Coping may explain why being cyberbullied affects children’s well-being differently, though previous studies are inconclusive. This survey among 325 children focused on the role coping strategies may play in the relationship between cyberbullying and depressive feelings and health complaints. Being cyberbullied was measured with the Cyberbullying Questionnaire, general coping with the Utrecht Coping List, and cyberbullying-specific coping with a questionnaire developed for this study. Health complaints were measured with the Short Questionnaire for Experienced Health and depressive feelings with the shortened Children’s Depression Inventory. The results showed that 18.8% of the children were bullied by mobile phone and 24.1% through the internet. Correlation analyses showed strong relationships between victimization, coping, depressive feelings, and health complaints. In the regression analyses conducted in all children, victimization, general emotion-focused, and problem-focused copings had main effects on depressive feelings and health complaints; emotion-focused coping interacted with victimization in health complaints. Simple slope analyses of children with high scores on emotion-focused general coping showed a stronger positive relationship between victimization and health complaints. Regression analyses of only cyberbullied children showed that only emotion-focused cyber-specific coping was associated with more health complaints and depressive feelings.
Most children and adolescents make use of the internet and mobile phone. For example, 90% of European youth [
However, Slonje and colleagues (2013) point out that there are many easy ways to cyberbully (like for instance sending offending text, photo’s, or video clips by smart phone) that does not take more technological expertise from the bully [
There are other differences between traditional bullying and Cyberbullying that is not captured in the definition for Cyberbullying. Specific to Cyberbullying is that there is often no face-to-face contact and that it can happen anonymously [
Finally, Cyberbullying has found its way into the private environment of children, so even at home children are not safe from their teasing peers.
Many studies have shown that Cyberbullying is a prevalent problem among children and adolescents. Among this group 11% to 26% bullied and 10% to 58% had been bullied through the internet [
Cyberbullying often results in health complaints and poor well-being [
Other studies found that especially the combination of online and offline bullying is most painful: van den Eijnden and colleagues (2008) showed that adolescents who have been cyberbullied and traditionally bullied experience the most mental and social problems compared with adolescents who have only been bullied in one way [
However, other studies found that especially the combination of online and offline bullying is most painful: van den Eijnden and colleagues (2008) showed that adolescents who have been cyberbullied and traditionally bullied experience the most mental and social problems compared with adolescents who have only been bullied in one way [
Although it is clear that being cyberbullied affects the (mental) health of children and adolescents, its impact may depend on their ability to react adequately. The importance of coping in the relationship between victimization and health is derived from research in traditional bullying. The study of Cassidy and Taylor (2005) [
Coping strategies that are recommended by victims of Cyberbullying in the study of Smith and colleagues (2008) are blocking or avoiding Cyberbullying messages (avoidance coping) and telling someone about the bullying (problem-based coping) [
Smith and colleagues (2001) concluded in their literature overview that seeking social support is an effective coping strategy to stop Cyberbullying [
Kochenderfer-Ladd and Skinner (2002) found that emotional ways of coping like crying or acting out of anger, shame, fear, or being upset worsen victimization [
Völlink et al. found that coping through coping behaviour that a child is used to perform in general in stress situations, especially emotional expression, avoidance and depressive coping like self blaming will lead to more cyber-specific depressive coping when confronted with Cyberbullying [
Other studies of victimized children who use problem-focused strategies like advice seeking, seeking social support, and problem solving showed lower risk of loneliness and depression [
Another study revealed that cyberbullied children tend to use the same coping strategies as traditionally bullied ones [
Based on these findings, it was expected that victims of Cyberbullying would report more depressive feelings and health complaints
We conducted a cross-sectional mail-out survey among 325 year 7 students from three state schools in a city in the south of England. All children filled in the questionnaire plenary in the classroom after instructions of their teacher. For this reason the response rate was 100%. One hundred and sixty-three children (50.2%) were 11 years old and 162 children (49.8%) were 12 years old. Slightly more girls (53%) than boys (47.7%) were included.
The school board or school management of all the secondary state schools in a city in the south of England (
The scales that were used and their reliability are shown in Table
Scales and their Cronbach’s alpha.
Scale | Total items, range |
|
M | SD |
---|---|---|---|---|
Victim of cyberbullying | (2, 2–8) | .68 | 2.6 | 1.2 |
Problem-focused general coping | (13, 13–52) | .79 | 26.3 | 6.5 |
Emotion-focused general coping | (31, 31–124) | .80 | 63.3 | 11.0 |
Problem-focused cyberspecific coping | (5, 5–20) | .59 | 9.8 | 3.1 |
Emotion-focused cyberspecific coping | (19, 19–76) | .85 | 39.2 | 10.6 |
Depressive feelings | (10, 0–20) | .82 | 5.6 | 3.9 |
Health complaints | (18, 0–18) | .85 | 6.5 | 4.3 |
Two types of coping strategies were assessed: coping strategies that children use in general and coping strategies that children use when being cyberbullied.
The general coping strategies were measured by (the English version of) the validated Utrecht Coping List for Adolescents (UCL-A) [
To measure cyber-specific coping, a questionnaire measuring the dimensions of problem-based coping and emotion-based coping was developed for this study. In line with the UCL-A, the questionnaire included reaction strategy items on confronting coping, social support coping, palliative coping, avoidance coping, optimistic coping. and expressive emotions coping. The items were, however, specifically formulated for Cyberbullying situations. Prior to the study, the items were judged by two experts in the area of Cyberbullying and by the youngsters who took part in the pretest (
The scale health complaints were measured with the English version of the short Questionnaire on Experienced Health Complaints [
Depression was assessed by using the 10-item short version of the Children’s Depression Inventory [
Chi-square analyses and ANOVA analyses were used to determine if there were any significant gender differences in victimization of Cyberbullying and, respectively, depressive feelings and health complaints.
To examine the hypotheses, four hierarchical multiple regression analyses (MRA) were performed. For each of the dependent variables (i.e., depressive feelings, health complaints) we conducted two MRAs: one among the total sample (
Table
Frequency (in %) of being bullied compared to gender and age.
Way of bullying or being bullied | Total | ♂ | ♀ | 11 years | 12 years |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Being bullied by mobile phone | 18.8 | 12.3 | 24.7** | 16.6 | 21.0 |
Being bullied on the internet | 24.1 | 11.7 | 35.3** | 19.1 | 29.0* |
Note: chi-square analyses.
In Table
Pearson correlations of the central variables (
(1) | (2) | (3) | (4) | (5) | (6) | (7) | (8) | (9) | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
(1) Victim of cyberbullying | −.03 | .07 | −.06 | .23* | .46** | .34** | .28** | .54** | |
(2) Problem-focused general coping | .44** | .74** | .14 | −.18** | −.04 | .08 | .03 | ||
(3) Emotion-focused general coping | .33** | .49** | .17* | .23** | .12* | −.00 | |||
(4) Problem- focused cyberspecific coping1 | .25* | −.13 | −.08 | .04 | −.01 | ||||
(5) Emotion- focused cyberspecific coping1 | .59** | .58** | .16 | .15 | |||||
(6) Depressive feelings | .59** | .11 | .33** | ||||||
(7) Health complaints | .12* | .21* | |||||||
(8) Gender2 | .01 | ||||||||
(9) Duration of cyberbullying3 |
Note. 1Less children were involved in the correlations of problem-focused and emotion-focused cyber-specific copings because only children who actually got cyber-bullied filled out a score on these variables. 2Gender: 1 = boy; 2 = girl. 3Duration of the cyberbullying: 1 = 1-2 weeks; 2 = about a month; 3 = about six months; 4 = about a year or longer.
In the first regression analyses, we determined the extent to which victimization explained the health complaints and depressive feelings in the total sample
With respect to depressive feelings, regression analyses (Table
Summary of the hierarchical regression analyses of general coping strategies on depressive feelings (
Predicting variables | Depression1 | Health complaints | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
SE |
|
|
SE |
| |
Step 1 | ||||||
Victim of cyberbullying | .42 | .06 | .43*** | .33 | .06 | .33*** |
Step 2 | ||||||
Victim of cyberbullying | .37 | .06 | .38*** | .29 | .06 | .29*** |
Problem-focused general coping | −.29 | .06 | −.30*** | −.18 | .06 | −.18** |
Emotion-focused general coping | .28 | .06 | .29*** | .27 | .06 | .27*** |
Step 3 | ||||||
Victim of cyberbullying | .36 | .06 | .37*** | .28 | .06 | .27*** |
Problem-focused general coping | −.30 | .06 | −.30*** | −.19 | .07 | −.19** |
Emotion-focused general coping | .28 | .06 | .29*** | .27 | .06 | .27*** |
Gender | .04 | .06 | .04 | .04 | .06 | .04 |
Step 4 | ||||||
Victim of cyberbullying × problem-focused general coping | −.02 | .07 | −.02 | −.10 | .07 | −.09 |
Victim of cyberbullying × emotion-focused general coping | .08 | .07 | .07 | .17 | .08 | .15* |
Note. 1Depression:
Summary of simple slope analyses of the effect of general emotion-focused coping on the relationship between being bullied and health complaints (
Low score | High score | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
SE |
|
|
SE |
| |
Emotion-focused general coping | ||||||
Victim of cyberbullying | .214 | .087 | .215* | .403 | .084 | .405*** |
Differences between victims and nonvictims in general problem-focused coping and general emotion-focused coping.
Victimsa | Nonvictims |
| |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Mean | SD | Mean | SD | ||
General problem-focused coping |
|
( |
|||
26.24 | 6.78 | 26.34 | 6.45 | .12 | |
General emotion-focused coping | ( |
( |
|||
65.56 | 11.11 | 62.45 | 10.87 | − |
Note. aVictims. This group also includes children who got cyberbullied once or twice.
In the subsample of victimized children regression analyses were also conducted to assess specifically for the subgroup the effect of general and cyber-specific coping strategies on health complaints and depressive feelings. In these analyses, the factor frequency of being cyberbullied (in the past couple of months only once or twice; several times; very often) was taken into account as covariate and therefore entered first. Next, the coping variables (general coping strategies and cyber specific) were entered into the model. In the third step the variables gender and duration of bullying were entered.
Table
Summary of the hierarchical regression analyses of bullied children for the predicted values of depression (
Predicting variables | Depressive feeling1 | Health complaints | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
SE |
|
|
SE |
| |
Step 1 | ||||||
Frequency of cyberbullying | .31 | .13 |
|
.32 | .11 |
|
Step 2 | ||||||
Frequency of cyberbullying |
|
.11 | .05* | .19 | .10 | .19 |
Problem focused general coping | −.18 | .16 | −.16 | .15 | .15 | .15 |
Emotion focused general coping | −.09 | .12 | −.08 | .08 | .12 | .08 |
Problem focused cyberspecific coping | −.09 | .17 | −.07 | −.22 | .16 | −.20 |
Emotion focused cyberspecific coping | .82 | .13 |
|
.56 | .12 |
|
Step 3 | ||||||
Frequency of cyberbullying | −.06 | .11 | −.06 | .13 | .11 | .13 |
Problem focused general coping | −.19 | .15 | −.17 | .14 | .15 | .14 |
Emotion focused general coping | −.07 | .12 | −.07 | .08 | .12 | .08 |
Problem focused cyberspecific coping | −.06 | .16 | −.05 | −.20 | .16 | −.18 |
Emotion focused cyberspecific coping | .82 | .12 |
|
.56 | .12 |
|
Gender | −.12 | .11 | −.10 | .04 | .11 | .03 |
Duration of the cyberbullying | .31 | .12 | .25* | .14 | .13 | .12 |
Note: 1Depressive feelings:
This study examined the effects of Cyberbullying on depressive feelings and health complaints among children of the lowest grade of secondary school and the influence of coping on this relationship. In line with most of the previous findings [
As in most of the other studies, our research that showed that victimization increases with age [
Findings with regard to the first hypothesis
Emotion-focused coping, however, was consequently related to more health complaints and depressive feelings in the whole sample and in the subsample of victims of Cyberbullying. The interaction that was found with regard to emotion-focused coping also confirmed our expectation
Although the study showed new, interesting, and relevant findings concerning the negative effect of emotion-focused cyber-specific coping (like begging the bully to stop or getting angry) on the well-being of cyberbullied children, the study also had limitations.
One limitation is the number of cyberbullied children included in the study (
Given the results, the research—preferably longitudinal—should be continued. Because it appeared that cyber-specific emotional coping affects the well-being of cyberbullied children to a large extent; there should be more emphasis on further development of a valid instrument to measure this factor. As this study only found that cyber-specific emotion coping negatively affects victimized children’s well-being and, contrary to the literature on traditional bullying, did not confirm the importance of problem-focused coping, future studies should emphasize this unexpected finding. It is also important to study coping strategies that are effective in preventing and reducing Cyberbullying, which has not received attention in this study. A future study should also consider using multiple sources of information, such as parents, peers, or teachers, to gain more information about the victims of Cyberbullying. As we only asked for Cyberbullying frequency, additionally it is recommended for future studies to ask for the severity of the Cyberbullying experience among the victims. It can be expected that perceived severity of Cyberbullying may influence the coping strategies that children use as well as their well-being. Additionally, it is recommended to differentiate between distinctive subgroups when discussing the seriousness of Cyberbullying. In line with Pyżalski (2012), it is recommended to distinguish at least four important subgroups: close friends, young people known from offline environment but not labelled as close friends, young people known only from online groups, and former romantic partners [