A Brazilian study links school bullying and cyberbullying, with greater emotional difficulties among teenagers involved in both settings.
A teenager gets picked on at school, then opens a group chat at home and finds more of the same. The school day has ended, but the bullying has not.
That connection runs through a study of 4,280 Brazilian teenagers.
Researchers found that online bullying often went hand in hand with bullying at school, and some of the students hurting others were also being hurt themselves.
Augusto Henrique Roiz Druziani, a doctoral researcher at the Federal University of São Paulo, led the study. Zila Sanchez, who heads the university’s Department of Preventive Medicine, coordinated it.
“The research shows that violence against the same young person occurs both at school and online, indicating that cyberbullying is often an extension of in-person conflict,” Sanchez said.
Students did not fit simple labels
It might seem straightforward to divide students into those who bully others and those who get bullied. Their answers told a more complicated story.
Researchers used a statistical method to group students whose experiences were similar.
Nearly half had little involvement in bullying, while another 46.3% mainly experienced bullying at school, sometimes bullied others, and had little involvement online.
The smallest group, 250 students, stood out because bullying reached into both their school lives and their online interactions.
These teenagers were more likely to be both targets and aggressors, and the group included most students who reported sending cruel messages.
No separate group emerged whose bullying experiences happened only online. Nor did researchers find a distinct group of students who mainly bullied others without also being targeted.
The smallest group struggled the most
Students answered a standard mental health questionnaire covering emotions, behavior, attention, and friendships.
More than half of those involved in bullying across both settings scored in the clinical range, suggesting significant emotional or behavioral difficulties.
Among students mainly bullied at school, about a third reached that threshold. Among those with little involvement in bullying, the figure was one in eight.
Mental health symptoms had the strongest link to bullying of all the factors researchers measured. The link remained after they accounted for age, sex, race, and other differences.
The small group involved in both settings was also more likely to have tried alcohol and cigarettes.
Those links remained after the same adjustments, although the survey could not explain whether substance use came before or after the bullying.
Listening to students at school
The survey took place between 2023 and 2024 in four small towns in São Paulo state. It formed part of Prev.Action, a larger project testing ways to prevent teenage drinking.
Researchers invited students from seventh grade through the end of high school at 12 public schools and one private school.
Participants were about 15 years old on average and answered through a smartphone app, with trained researchers present and teachers outside the room.
Questions covered substance use, bullying in person, and sending or receiving aggressive or humiliating messages online. Sanchez explained that some bullying can be easy for adults to overlook.
“Cases range from frequently excluding a student from games or conversations to the point where they would rather stay in the classroom during recess to insults about their appearance, weight, and other characteristics,” Sanchez said.
“That often goes undiagnosed by the school.”
Younger students were more involved
About half of all participants said they had been bullied in person, compared with roughly one in 10 who reported receiving cruel messages online. But the pattern varied across students.
Girls had higher odds than boys of belonging to the group mainly bullied at school.
Boys made up about 60% of the smaller group involved on both sides of bullying, online and in person.
Younger students had higher odds of belonging to either bullying group.
Students identified as Black or brown also had higher odds than white students of belonging to the group involved across both settings.
The same was true of Asian and Indigenous students, though their numbers were small. The authors suggested that wider social inequalities may help explain these differences and should inform prevention efforts.
Screen hours missed part of the picture
For parents worried about online bullying, limiting phone use may seem like an obvious place to start. Yet screen time did little to distinguish the groups in this study.
Nearly three in four students reported at least four hours of daily screen use. After researchers accounted for other factors, heavy screen use was not linked to either bullying group.
The total included everything from television to messaging, so it could not reveal what students encountered online.
Sanchez pointed out that teenagers’ WhatsApp groups often include the same people they see at school.
“Parents often think that keeping their children away from screens protects them. Protection isn’t just about limiting screen time; it’s also about what teenagers are doing, who they’re interacting with, and what’s happening,” she said.
The survey cannot show what started it
Each student answered the questions once. That gave researchers a picture of problems occurring together, but no way to establish which came first.
Bullying could contribute to emotional distress and substance use.
Teenagers already struggling might also become more involved in bullying, and the authors suggested that both could happen.
Students reported their own experiences, and all four towns were small, so the findings may not apply everywhere.
Combining the in-person bullying questions into one measure also made the groups less distinct.
Following students over several years would help researchers understand how these experiences develop. The three-group pattern also needs testing with other students.
Prevention needs a broader approach
The findings raise a practical issue for schools: a teenager may need help with several connected problems at once.
“This study reinforces the evidence that in Brazil, it isn’t possible to have one program focused solely on mental health, another on drug prevention, and a third against bullying, as is often seen in schools,” Sanchez said.
“Everything is connected.”
Some findings helped shape Prisma, a program São Paulo state launched in 2026 that researchers are testing with nearly 5,000 eighth and ninth graders in 36 state schools.
Its 12 lessons cover drug use, bullying, cyberbullying, and emotional education, with initial results expected after an end-of-year follow-up.
The study is published in the journal Psychiatry Research.
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