The new study is based on confidential questionnaires filled out by 120,115 teenagers, who were asked to rate how often they were bullied in the past two months, including details on the type of bullying and its impact. Around a third reported regular bullying, with more girls suffering than boys. Of those that were frequently bullied, 27 per cent were only bullied in the real world, and less than one per cent were only bullied online. Three per cent were bullied using both tactics, with the nature of the reports leading the coauthors to conclude that cyberbullying, rather than being a standalone phenomenon, was in fact an added tactic of traditional bullies.
“We don’t have unlimited resources to shepherd young people into adulthood,” Przybylski says. “It’s really important that we spend resources developing solid interventions that work. Starting at an area of over-caution and myth could distract from meaningful interventions.”
Przybylski and his co-author Lucy Bowes plan on sending the study to a number of governmental advisory boards, including Ofcom and the UK Council for Child Internet Safety, in the hopes the data will lead to investment and education without scaremongering. They have already been approached by a representative of the NSPCC interested in looking at the data. All of the data from the report is therefore publicly available.
The UK Council for Child Internet Safety has, in the past, been associated with recommendations for quite extreme measures, like default blocking of online pornography at an ISP level. But Przybylski hopes the study will make a meaningful impact on the Council’s ultimate recommendationss when it consults on the cyberbullying issue.
“These things can be typically led by a concern of the day – internet pornography, child grooming etc. Pretty blunt things come out,” he says. Before recommending default filter blocks, for instance, “no one bothered to see if it works.”
This is why transparent data is vital to the debate, he says. “It’s the thing that separates a report from an opinion.”
“[The alternative might] sell newspapers, and communicate that something is being done about something that sounds scary,” he adds. “It is really easy to confuse outrage with action.”
In its conclusion, The Lancet report states: “Our findings support the urgent need for evidence-based interventions that holistically target both forms bullying in adolescence and are in stark contrast to media reports and the popular perceptions that young people are now more likely to be victims of cyberbullying than traditional forms. That understood, as internet connectivity becomes an increasingly intrinsic part of modern childhood, initiatives fostering resilience in online and every day contexts will be needed.”
Przybylski and Bowes are now looking at whether cyberbullying stats change over time. So far, says Przybylski, “the rates have been pretty consistent”. To get a full picture, we would need this kind of study to be carried out annually. But this, he says, would be expensive. “There has to be political will.”
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
