Elsevier

Computers in Human Behavior

Volume 69, April 2017, Pages 136-141
Computers in Human Behavior

Full length article
Cyberbullying and self-esteem: An Italian study

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.12.026Get rights and content

Highlights

  • The study explored the cyberbullying risks among adolescent students.

  • Standardized questionnaires to explore the cyberbullying effects were used.

  • Survey data from 438 participants indicated that males and females showed cyberbullying risks.

  • Parent control reduce the subject's risk to be involved in aggressive behaviour.

  • Lower levels of self-esteem predicted cyberbullying risks.

Abstract

In this study, the cyberbullying risk related to self-esteem, social, and personal variables was investigated. Cyberbullying describes a pervasive form of aggressive behaviour aimed at offending victims who are unable to protect themselves. A considerable sample of Italian young people were interviewed using standardized questionnaires. The results of the current study showed that, although few subjects were affected by cyberbullying (perpetrators and victims), a relationship exists between lower levels of self-esteem and cyberbullying risks. The role of parental control represents a good opportunity for the subjects in preventing aggressive behaviour. In general, this study underlines the importance to design and realize specific didactical programs to prevent aggressive behaviour, and to increase parental awareness about cyberbullying risks.

Introduction

Bullying describes a pervasive form of aggressive and intentional behaviour within a situation of an imbalance of power against a victim unable to defend himself (Li, 2007, Slonje and Smith, 2008, Smith et al., 2008). Usually, bullying manifests itself repeatedly over time in two ways: direct (physical behaviours such as hitting, pushing, kicking, and stealing) or indirect (verbal behaviours such as calling names, provoking, threatening, insults, spreading rumours, excluding, or isolating socially), (Olweus, 1993). This form of aggressive behaviour is mainly problematic for the school setting and in particular for the students’ well-being, leading it to be studied in many countries (Menesini et al., 2012). In schools, victims of bullying show low educational achievements and emotional problems, and are at a higher risk of depression and low self-esteem (Kim & Leventhal, 2008). Over the past few years, a new form of bullying has emerged, gathering the attention of researchers and teachers. At the same time, the huge progresses in digital technology are becoming more and more widespread. Mobile devices and other Internet applications given to adolescents not only new communication opportunities, but also have brought some negative social interactions known as cyberbullying. Many large-scale, cross-sectional studies demonstrate that cyberbullying is a significant problem for adolescents (Berson et al., 2002, El Asam and Samara, 2016, Ybarra and Mitchell, 2004).

Cyberbullying is generally defined as using electronic media (e.g., social networking site, e-mail, chat rooms, SMS, MMS, etc.) to harm another person who cannot defend themselves. In contrast to traditional bullying, cyberbullying reaches a far wider audience at a rapid speed, transcending boundaries of time as well as both physical and personal space (Kowalski et al., 2008, Smith et al., 2008). Students who were cyberbullied reported feelings of sadness, anxiety, and fear as well as an inability to concentrate at school (Beran & Li, 2005). Some studies even underline that victims of cyberbullying have low social status within their peer group, problematic relationships with their parents, and low self-esteem (Katzer, Fetchenhauer, & Belschak, 2009). Research has also shown that depression, substance abuse, and delinquency are significantly higher among the youth who report experiencing cyberbullying or online sexual solicitation (Mitchell, Ybarra, & Finkelhor, 2007).

The present research explores the gap between cyberbullying and self-esteem, which has not been completely explored and discussed in previous studies (Brighi et al., 2012, Patchin and Hinduja, 2010). Previous Italian studies have focused on cyberbullying and on the use of the different technological instruments such as the mobile telephone, personal computer, and emotional profile (Ortega et al., 2012) or on victimization predictors (Brighi et al., 2012). Therefore, this study attempts to increase the knowledge in the current research field by examining the association between cyberbullying risks in young students and the role of the self-esteem considered as a protective factor. In addition, based on this relationship, the current study explores the function of other variables such as gender, age, and parental control on Internet usage, specifically, in order to prevent interpersonal maltreatment in the cyberspace.

Rosenberg (1965) defined self-esteem as “a favourable or unfavourable attitude toward the self” (p. 15). Self-esteem is a personal belief or perception of how an individual is appreciated in the social world. A person with high self-esteem is usually assertive, pleased, and self-respecting, whereas those who have low self-esteem are anxious, lacking confidence, and self-critical. Whereas, people with low self-esteem show social problems and their self-concepts are inconsistent. In general, self-esteem tends to rise when a subject experiences positive life events such as success and favourable opinions among peers.

Previous studies have demonstrated an association between victimization experience and low self-esteem. Initially, O'Moore and Kirkham (2001) found that, among school students aged 8–18 years, high self-esteem protects children and adolescents from involvement in bullying. Furthermore, Seals and Young (2003) found no significant differences between self-esteem and groups of bullies and non-bullies. In a recent study, Patchin and Hinduja (2010) explored the relationship between an adolescent's experience with cyberbullying and their level of self-esteem. They found that victims of cyberbullying, when compared to normal subjects, showed lower levels of self-esteem. Among a number of risk factors in cyberbullying, a previous study indicated that positive feedback given on an adolescents' friend in Social Network Sites (SNSs) enhanced their self-esteem and well-being, whereas negative feedback decreased their self-esteem and well-being (Valkenburg, Peter, & Schouten, 2006).

A recent study on the effect of information technology usage and self-esteem showed that children who played video games more had lower self-esteem than children who played them less (Jackson, Fitzgerald, von Eye, Zhao, & Witt, 2010). Additionally, Williams and Guerra (2007) examined the relations among self-esteem, normative belief, and school climate. The results of their study underlined that, in schools with a negative climate, high self-esteem is a predictor of a higher level of bullying perpetration. In contrast, when the school climate was positive, a high level of self-esteem indicated a reduced problem of aggressive behaviour. Other studies have found that cyberbullying victimization among youths is a prediction of psychological distress and low self-esteem (Cénat et al., 2014). Others studies, for example, consider the self-esteem as an important predictor of personal and social well-being (Orth et al., 2012, Orth et al., 2014).

However, the current literature review underlines that the association between cyberbullying and self-esteem is not fully explained. In order to cover this gap, the current study aims at investigating in an Italian adolescent sample the protective role of self-esteem to reduce the risk of cyberbullying. More specifically, we considered that lower levels of self-esteem, and a reduced parental control over the subjects could increase risk of deviant behaviours such as cyberbullying in their use of Internet services.

Cyberbullying often occurs within the social-relational context (Hoff & Mitchell, 2008) by using short messaging service (e.g. SMS) between known people, or using social networking websites between “friends” in contrast with the commonly held assumption that it is anonymous (Hinduja and Patchin, 2008, Hinduja and Patchin, 2009, Kowalski and Limber, 2007, Patchin and Hinduja, 2006, Shariff, 2009).

Some previous studies have identified the risk factors of cyberbullying in demographic variable. Respect to the gender, in the traditional bullying, boys have more likely to be involved compared to girls (Jolliffe & Farrington, 2006) while in the cyberbullying behaviour, the studies are conflicting. Some studies, for instance, does not show gender differences for cyberbullies but found that boys are more involved as cyberbully (Li, 2006) and girls as cybervictim (Calvete et al., 2010, Dehue et al., 2008, Li, 2007, Smith et al., 2008). However, an evidence from a study showed that girls are more interested in cyberbullying than traditional bullying probably for their greater involvement in indirect aggression rather than direct one (Whittaker & Kowalski, 2015).

Recent studies (Mishna et al., 2011, Whittaker and Kowalski, 2015) suggest that cyberbullying tends to increase with the age and older boys are more likely to call someone names or threaten someone online. Instead, younger boys were more likely than younger girls to send unwelcome sexual words or photos to other subjects by online services.

Other findings show that children growing up in families with low or middle socioeconomic status (Kim et al., 2009, Wolke et al., 2001), and those that live in families with few social activities, have a high risk of victimization (Stevens, De Bourdeaudhuij, & VanOost, 2002).

In the past few years, studies have investigated the relationship between cyberbullying and family suggesting as young people have created an interactive virtual world away from adult supervision (Floros et al., 2013, Mishna et al., 2011). Internet services are easily accessible to the majority of young people at home and in educational settings worldwide. Often, young people are alone while surfing on the Internet, which may increase the risk to experience the role of bully or victim. Different studies underlined that cyberbullying (perpetration and victimization) is related to a subject's high computer competences and frequent use of the Internet or communication technologies in general (Huang and Chou, 2010, Katzer et al., 2009, Mesch, 2009, Vandebosch and Van Cleemput, 2009). Patchin and Hinduja (2006) found that adolescents used their computers in the privacy of their own bedrooms, thereby reducing, or even eliminating, the presence and supervision of their parents. This explains why cyberbullying can be highly correlated with a lack of parental control (Ybarra & Mitchell, 2004).

According to Livingstone and Bober (2004), parents exert less control because they believe that the virtual world is less dangerous than the real one. For parents, the Internet is a real challenge, which is why it is one of the few contexts in which they have less competence than their children. Some studies evidenced a relationship between parental knowledge about their children's whereabouts and discussions about online behaviour, and a lower frequency of cyberbullying victimization (Taiariol, 2010, Wade and Beran, 2011). Despite some parents' efforts to monitor their children's online behaviours, some studies found that many adolescents are hesitant to disclose being cyberbullied to a trusted adult (Ybarra & Mitchell, 2004). Therefore, it is assumed that a minor parental control on Internet use increase the risk of experiencing cyberbullying effects in young people.

Section snippets

Participants

The current study involved 438 students, of which 250 were females (57.1%) and 184 were males (42%) aged 10–20 years old (M = 15.17; SD = 2.22 years). The mean age was 15.08 years for males (SD = 2.25) and 15.23 years for females (SD = 2.18). Only four students did not specify their gender (0.9%), but they were included for the final statistical analyses because all their answers fulfilled the parameters correctly. The participants were recruited from four public schools (one middle school and

General aspects

Regarding the total sample, 11% of students were involved in cyberbullying as a perpetrator (occasional, 9%; severe, 2%), and 15.4% of the students as a victim (occasional, 13.1%; severe, 2.3%). Considering gender, males were involved as perpetrators 14% (occasional, 10.8%; severe, 3.2%), and as victims 14.9% (occasional, 12.8%; severe, 2.1%). Females were involved as perpetrators 8.9% (7.8% occasional and the 1.1% as severe), and as victims 15.6% (occasional, 13.3%; severe, 2.3%).

Concerning

Discussion

This study analysed the role of self-esteem in relation to the risk of cyberbullying in a sample of Italian adolescents. Moreover, other variables were considered such as gender, parental control, and school level. Regarding the gender variable, the analyses show that there are no significant differences in adolescents involved in cyberbullying, but male subjects appear more involved as perpetrators. This result is consistent with previous investigations, which found that boys are more

Conclusions, limitation and further research

The main objectives of the current study were to investigate two aspects of the cyberbullying risks: self-esteem level and the role of parental control. The results obtained in this study are consistent with previous investigations (Perren and Gutzwiller-Helfenfinger, 2012, Sticca et al., 2013). In particular, we found that subjects with a low level of self-esteem are more likely to be involved in cyberbullying risks. Other significant results are related to parental control. In fact, subjects

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    These authors contributed equally to this current paper.

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