to a study published by the American Psychological Association, cyberbullying might be less harmful and less disturbing because it's likely to have a shorter duration.

The researchers at the University of New Hampshire analyzed data from the Technology Harassment Victimization Study. The study was funded by the National Institute of Justice and focused on telephone interviews conducted in 2013-2014 with 791 American youth aged 10 – 20 years. Of those studied, 49 percent identified as male.

While 34 percent of the 791 American youth collectively reported 311 harassment cases in the prior year, 54 percent of those were in-person only; 15 percent of those involved technology only; and 31 percent had a combination of the two. Contrary to popular belief, it seems that since cyberbullying starts and stays online only, it does not involve significant power play that can skew the scales in the bully's favour.

Even though technology-only incidents involved large numbers of witnesses, they were the least likely to involve multiple perpetrators. In addition, technology-only incidents were also more likely to involve strangers or anonymous perpetrators. This fact presented a different view on the whole situation because according to the study, anonymous bullying might be less distressing to youth than harassment in school by people they must encounter on a regular basis.

Lead researcher Kimberly J. Mitchell, Ph.D., with the Crimes against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire said:

“Technology-only incidents were less likely than in-person only incidents to result in injury, involve a social power differential, and to have happened a series of times. Mixed episodes, those that involved both in-person and technology elements, were more likely than technology-only episodes to involve perpetrators who knew embarrassing things about the victim, happen a series of times, last for one month or longer, involve physical injury, and start out as joking before becoming more serious. It is these mixed episodes that appear to be the most distressing to youth.”

As the researchers designed the survey to gather extensive details about separate harassment incidents, it has allowed them to really examine new technology as one aspect of aggravating incidents. This research is especially valuable, since the research on cyberbullying to date has mostly been conducted separately from or parallel to research about in-person bullying.

The study published in Psychology of Violence could clear up some of the misconceptions that researchers and advocates have assumed for years. Specifically, that technology-based bullying would be particularly damaging to victims because online harassers can post pictures or videos, anonymously and to large audiences, and because the aggression can reach the targets at any given point of time. These new findings suggest that technology by itself does not necessarily increase the seriousness and level of distress associated with the harassment.

Co-author Heather Turner suggested that:

“Instead, data from this study indicated that factors such as duration, power imbalance, injury, sexual content, involvement of multiple perpetrators, and hate/bias comments are some of the key factors that increase youth distress."

This research demonstrates, quite remarkably, that a combination of both in-person and technology-based bullying can cause serious damage to the victim's psyche. Thus, the best course of action is to create education policies that strive to curb both kinds of bullying. 

Perhaps, as Christine Quinn said, it might also be useful for educators to really focus on tolerance education to work on prevention techniques for bullying.