Cyberbullying: The Effects of Parental Guidance and Internet Use on Teenagers Experiencing Cyberbullying

Abstract

The majority of the younger population has access to the Internet in some capacity (Guan and Subrahmanyam 2009). Though the Internet has many positive aspects, the abundance of uses inevitably brings about negative characteristics (Ybarra and Mitchell 2004). Offensive behavior, such as cyberbullying, is one of these negative characteristics the youth faces today (Guan and Subrahmanyam 2009). Although cyberbullying has been studied recently, it is still a serious problem, especially on social media. Cyberbullying can take many different forms, which makes it hard to study all of the ways and reasons as to why cyberbullying occurs (Kowalski, Giumetti, Schroeder, and Lattanner 2014). The purpose of this study was to assess the roles a parent plays in their child’s online behaviors, as well as general Internet use versus focused Internet use, and its relationship to the likelihood of being cyberbullied. These findings suggest two things: (1) safe Internet use, seeking advice about handling situations where people are mean or cruel online, suggesting ways to behave online, and using parental controls do not completely prevent cyberbullying and (2) general Internet use does not provide enough support in regards to being cyberbullied, but use of social networking sites does increase the likelihood of being cyberbullied.