Claire Callahan
Approximately, 97% of teens in the United States use the internet every day (Kowalski & Limber, 2007). In fact, adolescents interact through social media sites at comparable rates to phone calls and face-to-face communication (Hinduja & Patchin, 2008), thereby highlighting the prominence of the internet as a social tool for adolescent youth (Kowalski & Limber, 2007; O’Keeffe & Clarke-Pearson, 2011). The salience of online communication today, however, is problematic, as it is associated with high rates of cyberbullying, with 21% of adolescents reporting being bullied online (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2017). Cyberbullying is defined as repeated and intentional harm that occurs over digital mediums (e.g., threats, alienation, posting compromising pictures of the victim online; Hinduja & Patchin, 2008; Pujazon-Zazik & Park, 2010), and can occur on multiple online forums, such as social media sites, email services, and instant messaging services (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2017). The growing usage of online networking mediums (Valkenburg, Peter, & Schouten, 2006), and the frequent adolescent peer interactions that occur on them (O’Keeffe & Clarke-Pearson, 2011), has led to an increased interest in the potential effects of cyberbullying on adolescents. Understanding the impact of cyberbullying on female victims is particularly important, as adolescent girls tend to use online networks more frequently than males (Kowalski & Limber, 2007; Pujazon-Zazik & Park, 2010), and are, therefore, at greater risk of experiencing cybervictimization (Heiman & Olenik-Shemesh, 2015) as compared to male adolescents (Sourander et al., 2010). Given the high usage of internet mediums among female adolescents, this review sought to explore female adolescents’ experiences of cyberbullying.
Cyberbullying as a Form of Female Aggression
In order to understand the experiences of adolescent female cyberbullying victims, it is important to explore why girls bully other girls online. Girls are typically socialized to behave in a less confrontational manner than boys, and thus they often express their aggression in more underhanded ways (Hinduja & Patchin, 2008). One salient outlet for female aggression, therefore, is the internet (Athanasiades & Deliyanni-Kouimtzis, 2010), which provides a medium for girls to indirectly and covertly victimize one another (e.g., through excluding others from chat rooms and spreading false rumors; Chisolm, 2006; Connell, Schell-Busey, Pearce, & Negro, 2014; Hinduja & Patchin, 2008). Thus, the propensity for females to direct their
aggression towards other females through the internet also leads to high rates of cyberbullying victimization among female teenagers. In fact, almost 40% of adolescent girls have been victims of cyberbullying (Burgess Proctor, Patchin, & Hinduja, 2010). The prevalence of cyberbullying among young females is especially problematic given that cyberbullying has a more severe impact on psychological well-being (e.g., feelings of loneliness) than that of direct bullying (e.g., physical violence; Klomek et al., 2009), in light of the stresses involved in facing an anonymous perpetrator and the potential for the victimization be witnessed by a larger audience of peers (Beckman, Hagquist, & Hellström, 2012; Hinduja & Patchin, 2008; Raskauskas & Stoltz, 2007; Turner, Exum, Brame, & Holt, 2013).
In fact, female cyberbullying is often aimed at sabotaging or ending a relationship (Rose & Rudolph, 2006), which is alarming in light of females’ propensity to focus on relational issues in peer groups (Crick & Grotpeter, 1995), and to experience high stress when confronted with relational problems (Rose & Rudolph, 2006). As such, the effects of cyberbullying are especially damaging for females, and are associated with a series of internalizing problems such as excessive worrying and a lower sense of self-worth (Katzer, Fetchenhauer, & Belschak, 2009). Female victims of cyberbullying experience higher rates of depression as compared to those who were not cyberbullied (Selkie, Kota, Chan, & Moreno, 2015), and this risk for depression was sustained even when females were infrequently victimized, suggesting that female adolescents can be negatively affected by even minor experiences of cyberbullying (Klomek, Marrocco, Kleinman, Schonfeld, & Gould, 2007; Turner et al., 2013). Additionally, youth who are cyberbullied show an increased susceptibility to suicidal thoughts and feelings of loneliness, both
of which are often precursors of suicidal ideation and intention (Hinduja & Patchin, 2010). Hence, the effects of cyberbullying on mental health appear to endure long after the bullying has ceased, potentially persisting even into adulthood (Selkie et al.,
2015).
Risk-Seeking Behaviors
In order to cope with the low self-esteem and loneliness associated with being a victim of cyberbullying, many female victims engage in risk-seeking behaviors online. For example, victims of cyberbullying are more likely to give personal information such as passwords to others (Baumann, 2010), and to interact extensively with online strangers (Van den Heuvel, Van den Eijnden, Van Rooij, & Van de Mheen, 2012). These interactions often take the form of risky sexual behaviors (e.g., sending explicit messages to strangers; Katzer et al., 2009), which have the potential to lead to harmful in-person encounters (e.g., sexual assault; Van den Heuvel et al., 2012).
The emotional effects of cyberbullying are also related to further risky behaviors offline. Victims of cyberbullying often seek to cope with negative sequelae such stress, anxiety, and depression, through binge-drinking and marijuana use (Chan & La Greca, 2016; Goebert, Else, Matsu, Chung-Do, & Chang, 2011). When such risk-taking behaviors are undertaken during adolescence, they place females at greater risk for experiencing sexual assault and forceful sexual relationships (Welsh et al., 2017). Given that risky behaviors can lead to further cyberbullying (Reyns, Burek, Henson, & Fisher, 2013; Walrave & Heirman, 2011), adolescent girls have the potential to become trapped in a cycle of victimization.
School Outcomes
It is not surprising that the negative outcomes associated with cyberbullying victimization transcend into other settings, most notably the school (Beckman et al., 2012; Betts, Spenser, & Gardner, 2017; Latvala et al., 2014; Ybarra & Mitchell, 2004). In particular, victims of cyberbullying report feeling unsafe at school (Varjas, Henrich, & Meyers, 2009), feelings that can in turn lead to frequent absences (Katzer et al., 2009; Beran & Li, 2008; Ybarra, Diener-West, & Leaf, 2007) in an attempt to avoid facing their online bullies (Beckman et al., 2012; Raskauskas & Stoltz, 2007).
Over time, the accumulation of these negative
perceptions of school safety contribute to more unfavorable perceptions of school in general (Betts et al., 2017). Furthermore, due to the negative influence cyberbullying has on peer relationships, students can feel discouraged from engaging in the school environment (Betts et al., 2017); this lack of engagement in school, in turn, is associated with lower academic achievement (Li, 2007), and a greater risk of dropping out of high school (Fall & Roberts, 2012). Thus, although cyberbullying is not perpetrated in the school environment, it can nevertheless have an extremely damaging impact on adolescents’ academic outcomes by decreasing feelings of safety and peer inclusion in school.
Conclusion
A large and growing body of research suggests the
negative impact cyberbullying can have on the well-being of female adolescents. The emotional disruption of adolescent females as a result of cyberbullying can increase risk-seeking behaviors such as substance use and negative school outcomes. Additionally, many cyberbullying studies are conducted using self-report measures (Sourander et al., 2010), suggesting that the data used in studies may be biased, as adolescents are likely to perceive themselves in socially desirable ways (Van den Heuvel et al., 2012). As similar effects of cyberbullying victimization have been seen with respect to traditional bullying victimization (Kowalski et al., 2014; Vieno et al., 2015), and many individuals can experience both types of bullying, further research is needed to determine whether a combination of traditional bullying and cyberbullying has an additive effect on the likelihood of adverse mental health outcomes (Connell et al., 2014; Katzer et al., 2009). As such, given the adverse effects of cyberbullying for the emotional well-being, risk-seeking behaviors, and school outcomes of female adolescent victims, future longitudinal research is needed to address the long-term implications of cyberbullying for female adolescents’ development, as well as its effects in tandem with other forms of bullying victimization.
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