case study research about bullying

• Research article
• Open access
• Published: 14 December 2021

Bullying at school and mental health problems among adolescents: a repeated cross-sectional study

• Håkan Källmén 1 &
• Mats Hallgren   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0599-2403 2  

Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health volume  15 , Article number:  74 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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To examine recent trends in bullying and mental health problems among adolescents and the association between them.

A questionnaire measuring mental health problems, bullying at school, socio-economic status, and the school environment was distributed to all secondary school students aged 15 (school-year 9) and 18 (school-year 11) in Stockholm during 2014, 2018, and 2020 (n = 32,722). Associations between bullying and mental health problems were assessed using logistic regression analyses adjusting for relevant demographic, socio-economic, and school-related factors.

The prevalence of bullying remained stable and was highest among girls in year 9; range = 4.9% to 16.9%. Mental health problems increased; range = + 1.2% (year 9 boys) to + 4.6% (year 11 girls) and were consistently higher among girls (17.2% in year 11, 2020). In adjusted models, having been bullied was detrimentally associated with mental health (OR = 2.57 [2.24–2.96]). Reports of mental health problems were four times higher among boys who had been bullied compared to those not bullied. The corresponding figure for girls was 2.4 times higher.

Conclusions

Exposure to bullying at school was associated with higher odds of mental health problems. Boys appear to be more vulnerable to the deleterious effects of bullying than girls.

Introduction

Bullying involves repeated hurtful actions between peers where an imbalance of power exists [ 1 ]. Arseneault et al. [ 2 ] conducted a review of the mental health consequences of bullying for children and adolescents and found that bullying is associated with severe symptoms of mental health problems, including self-harm and suicidality. Bullying was shown to have detrimental effects that persist into late adolescence and contribute independently to mental health problems. Updated reviews have presented evidence indicating that bullying is causative of mental illness in many adolescents [ 3 , 4 ].

There are indications that mental health problems are increasing among adolescents in some Nordic countries. Hagquist et al. [ 5 ] examined trends in mental health among Scandinavian adolescents (n = 116, 531) aged 11–15 years between 1993 and 2014. Mental health problems were operationalized as difficulty concentrating, sleep disorders, headache, stomach pain, feeling tense, sad and/or dizzy. The study revealed increasing rates of adolescent mental health problems in all four counties (Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark), with Sweden experiencing the sharpest increase among older adolescents, particularly girls. Worsening adolescent mental health has also been reported in the United Kingdom. A study of 28,100 school-aged adolescents in England found that two out of five young people scored above thresholds for emotional problems, conduct problems or hyperactivity [ 6 ]. Female gender, deprivation, high needs status (educational/social), ethnic background, and older age were all associated with higher odds of experiencing mental health difficulties.

Bullying is shown to increase the risk of poor mental health and may partly explain these detrimental changes. Le et al. [ 7 ] reported an inverse association between bullying and mental health among 11–16-year-olds in Vietnam. They also found that poor mental health can make some children and adolescents more vulnerable to bullying at school. Bayer et al. [ 8 ] examined links between bullying at school and mental health among 8–9-year-old children in Australia. Those who experienced bullying more than once a week had poorer mental health than children who experienced bullying less frequently. Friendships moderated this association, such that children with more friends experienced fewer mental health problems (protective effect). Hysing et al. [ 9 ] investigated the association between experiences of bullying (as a victim or perpetrator) and mental health, sleep disorders, and school performance among 16–19 year olds from Norway (n = 10,200). Participants were categorized as victims, bullies, or bully-victims (that is, victims who also bullied others). All three categories were associated with worse mental health, school performance, and sleeping difficulties. Those who had been bullied also reported more emotional problems, while those who bullied others reported more conduct disorders [ 9 ].

As most adolescents spend a considerable amount of time at school, the school environment has been a major focus of mental health research [ 10 , 11 ]. In a recent review, Saminathen et al. [ 12 ] concluded that school is a potential protective factor against mental health problems, as it provides a socially supportive context and prepares students for higher education and employment. However, it may also be the primary setting for protracted bullying and stress [ 13 ]. Another factor associated with adolescent mental health is parental socio-economic status (SES) [ 14 ]. A systematic review indicated that lower parental SES is associated with poorer adolescent mental health [ 15 ]. However, no previous studies have examined whether SES modifies or attenuates the association between bullying and mental health. Similarly, it remains unclear whether school related factors, such as school grades and the school environment, influence the relationship between bullying and mental health. This information could help to identify those adolescents most at risk of harm from bullying.

To address these issues, we investigated the prevalence of bullying at school and mental health problems among Swedish adolescents aged 15–18 years between 2014 and 2020 using a population-based school survey. We also examined associations between bullying at school and mental health problems adjusting for relevant demographic, socioeconomic, and school-related factors. We hypothesized that: (1) bullying and adolescent mental health problems have increased over time; (2) There is an association between bullying victimization and mental health, so that mental health problems are more prevalent among those who have been victims of bullying; and (3) that school-related factors would attenuate the association between bullying and mental health.

Participants

The Stockholm school survey is completed every other year by students in lower secondary school (year 9—compulsory) and upper secondary school (year 11). The survey is mandatory for public schools, but voluntary for private schools. The purpose of the survey is to help inform decision making by local authorities that will ultimately improve students’ wellbeing. The questions relate to life circumstances, including SES, schoolwork, bullying, drug use, health, and crime. Non-completers are those who were absent from school when the survey was completed (< 5%). Response rates vary from year to year but are typically around 75%. For the current study data were available for 2014, 2018 and 2020. In 2014; 5235 boys and 5761 girls responded, in 2018; 5017 boys and 5211 girls responded, and in 2020; 5633 boys and 5865 girls responded (total n = 32,722). Data for the exposure variable, bullied at school, were missing for 4159 students, leaving 28,563 participants in the crude model. The fully adjusted model (described below) included 15,985 participants. The mean age in grade 9 was 15.3 years (SD = 0.51) and in grade 11, 17.3 years (SD = 0.61). As the data are completely anonymous, the study was exempt from ethical approval according to an earlier decision from the Ethical Review Board in Stockholm (2010-241 31-5). Details of the survey are available via a website [ 16 ], and are described in a previous paper [ 17 ].

Students completed the questionnaire during a school lesson, placed it in a sealed envelope and handed it to their teacher. Student were permitted the entire lesson (about 40 min) to complete the questionnaire and were informed that participation was voluntary (and that they were free to cancel their participation at any time without consequences). Students were also informed that the Origo Group was responsible for collection of the data on behalf of the City of Stockholm.

Study outcome

Mental health problems were assessed by using a modified version of the Psychosomatic Problem Scale [ 18 ] shown to be appropriate for children and adolescents and invariant across gender and years. The scale was later modified [ 19 ]. In the modified version, items about difficulty concentrating and feeling giddy were deleted and an item about ‘life being great to live’ was added. Seven different symptoms or problems, such as headaches, depression, feeling fear, stomach problems, difficulty sleeping, believing it’s great to live (coded negatively as seldom or rarely) and poor appetite were used. Students who responded (on a 5-point scale) that any of these problems typically occurs ‘at least once a week’ were considered as having indicators of a mental health problem. Cronbach alpha was 0.69 across the whole sample. Adding these problem areas, a total index was created from 0 to 7 mental health symptoms. Those who scored between 0 and 4 points on the total symptoms index were considered to have a low indication of mental health problems (coded as 0); those who scored between 5 and 7 symptoms were considered as likely having mental health problems (coded as 1).

Primary exposure

Experiences of bullying were measured by the following two questions: Have you felt bullied or harassed during the past school year? Have you been involved in bullying or harassing other students during this school year? Alternatives for the first question were: yes or no with several options describing how the bullying had taken place (if yes). Alternatives indicating emotional bullying were feelings of being mocked, ridiculed, socially excluded, or teased. Alternatives indicating physical bullying were being beaten, kicked, forced to do something against their will, robbed, or locked away somewhere. The response alternatives for the second question gave an estimation of how often the respondent had participated in bullying others (from once to several times a week). Combining the answers to these two questions, five different categories of bullying were identified: (1) never been bullied and never bully others; (2) victims of emotional (verbal) bullying who have never bullied others; (3) victims of physical bullying who have never bullied others; (4) victims of bullying who have also bullied others; and (5) perpetrators of bullying, but not victims. As the number of positive cases in the last three categories was low (range = 3–15 cases) bully categories 2–4 were combined into one primary exposure variable: ‘bullied at school’.

Assessment year was operationalized as the year when data was collected: 2014, 2018, and 2020. Age was operationalized as school grade 9 (15–16 years) or 11 (17–18 years). Gender was self-reported (boy or girl). The school situation To assess experiences of the school situation, students responded to 18 statements about well-being in school, participation in important school matters, perceptions of their teachers, and teaching quality. Responses were given on a four-point Likert scale ranging from ‘do not agree at all’ to ‘fully agree’. To reduce the 18-items down to their essential factors, we performed a principal axis factor analysis. Results showed that the 18 statements formed five factors which, according to the Kaiser criterion (eigen values > 1) explained 56% of the covariance in the student’s experience of the school situation. The five factors identified were: (1) Participation in school; (2) Interesting and meaningful work; (3) Feeling well at school; (4) Structured school lessons; and (5) Praise for achievements. For each factor, an index was created that was dichotomised (poor versus good circumstance) using the median-split and dummy coded with ‘good circumstance’ as reference. A description of the items included in each factor is available as Additional file 1 . Socio-economic status (SES) was assessed with three questions about the education level of the student’s mother and father (dichotomized as university degree versus not), and the amount of spending money the student typically received for entertainment each month (> SEK 1000 [approximately $120] versus less). Higher parental education and more spending money were used as reference categories. School grades in Swedish, English, and mathematics were measured separately on a 7-point scale and dichotomized as high (grades A, B, and C) versus low (grades D, E, and F). High school grades were used as the reference category.

Statistical analyses

The prevalence of mental health problems and bullying at school are presented using descriptive statistics, stratified by survey year (2014, 2018, 2020), gender, and school year (9 versus 11). As noted, we reduced the 18-item questionnaire assessing school function down to five essential factors by conducting a principal axis factor analysis (see Additional file 1 ). We then calculated the association between bullying at school (defined above) and mental health problems using multivariable logistic regression. Results are presented as odds ratios (OR) with 95% confidence intervals (Cis). To assess the contribution of SES and school-related factors to this association, three models are presented: Crude, Model 1 adjusted for demographic factors: age, gender, and assessment year; Model 2 adjusted for Model 1 plus SES (parental education and student spending money), and Model 3 adjusted for Model 2 plus school-related factors (school grades and the five factors identified in the principal factor analysis). These covariates were entered into the regression models in three blocks, where the final model represents the fully adjusted analyses. In all models, the category ‘not bullied at school’ was used as the reference. Pseudo R-square was calculated to estimate what proportion of the variance in mental health problems was explained by each model. Unlike the R-square statistic derived from linear regression, the Pseudo R-square statistic derived from logistic regression gives an indicator of the explained variance, as opposed to an exact estimate, and is considered informative in identifying the relative contribution of each model to the outcome [ 20 ]. All analyses were performed using SPSS v. 26.0.

Prevalence of bullying at school and mental health problems

Estimates of the prevalence of bullying at school and mental health problems across the 12 strata of data (3 years × 2 school grades × 2 genders) are shown in Table 1 . The prevalence of bullying at school increased minimally (< 1%) between 2014 and 2020, except among girls in grade 11 (2.5% increase). Mental health problems increased between 2014 and 2020 (range = 1.2% [boys in year 11] to 4.6% [girls in year 11]); were three to four times more prevalent among girls (range = 11.6% to 17.2%) compared to boys (range = 2.6% to 4.9%); and were more prevalent among older adolescents compared to younger adolescents (range = 1% to 3.1% higher). Pooling all data, reports of mental health problems were four times more prevalent among boys who had been victims of bullying compared to those who reported no experiences with bullying. The corresponding figure for girls was two and a half times as prevalent.

Associations between bullying at school and mental health problems

Table 2 shows the association between bullying at school and mental health problems after adjustment for relevant covariates. Demographic factors, including female gender (OR = 3.87; CI 3.48–4.29), older age (OR = 1.38, CI 1.26–1.50), and more recent assessment year (OR = 1.18, CI 1.13–1.25) were associated with higher odds of mental health problems. In Model 2, none of the included SES variables (parental education and student spending money) were associated with mental health problems. In Model 3 (fully adjusted), the following school-related factors were associated with higher odds of mental health problems: lower grades in Swedish (OR = 1.42, CI 1.22–1.67); uninteresting or meaningless schoolwork (OR = 2.44, CI 2.13–2.78); feeling unwell at school (OR = 1.64, CI 1.34–1.85); unstructured school lessons (OR = 1.31, CI = 1.16–1.47); and no praise for achievements (OR = 1.19, CI 1.06–1.34). After adjustment for all covariates, being bullied at school remained associated with higher odds of mental health problems (OR = 2.57; CI 2.24–2.96). Demographic and school-related factors explained 12% and 6% of the variance in mental health problems, respectively (Pseudo R-Square). The inclusion of socioeconomic factors did not alter the variance explained.

Our findings indicate that mental health problems increased among Swedish adolescents between 2014 and 2020, while the prevalence of bullying at school remained stable (< 1% increase), except among girls in year 11, where the prevalence increased by 2.5%. As previously reported [ 5 , 6 ], mental health problems were more common among girls and older adolescents. These findings align with previous studies showing that adolescents who are bullied at school are more likely to experience mental health problems compared to those who are not bullied [ 3 , 4 , 9 ]. This detrimental relationship was observed after adjustment for school-related factors shown to be associated with adolescent mental health [ 10 ].

A novel finding was that boys who had been bullied at school reported a four-times higher prevalence of mental health problems compared to non-bullied boys. The corresponding figure for girls was 2.5 times higher for those who were bullied compared to non-bullied girls, which could indicate that boys are more vulnerable to the deleterious effects of bullying than girls. Alternatively, it may indicate that boys are (on average) bullied more frequently or more intensely than girls, leading to worse mental health. Social support could also play a role; adolescent girls often have stronger social networks than boys and could be more inclined to voice concerns about bullying to significant others, who in turn may offer supports which are protective [ 21 ]. Related studies partly confirm this speculative explanation. An Estonian study involving 2048 children and adolescents aged 10–16 years found that, compared to girls, boys who had been bullied were more likely to report severe distress, measured by poor mental health and feelings of hopelessness [ 22 ].

Other studies suggest that heritable traits, such as the tendency to internalize problems and having low self-esteem are associated with being a bully-victim [ 23 ]. Genetics are understood to explain a large proportion of bullying-related behaviors among adolescents. A study from the Netherlands involving 8215 primary school children found that genetics explained approximately 65% of the risk of being a bully-victim [ 24 ]. This proportion was similar for boys and girls. Higher than average body mass index (BMI) is another recognized risk factor [ 25 ]. A recent Australian trial involving 13 schools and 1087 students (mean age = 13 years) targeted adolescents with high-risk personality traits (hopelessness, anxiety sensitivity, impulsivity, sensation seeking) to reduce bullying at school; both as victims and perpetrators [ 26 ]. There was no significant intervention effect for bullying victimization or perpetration in the total sample. In a secondary analysis, compared to the control schools, intervention school students showed greater reductions in victimization, suicidal ideation, and emotional symptoms. These findings potentially support targeting high-risk personality traits in bullying prevention [ 26 ].

The relative stability of bullying at school between 2014 and 2020 suggests that other factors may better explain the increase in mental health problems seen here. Many factors could be contributing to these changes, including the increasingly competitive labour market, higher demands for education, and the rapid expansion of social media [ 19 , 27 , 28 ]. A recent Swedish study involving 29,199 students aged between 11 and 16 years found that the effects of school stress on psychosomatic symptoms have become stronger over time (1993–2017) and have increased more among girls than among boys [ 10 ]. Research is needed examining possible gender differences in perceived school stress and how these differences moderate associations between bullying and mental health.

Strengths and limitations

Strengths of the current study include the large participant sample from diverse schools; public and private, theoretical and practical orientations. The survey included items measuring diverse aspects of the school environment; factors previously linked to adolescent mental health but rarely included as covariates in studies of bullying and mental health. Some limitations are also acknowledged. These data are cross-sectional which means that the direction of the associations cannot be determined. Moreover, all the variables measured were self-reported. Previous studies indicate that students tend to under-report bullying and mental health problems [ 29 ]; thus, our results may underestimate the prevalence of these behaviors.

In conclusion, consistent with our stated hypotheses, we observed an increase in self-reported mental health problems among Swedish adolescents, and a detrimental association between bullying at school and mental health problems. Although bullying at school does not appear to be the primary explanation for these changes, bullying was detrimentally associated with mental health after adjustment for relevant demographic, socio-economic, and school-related factors, confirming our third hypothesis. The finding that boys are potentially more vulnerable than girls to the deleterious effects of bullying should be replicated in future studies, and the mechanisms investigated. Future studies should examine the longitudinal association between bullying and mental health, including which factors mediate/moderate this relationship. Epigenetic studies are also required to better understand the complex interaction between environmental and biological risk factors for adolescent mental health [ 24 ].

Availability of data and materials

Data requests will be considered on a case-by-case basis; please email the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgements

Authors are grateful to the Department for Social Affairs, Stockholm, for permission to use data from the Stockholm School Survey.

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HK conceived the study and analyzed the data (with input from MH). HK and MH interpreted the data and jointly wrote the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Principal factor analysis description.

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Källmén, H., Hallgren, M. Bullying at school and mental health problems among adolescents: a repeated cross-sectional study. Child Adolesc Psychiatry Ment Health 15 , 74 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13034-021-00425-y

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Bullying, Interrupted

• Posted August 30, 2021
• By Gianna Cacciatore
• Counseling and Mental Health
• Disruption and Crises
• Human Development
• Online Education

The COVID-19 pandemic closed schools and forced students into online education, causing widespread worry among parents and educators that an increase in cyberbullying would follow. But that increase never materialized, reports a new study by Andrew Bacher-Hicks , Ed.M.’14, assistant professor of education at Boston University, and co-authors Joshua Goodman , Jennifer Greif Green , and Melissa Holt . In fact, bullying and cyberbullying rates, measured by the frequency of online searches for bullying-related terms, actually dropped during the pandemic. We caught up with Bacher-Hicks to learn why. 

We wanted to look into bullying during COVID in particular because, after the massive shift from in-person instruction to online learning in March of 2020, there was a lot of concern that cyberbullying might increase (since students were spending more time online). We wanted to see if that increase had indeed come to pass. 

How did the study work?

We used Google search trends in this study, for two purposes: First, we looked at historical Google search trend data from before the pandemic to figure out whether or not Google search trends for words like “bullying” or “cyberbullying” actually predict bullying behavior. Linking historical search popularity for those terms with survey responses from the CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey , we provided clear evidence that increases in internet searches for bullying historically predicted higher reported rates of bullying. 

Then, we tracked Google searches for “bullying” and “cyberbullying” during the periods directly before and after schools closed in March 2020. We also tracked search frequency during the summer of 2020 and into the fall of the 2020–21 school year. 

What did you find? 

The main result was that both bullying and cyberbullying searches dropped dramatically (by 30 to 40%) in months immediately following school closures. We also found that, for schools that remained remote in the fall of 2020, decreases in both in-person bullying and cyberbullying persisted. 

When we looked at schools that remained fully remote versus schools that offered in-person instruction for the 2020–2021 school year, we found that the drops in bullying were concentrated among schools that remained fully remote. This is consistent with the idea that shifting to remote schooling was an important mechanism that drove down the rates of both bullying and cyberbullying. 

Interestingly, even in schools that shifted back to in-person instruction, we found that in-person bullying and cyberbullying did not fully return to pre-pandemic levels. 

Why do you think that is? 

There were likely some differences between the fall of 2020 and past falls. For schools that returned to some in-person instruction in the fall of 2020, bullying rates may have been lower than historical patterns because those schools had lower rates of in-person attendance. Just because a school offered in-person instruction doesn’t mean all students accepted it.  

Another possible reason is that even if everybody did return for in-person learning, there were additional structures in place. Prior literature has found that bullying tends to happen during unstructured time — when students are passing in the hallways, at recess, during lunchtime. With COVID precautions, in-person schools had less unstructured time, meaning there may have been fewer opportunities for in-person bullying to occur. 

What about cyberbullying rates? Why might those have initially dropped and, in schools that returned to in-person learning, remained lower?

This gets into one of the most surprising results of this study. It was not surprising to me or my co-authors that in-person bullying dropped, but it was surprising to us that cyberbullying dropped. 

Our study didn’t examine this question directly, but it might be the case that there is a link between in-school interactions and online interactions. Prior research shows that the same individuals are often involved both in cyberbullying and in-person bullying. Some instances of bullying, therefore, may start in person and then shift online. If these in person interactions are disrupted, then the spillover onto online bullying may also be disrupted. 

What do these findings mean for educators and families? 

They suggest a few things. The first is that we, as families, educators, and policymakers, do not have to accept high rates of bullying. The pandemic has shown us that bullying rates can change quite dramatically. Second, this research suggests that we may be able to identify effective strategies implemented during pandemic to decrease bullying rates in the future. For example, school leaders might think carefully about unstructured time in a school day, how those student interactions have differed during the pandemic, and if any of the additional structure introduced during the pandemic would be useful to offer moving forward.

Finally, I think a lot of research on the educational effects of COVID-19 has focused on negative consequences — things like learning loss, student achievement, and anxiety. It’s certainly crucial that we document these harmful effects, but this study suggests that there are at least some aspects of students’ learning experiences that may have improved. Highlighting the decrease in pandemic-era bullying allows us to see the shift to remote as not entirely harmful. This is important to remember, as there might be other benefits we can learn about from the shift. 

The latest research, perspectives, and highlights from the Harvard Graduate School of Education

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Home / Publications & Research / Social Mobility & Vulnerable Learners / Bullying: A review of the evidence

Bullying: A review of the evidence

November 12 th to 16 th is Anti-Bullying Week run by the Anti-Bullying Alliance . In this blog, EPI’s Kristen Brown explores the field of bullying research and reviews international evidence on approaches to tackling bullying in schools.

Key findings:

• While there are no official statistics on the prevalence of bullying in England, research suggests that at least two in five young people have experienced bullying in some form in the previous year, including cyber-bullying. 
• Bullying has deeply negative and long-lasting consequences for those who experience it, including mental and physical health difficulties, lower attainment and lower income in adulthood . Young people who bully others are also more likely to have mental health difficulties.
• Different social groups experience bullying differently, with girls, ethnic minority pupils, those with special educational needs and disabilities, and LGBTQ pupils more likely to face discriminatory bullying . The role played by this type of bullying in perpetuating inequities in outcomes for these groups, including lower adult earnings and poorer health, warrants further research.
• The government requires all state-funded schools to include anti-bullying measures in their behaviour policies, and all schools must comply with anti-discrimination law . In 2017, the Government Equalities Office launched an initiative to tackle homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying in schools through group support programmes and teacher training.
• Some approaches to tackling bullying are better evidenced than others. Interventions that create empathy and understanding of harm caused appear to be more effective than punitive action . Existing research suggests that resources should be focused on anti-bias and bystander intervention training, peer support programmes, and restorative justice approaches rather than zero tolerance policies.

Prevalence and trends

Research on bullying began in the 1970s, prompted by a number of communities that lost victimised pupils to suicide. The early research identified unique social factors at the root of bullying, most notably the power imbalance between the perpetrator and victim, which can be exploited through physical, verbal and non-verbal means, either directly or indirectly. [1] Since then, research has focused on understanding prevalence, identifying risk factors, and testing interventions. With the advent of technological developments, the battle against bullying grew to encompass the rising prevalence of cyberbullying.

The field of bullying research has been complicated by several issues. Many studies do not use the same measures across time and place, making systematic reviews and meta-analyses difficult. According to one review of studies conducted between 1990 and 2009, rates of school bullying are decreasing; however two-thirds of children in English schools feel that bullying is getting worse. [2] Evidence suggests that changing levels of in-school bullying are driving this, while bullying outside of school is actually increasing. 1,2 It is possible that interventions tackling bullying have not addressed bullying outside of schools to the same extent as in-school bullying, and more cohesive research is needed to understand the role played by both.

There are currently no official statistics collected on the prevalence of bullying in England. Research findings indicate that more than half of young people have experienced some form of peer victimisation in their lives, with approximately two in five reporting some type of bullying, including cyber-bullying, in the previous year. [3] , [4]  

However, experiences of bullying differ across social groups . Boys are more likely to be hit or threatened, while girls are more likely to suffer from indirect forms of bullying such as social isolation and rumour-spreading. [5] As a result, some staff find that bullying faced by girls is less visible and therefore more difficult to address. [6] Many girls also experience misogynistic bullying in school. According to a Women and Equalities Committee report published earlier this year, 29 per cent of 16- to 18-year-old girls experienced unwanted sexual touching in school, 59 per cent of 13- to 21-year-old girls said they faced some form of sexual harassment in the past year, and 71 per cent of 16- to 18-year-olds report hearing gendered insults on a regular basis. [7] In addition to the mental health consequences associated with bullying, victimisation in childhood is associated with lower accumulated wealth and higher health-related costs for women compared to men in adulthood . [8] This is of particular importance, considering the entrenched wage gap between men and women in the UK and internationally. [9]

Ethnic minority pupils may experience racist bullying or harassment. One meta-analysis found no significant differences in bullying experienced by majority and minority ethnic groups of pupils. However, when broken down by country, researchers found that this was not true in the UK, where ethnic minority pupils faced significantly more bullying than their majority group peers . [10] It is possible that variations in racist bullying across countries can be attributed to political climate. Research has found that a negative campus climate invites the harassment and victimisation of sexual minority youth. [11] Some preliminary research suggests that the election of Donald Trump was associated with an increase in racist bullying. [12] In a series of case studies, schools with clear procedures for responding to racist bullying and harassment increased attainment for ethnic minority pupils. [13] More research should investigate whether this is a causal association, as the implications for the attainment of ethnic minority pupils could be significant.

Similar issues arise for LGBTQ pupils. About one half of primary school teachers report that their pupils experience homophobic, biphobic or transphobic (HBT) bullying; in secondary school, this problem becomes even worse, with nine out of ten teachers reporting that their pupils experience HBT bullying. [14] One fifth of LGBTQ students who progress to university experienced name calling, rumours and gossip about them due to their sexual orientation, with a small number reporting severe forms of HBT bullying including threats or intimidation and being physically attacked. [15] Almost all (91 per cent) students who experience these kinds of discriminatory bullying did not report them, for reasons that included not believing the university would take them seriously, not knowing how to make an official report, being too afraid to make an official report, and not thinking the incident was worth reporting. 15 Not only does the lack of reporting indicate that perpetrators may be left unchallenged and continue to harass students, it also suggests that university records likely significantly underestimate the scope of the problem.

Additionally, pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) face increased risk of bullying, with some research showing that pupils with SEND were twice as likely to be bullied as non-SEND pupils with similar characteristics. [16] Pupils with Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) are more likely to be bullied than the general population, and some evidence suggests that these pupils face a higher risk of bullying than other pupils with SEND. [17] Among pupils with ASC, being older, attending a mainstream (rather than special) school, having lower levels of educational support, and using public transport to travel to and from school increased the risk of being bullied further. [ 17] Research suggests that the way pupils are labelled or separated within schools may result in stigma or ‘othering’ which could increase bullying, as pupils with a statement have been found to be bullied more frequently than pupils with SEND without a statement. 16

While the groups discussed here are not the only ones who face specific or disproportionate bullying, they have been most addressed by the literature. Some evidence has identified socioeconomic disadvantage as a predictor of bullying victimisation, though this association may be explained by other factors. [18] , [19] Some research suggests that being a child carer is associated with being bullied. [20] , [21] , [22] Another study shows that children in care are often bullied, however due to a small sample size these results could not be compared meaningfully to the general population. [23] Further studies should clarify this preliminary research and identify other groups of pupils who face similar struggles, as well as exploring solutions for groups that we know are at increased risk of experiencing bullying.

Consequences of bullying

The literature consistently shows that being bullied is associated with increased social and emotional problems, as well as negative academic and career consequences in the long-term. These include low self-esteem, low attendance, mental ill-health and suicidal ideation. [24] , [25] Bullying victimisation can be harmful to one’s physical health as well, with bullied children reporting more stomach aches, headaches, mouth sores and chest thumping. 24 Some evidence suggests a circular relationship: the emotional distress caused by victimisation may impair behavioural and emotional regulation, lower self-esteem, and hinder social skills, increasing the likelihood of further victimisation. [26] Additionally, research has indicated that bullied children have lower educational qualifications, worse financial management and a lower income at age 50. [ 25] These negative impacts are particularly concerning given the pre-existing disparities between some of the groups disproportionately affected by bullying and the general population. It is possible that school bullying perpetuates these inequities.

Importantly, the perpetration of bullying is also associated with similar social, emotional, and long-term life consequences. Pupils who bully others are more likely to come from abusive homes than their peers, and have higher levels of anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation [24],  [27] , [28] When excluded, these children are more likely to not complete their education, become involved in criminal behaviour, abuse drugs, and develop depression. [ 27]

Existing interventions and their effectiveness

In recent years, the Department for Education (DfE) has made some effort to address bullying. All state-funded schools are required to include anti-bullying measures in their discipline policy, which are checked by Ofsted inspections. [29] In 2017, the Government Equalities Office led a £3m initiative to reduce HBT bullying in schools by partnering with anti-discrimination and children’s charities, which deliver group support programmes and teacher training. [30] However, it is unclear if DfE’s impression that such interventions would be sufficient to ‘stamp out LGBT bullying’ will prove correct. 30 As the Department continues to support pupils, it is necessary to examine the evidence on how bullying is best tackled.

Various types of training have been used to prevent bullying. The Early Intervention Foundation has found strong evidence that prevention programmes lead to positive bystander behaviour, lower acceptance of bullying and aggression, reductions in self-reported bullying and victimisation, and reductions in assisting or reinforcing the bully. [31] Other evidence shows that bystander training, though rarely used in the UK, has been considered moderately effective by the school staff who use it. [32] School staff have reported that more general programmes, such as Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) and Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL), were helpful as well. 32 This research suggests that the DfE’s work to combat HBT bullying through teacher training programmes which seek to help teachers discuss HBT bullying productively could be similarly effective. However, the research on PSHE, SEAL and bystander training relies on staff reports rather than the prevalence of bullying before and after the programmes. Additionally, these programmes are limited to HBT bullying.

Empathy training methods, such as the Persona Dolls Approach (PDA), have also demonstrated promise with regards to decreasing bullying. The PDA involves cloth dolls being introduced to classes of young children along with an identity, cultural background, gender and (dis)ability. [33] The teacher incorporates relatable experiences or feelings, and negative experiences related to bullying or bias, which the teacher and children work together to resolve. Teachers reported that using these dolls improved empathy and decreased bullying, however this measure could be vulnerable to self-report bias, and there has been little large scale, quantitative research conducted to test effectiveness. 33 Additionally, teachers may unintentionally project stereotypes or biases into their characterisation of the dolls or their problem solving.

Interventions

In addition to prevention methods, there are a number of well-evidenced responses to bullying.

Peer programmes , including peer mediation and peer support, are used to some extent in about 68 per cent of UK schools. 32 According to the teachers surveyed in one study, peer mediation, which involves training pupils to intervene, was the most effective peer programme. 32 Peer support can also be effective, with one study concluding that high levels of emotional support protected against the negative impact of bullying on attainment. [34] Another found a number of benefits of Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs) in US schools. First, LGBTQ pupils in schools with GSAs were significantly less likely to drop out than those in schools without, even if they were not involved with the group. Furthermore, pupils in their school’s GSA were even less likely to drop out than their counterparts who did not join. 11 Additionally, the average Grade Point Averages of pupils in schools with a GSA were higher. In schools with a GSA, fewer pupils reported feeling unsafe at school or missing school because of fear. 11 These findings indicate that it may be helpful to develop similar support groups for pupils with other marginalised identities. Additionally, this suggests that DfE initiatives will improve the experiences of some pupils.

Some qualitative research has discussed the role of managed moves, the process by which a local authority, parents and governors cooperate to move a pupil to a different school, as a response to bullying. Managed moves are often considered an alternative to exclusions, though little is known about how they are implemented in practice, the extent to which they are fully cooperative, or their long-term impacts. One study found that bullying or social isolation and the breakdown of relationships with staff were the two most prominent reasons for managed moves. [35] Outcomes for children who move schools to escape bullying vary, according to the limited research, with some pupils experiencing a fresh start, improved peer and staff relationships, and decreased anger, and others feeling characterised as a ‘problem’ and finding the process stressful and slow. [36] More research should identify the prevalence of such arrangements as a response to bullying and investigate the factors which determine their impact on pupils.

School responses, however, must do more than just support the victims of bullying; they must address the behaviour of the perpetrators. Many schools do this through strict, clear school rules that establish punishments for a range of violations, often referred to as ‘ zero-tolerance policies. ’ While these policies originally targeted physically violent bullying, they have since expanded to include drugs, sexual harassment and verbal attacks. [37] Zero-tolerance policies are intended to send a message, which theoretically both punishes the perpetrator and makes an example of them, discouraging all pupils from engaging in similar behaviours. 37 By this logic, these policies act as a prevention method as well as a response. Nine in ten schools in the UK report using direct sanctions with the purpose of sending a message. 32

However, research on the effectiveness of such policies has been mixed. While some studies report that they are associated with significant decreases in average incidents of violence per day, others found little to no impact on violence or bullying, and some even found they leave schools worse off overall due to the negative consequences of punishments, which may lead to drug use and poor academic achievement. 27,37, [38] Teachers reported that these approaches were moderately effective in reducing bullying, but not as effective as alternatives such as restorative justice policies. 32 In fact, even though 92 per cent of schools report using such policies, only about half of local authorities recommend them. 32 Some researchers suggest that zero-tolerance policies are not effective because they teach children not to bully out of fear of a punishment, rather than out of empathy for their peers. [ 27], [39] , [40] As a result, bullies who face sanctions may turn to more covert methods, such as cyberbullying, as their punishment did not teach them not to bully but rather to not get caught. 27

Furthermore, these policies are associated with negative outcomes for certain groups but not others. When rule violations result in immediate punishment, without an understanding of what may have caused it, pupils who struggle with emotional or behavioural regulation may be disproportionately affected. In the UK, children with SEND are six times more likely to be excluded from schools. [41] While these suspensions and exclusions may not have been the result of a misunderstood bullying incident, the underlying implication remains: setting specific punishments for certain behaviours (e.g. not making eye contact with a teacher, speaking out of turn or struggling to get along with peers) privileges pupils who conform more easily to expectations. Behaviour policies of this sort in the US have resulted in the disproportionate punishment of African-American pupils even after controlling for socioeconomic background. 27, [42] In English schools, Black Caribbean pupils are three times more likely to be excluded than their White British peers, though the role of discipline policy is unclear. 41 Further research should investigate the links between zero-tolerance policies, biased enforcement and racial inequality.

Another disciplinary method, often discussed in contrast to a zero-tolerance policy, is restorative justice – defined as ‘a process whereby all the parties with a stake in a particular offence come together to resolve collectively how to deal with the aftermath of the offence and its implications for the future.’ [43] Some studies have found that perpetrators met with restorative justice were 14 per cent less likely to reoffend compared to those who faced a retributive approach. 39 Though originally used in the criminal justice system, restorative justice has also been practiced in schools to tackle bullying as well as other forms of misbehaviour. 32,39 In these cases, restorative justice focuses on helping the perpetrator recognise the harm done by their actions, while allowing those involved to take responsibility where due, understanding why the perpetrator committed the offence, repairing the relationship between the perpetrator, victim and community, and reintegrating everyone involved. 39 , [44] Restorative justice programmes have been effective in New Zealand and Australia, reducing truancy and exclusions as well as improving relationships with staff and parents. 39 Additionally, data from UK schools shows that rates of success in stopping bullying were highest in schools with consistently restorative approaches (79 per cent) and lower in schools that were inconsistently restorative (64 per cent) or not restorative at all (58 per cent). 32 By decreasing the rates of reoccurrence, perhaps because they work to improve the relationship between pupils, restorative justice policies function as both a prevention and response strategy for school bullying.

Restorative justice also addresses some of the shortcomings of zero tolerance policies. First, it focuses on establishing empathy for the victim, as opposed to adherence to a rule. 27,39,40 Therefore, it may be more effective in reducing types of bullying that are difficult for school staff to observe, such as cyberbullying and relational bullying. Research also suggests that restorative justice makes the school system fairer, especially for pupils with SEND, by decreasing ineffective sanctions [ 39]. Additionally, restorative justice aims to reintegrate the perpetrator and victim once appropriate, which may curb the adverse long-term effects that both parties face. More research is necessary to test these hypotheses.

However, restorative justice has limitations as well. It may be more time consuming than other forms of punishment, since it often includes teacher training and mediation conferences [ 40].  Research on whether the time gained due to decreased bullying reoccurrence justifies this investment is necessary. Additionally, some argue that the anecdotal evidence on restorative justice characterises it in an unrealistic way, and that the reality, while still impactful, is more complicated [ 42].

Policy and research implications

The evidence suggests that further resources should focus on strategies such as anti-bias, anti-bullying, and bystander intervention training; peer support programmes; and restorative justice programmes rather than zero-tolerance policies, while continuing research on improving these methods. Many schools report that they used direct sanctions but would have liked to use restorative justice policies. 32 Some argue that the role of Ofsted ratings in facilitating competition between schools to attract pupils incentivises low tolerance behaviour policies. [45] Concerns have been raised that it can be difficult to make time for restorative justice conferences and trainings, given teachers’ workloads. 40 However, since research suggests that restorative justice is more effective in reducing bullying than quicker interventions such as zero-tolerance policies, investing in such methods is likely to decrease workload in the long term.

Future research and policy-making should take into account that bullying varies in nature and severity for different pupils, and it is important to acknowledge where certain characteristics, such as ethnic origin, gender, ability/disability and sexual orientation, may shape a child’s experience of bullying. Additionally, it is crucial to acknowledge the underlying emotional health problems that may lead pupils to victimise their peers. Furthermore, it is important to consider which schools have the most effective anti-bullying policies and how pupils are affected. In the US, restorative justice is less likely to be used in schools with higher proportions of African-American pupils. [46] Research should investigate whether access to the best evidenced anti-bullying measures varies by race or ethnicity, socioeconomic position or geography. In answering these questions, researchers and policymakers will support pupils in pursuing an education in a setting that helps them succeed and reach their potential in terms of academic achievement and well-being.

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Kristen Brown

• Research article
• Open access
• Published: 22 November 2021

Bullying in schools: prevalence, bystanders’ reaction and associations with sex and relationships

• Temesgen Demissie Eijigu   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8846-8844 1 &
• Seleshi Zeleke Teketel 2  

BMC Psychology volume  9 , Article number:  183 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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Bullying and peer victimization are the most pressing social problems affecting the wellbeing of children and adolescents. This study attempts to estimate the prevalence and examine the association of bystander’s sex, her/his relationship with the victim and with the bully, and bystander’s reaction to school bullying in East Gojjam Administrative Zone, Ethiopia.

This study followed an explanatory mixed-method study design. For the quantitative phase, 612 participants were selected using multistage cluster sampling techniques and for qualitative phase, 18 participants were selected using purposive sampling technique. We used self-reported questionnaires and semi-structured interviews to collect data from students attending grades 7, 8, 9, and 10.

This study revealed that 55% of bystanders remained passive while 38% of them defended the victim upon witnessing bullying incidents. Pearson Chi-Square test for independence indicated a significant association between bystanders’ relationship with the victim and/or bully, and bystanders’ reaction. In contrast, sex has no significant association with bystanders’ reaction. The semi-structured interview data also suggested that large number of bystanders most often stood by passively while some of them defended the victim.

The practice of defending among students attending their education in governmental primary and secondary schools in East Gojjam Administrative Zone was low. Close social relationships (being close friends, relatives, and classmates) with the victim and bully were significantly associated with the practice of defending.

Peer Review reports

Bullying and peer victimization are the most pressing social problems affecting the wellbeing of children and adolescents [ 1 ]. Although bullying occurs in many contexts [ 2 ], it is predominantly prevalent within a school setting [ 3 , 4 ]. For instance, over 90% of primary and secondary school students in Australia witnessed verbal bullying, and more than 60% witnessed physical bullying in their schools [ 5 ]. Moreover, a study on the prevalence of being bullied in South Australian schools depicted that approximately one of every two secondary school students experienced victimization by peers while at school [ 3 ].

The problem of violence and bullying is also prevalent in Ethiopia [ 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 ]. A study in Addis Ababa revealed that 84% of teachers and directors confirmed that violence is a problem in and around primary and secondary schools, mainly targeting girls and smaller children [ 7 ]. Similarly, a national study in Ethiopia revealed that 13.1% and 16.7% of children have been left out and hit by other children, respectively, in their class [ 10 ].

The situation of school bullying in the East Gojjam Zone does not seem an exception. For example, in the 2014 academic year, more than 57% of students in Menkorer High School at Debre Markos Town, the capital of East Gojjam Administrative Zone, experienced physical and sexual violence [ 11 ].

School bullying is viewed as a group phenomenon that, in addition to bullies and victims, involves a large number of bystanders who witness bullying [ 12 , 13 , 14 ]. For instance, two studies in Canada illustrated that peer bystanders were present in more than five out of six bullying episodes [ 13 , 14 ]. Another natural observational research also reported that peers were present closely in nine out of ten bullying episodes [ 13 ]. Although bullying often occurs in the presence of large bystanders who have a high potential to reduce it, most do not intervene to stop it [ 13 , 14 ].

In bullying situations, bystanders may take the following four roles: (1) assistants, who join in the bully’s side (2) reinforcers, who encourage bullies (3) passive bystanders, who merely watch what is happening and (4) defenders, who stand up on behalf of victims [ 12 ]. Recent studies proposed three forms of bystander roles as passive bystanders, defenders, and pro-bully/bully supporters/by combining the roles of assistant and reinforcers [ 15 ].

A study in 1220 elementary school children from grades four to six found that low scores on the anti-bullying attitude scale were associated with bullying, assisting the bully, and reinforcing the bully. In contrast, high scores on that scale were related to defending the victim and remaining passive in bullying situations [ 16 ]. Since passive bystanders scored high in anti-bullying attitude and moral disapproval scores of bullying, it is easier to change them to the defenders than assistants and reinforcers. Thus, passive bystanders were the focus of this study. Besides, passive bystanders and defenders account for more than half of the bystanders who could play a key role in reducing bullying. To our knowledge, no previous studies in Ethiopia estimated the extent of defenders and passive bystanders during bullying in primary and general secondary school students. Thus, one of the focuses of this study was to estimate the extent of defending and passive bystanding behaviors during school bullying.

Empirical findings reported gender differences in defending and passive bystanding behavior [ 5 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 ]. Several studies revealed that girls are more involved in defending the victim [ 16 , 17 , 20 , 21 , 22 ] and remaining passive in bullying situations than boys, whereas boys were more involved in supporting bullies as assistants and reinforcers than girls [ 16 , 17 , 20 , 23 ]. In addition, some studies have shown a significant association between the gender of the bystander, the gender of the bully, and the victim [ 13 ]. Their findings suggest that boys are more likely to defend when the bully or victim is male, whereas girls are more likely to defend when the bully or victim is female. Likewise, some studies [ 24 , 25 ] documented that students were more likely to defend their same-sex peers than opposite-sex peers. This shows that previous studies emphasized sex differences and how bystanders are more likely to help the same sex victim [ 17 , 18 , 19 ]. They did not answer the question, “To what extent do female and/or male bystanders defend or remain passive upon witnessing a girl victimizing a boy, a boy victimizing a boy, a boy victimizing a girl, and a girl victimizing a girl. Thus, further research is needed to fill these knowledge gaps.

Furthermore, bystanders’ relationships with the victim or bully may also influence defending or passive bystanding behavior [ 26 , 27 ]. These studies revealed that bystanders who had a close relationship with the victim are more likely to help the victim, whereas those who had a close relationship with the perpetrator and no relationship with the victim are more likely to remain passive; sometimes it may even initiate co-bullying [ 26 ]. The motives for co-bullying or non-intervention, were reported to come from fear of friendship loss, perceived peer pressure, or to not disprove the actions of friends.

In the culture of Amhara, when one's close relative or friend is attacked, he/she will not watch the incident passively. At least, he/she is expected to separate the bully and the victim. This strong social bond among Amhara society [ 28 ] makes it reasonable to include bystanders’ relationship with the bully and victim in the study.

Research question

This research planned to answer the following questions:

To what extent do students defend or remain passive during bullying incidents in primary and secondary schools in East Gojjam Administrative Zone?

To what extent do male and female bystanders defend or remain passive upon witnessing a boy victimizing a boy, a boy victimizing a girl, a girl victimizing a girl, and a girl victimizing a boy?

Does the relationship between the bystander and the victim or the bystander and the bully make a difference in the bystander’s reaction?

This study aimed to estimate the prevalence and examine the association between bystander’s sex, her/his relationship with the victim and with the bully, and bystander’s reaction to school bullying in East Gojjam Administrative Zone, Ethiopia.

Study design

This study followed an explanatory sequential mixed methods design [ 29 , 30 ] with quantitative data collection and analysis in the first phase and qualitative data collection and analysis in the second phase. Mixed methods design was selected to other designs since the complex nature of bystanding behaviors during school bullying requires an investigation from multiple ways.

The study was conducted in primary and general secondary schools from Aneded, Debre Markos, Enebesie Sar Medir, Enemay, and Machakel Woredas of East Gojjam Administrative Zone, Amhara National Regional State, Ethiopia. These five Woredas consists of 181 second cycle primary schools (Grades 5–8) and 19 secondary schools (grades 9 and 10). Primary and general secondary schools from Woredas in East Gojjam Administrative Zone were selected due to bullying prevalence and its serious consequences. In addition to familiarity with the language and culture, the researcher works in the study area that may contribute to the study.

Participants and sampling techniques

The quantitative data were drawn from 612 students aged 12–16 years attending five primary schools in grades 7and 8 and five general secondary schools in grades 9 and 10 (see Table 1 ). To select participants for this study, we used a multistage cluster sampling procedure. In the first stage, we subdivided the 19 Woredas of East Gojjam Administrative Zone into five groups based on the number of students’ population from grades 7–10. From each group, we selected one woreda randomly. Then, from each woreda, one general secondary school was chosen randomly. Next, for accessibility and comparison purposes, from all primary schools in the area where the selected general secondary schools were situated, one primary school from each woreda was selected by using lottery method. Then, one class from each grade in each school was selected by applying lottery method. Accordingly, 20 classes of students from both primary and general secondary schools (10 classes each) were invited to participate in the study.

On the other hand, the qualitative data were drawn from 18 participants (9 boys and 9 girls) who witnessed bullying incidents. To select participants, a purposive sampling technique was employed. With the help of school principals, homeroom teachers, and classroom representatives, students who usually defend or passively watch when witnessing bullying incidents were selected. Participants’ age ranged from 14 to 16 years, and more than 22% were from rural areas. Concerning grade level, five students were from grade seven, four students from grade eight, five students from grade nine, and four students from grade ten.

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

All students who were attending grades 7–10 education in 20 classes were included in the study. Those students who witnessed bullying were also included in the study. Those students outside the age range of 12–16 years, who did not witness bullying, and absent from class during data collection were excluded from the study.

Data collection instruments

Questionnaire.

To collect quantitative data, self-report questionnaires have been adapted from previous sources [ 17 ]. To estimate the prevalence and examine the association between bystander’s sex, her/his relationship with the victim and with the bully, and bystander’s reaction to school bullying, participants were asked to recall one particular incident where they witnessed a student/s bullying another student since the beginning of this semester. The items included in the questionnaire were: “Describe in brief the nature of the bullying incident you witnessed,” “When and where the bullying incident happened,” “Describe the characteristics of the victim and the bully (sex, grade, bystander’s relationship with the victim/bully such as close relative, close friend, classmate, a person that I knew but have no close relationship, or person that I did not know),” and “What did you do when you witnessed bullying incident?”.

A bystander was placed into categories of defender, passive bystander, and bully supporter based on his/her reactions to the bullying incident in the school:

If a student answers, “I joined in the bullying when the bully had started it,” “I assisted the bullying by doing something for the bully”, and/or “I giggled, laughed, shouted, or made similar reactions,” s/he is categorized under “bully supporter.”

If a student answers, “I kept looking at the bullying without siding anyone,” “Nothing, I went away from the situation,” and/or “Nothing, I pretended not to notice what was happening,” s/he is categorized under “passive bystander.”

If a student answers, “I tried to help in some way but was not successful,” and/or I tried to help in some way and was successful,” s/he is categorized under “defender.”

The English version of the instrument was translated into the Amharic language by three language experts who have Ph.D. in Teaching Amharic, Linguistic, and Teaching English as a Foreign Language and whose mother tongue was Amharic. The principal investigator of this study synthesized a single version by combining the best cultural translation of each item. The appropriateness of the synthesized translated version was judged by three language experts (two Amharic, one English) and two psychologists. By taking into account the feedback offered by professionals, in view of the study's objectives and reviewed literature, the researcher of this study revised the synthesized translated version of the instrument. An expert from Debre Markos University who had a doctoral degree in Teaching English as a Foreign Language back-translated the synthesized version from Amharic into English. Moreover, the Amharic version of the instrument was submitted to seven psychology instructors of Debre Markos University to assess the instruments' content validity. Based on comments of experts, some items were modified. Finally, the questionnaire was administered to the participants during the period 01–31 January 2019.

Semi-structure interview

The interviews were conducted face to face by the principal investigator from 01 April to 02 May 2019 using semi-structured open-ended items with probing questions. Interviews were conducted at the offices of the counselor, or school director lasted between 30 and 45 min. Students were alone (not accompanied by guardians/parents) when interviews were administered. All interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and notes were taken properly. Items in the interview guide include: “If you have witnessed someone being bullied by another student, tell me what happened?”, “How did you feel when you saw bullying happening?”, “What did you do when you witnessed bullying happening? Why?”, “Who else witnessed the bullying situations besides you?”, “What did they do when this was happening?”, “Why do you think they reacted this way?”, “Why do you think that some students defend and others remain silent in bullying incidents?” and “How do you describe boys and girls' engagement in defending or passive bystanding behaviors?”.

Data analysis techniques

Researchers employed percentage to describe the rate of defending and passive bystanding behavior during bullying incidents for data analysis. Chi-square test of independence was used to check the association between bystanders’ sex, their relationship with the victim and with the bully, and their reaction to the bullying incident. Thematic analysis [ 31 ] was used to analyze the qualitative data.

Ethical considerations

Addis Ababa University School of Psychology Ethical Review Committee exempted the study from requiring ethical clearance and suggested collecting letter of permission from the school of Psychology. Accordingly, a letter of permission was collected from the School of Psychology, Addis Ababa University.

Permission letters were submitted to East Gojjam Administrative Zone Education Office. The office itself wrote a letter of permission to school directors. After receiving permission from school directors, students were also asked their willingness to participate in the study. Before data collection, informed assent and passive consent were secured from students and parents, respectively. Students were also informed that they would be free to omit any questions they did not want to answer. The participants were also informed that their identity would not be disclosed to any third party, and the information they provided would be kept confidential.

The extent of defenders, passive bystanders, and bully supporters

Out of 511 participants who reported witnessing a single bullying incident, 55% of bystanders reported being passive bystanders, and 38% of them reported being defenders (see Table 2 ). The Chi-Square test revealed significant differences between the three percentages, x 2 (2, N = 511) = 181.131, p  = 0.000.

In the semi-structured interview, all of the participants agreed that most of the students did not want to defend the victims when witnessing school bullying. For instance, One interviewee stated, “Those who stand and watch victimization were larger than those who defend because they have the interest to see the fight and to know who wins at the end.”

The extent of students involved in defending, passive bystanding, and bully supporting by bully-victim sex

As shown in Table 3 , 39.3% of bystanders witnessed male victimizing male, 33.1% witnessed male victimizing female, 20.2% witnessed female victimizing female, and 7.4% witnessed female victimizing male.

Since the bully support role expected frequencies were less than 5 in more than 8% of the cells [ 32 ], and the purpose of the study focused on defending and passive bystanding behaviors, the bully support role was removed from further analysis (see Table 4 ).

The Chi-Square test revealed no significant association between bully-victim sex and bystander’s reaction, χ 2 (3, N = 475) = 1.956, p  = 0.58, Cramer’s V = 0.06.

The extent to which male and female bystanders defend, or remain passive upon witnessing victimization across bully-victim sex

Tables 5 , 6 , 7 and 8 summarizes that 67.2% of males and 32.8% females had witnessed male victimizing male, 31.2% males, and 68.8% females witnessed male victimizing femalel, 14.4% males and 85.6% females witnessed female victimizing female, and 63.9% males and 36.1% females witnessed female victimizing male.

Among students who witnessed male victimizing male, 40.2% of boys and 38.7% of girls defended victims. Besides, 36% of boys and 49.1% of girls who witnessed male victimizing female helped victims in some way. Regarding students who saw female victimizing female, 46.2% of boys and 35.1% of girls defended victims. Moreover, 30.4% of boys and 53.8% of girls helped victims when witnessing female victimizing male.

The Chi-Square test revealed no significant association between bystander’s sex with victimization across bully-victim sex and bystander’s reaction. The Chi-Square test values were χ 2 (1, N = 189) = 0.001, p  = 0.974, phi  = − 0.014, for students witnessing male victimizing male; χ 2 (1, N = 160) = 1.881, p  = 0.170, phi  = − 0.122, for students witnessing male victimizing female; and χ 2 (1, N = 36) = 1.057, p  = 0.304, phi  = − 0.231, for students witnessing female victimizing male.

The interview data revealed that boys and girls intervened when witnessing school bullying. For instance, Hermela noted, “When male victimizes female, mostly girls hold girls and boys hold boys.” Kidist, a ninth-grade student, also indicated, “When female victimizes female, both boys and girls may intervene.”

The qualitative data demonstrated a dissimilar intervention approach between girls and boys when witnessing male physically victimizing male. Male students, most of the time, defend directly when witnessing male physically victimizing male. On the other hand, girls can participate in defending indirectly by screaming or calling other students or reporting the case to the school authority. For instance, Hermela says, “When male physically attacks male, mostly boys and teachers directly intervene.” Debasu, an eighth-grade student said “If a girl directly intervenes when male is victimized, rumors will spread which show the girl has love affair with the victim.”

The extent of students’ participation in defending and passive bystanding behavior by relationship with the victim or bully

As indicated in Tables 9 and 10 , bystanders were asked to report their relationship with victims and bullies. Among those who reported their relationship with victims and bullies, 3.6% and 3.8% reported to be relatives, 26.7% and 11.6% close friends, 24.6% and 24.2% classmates, 24.6% and 26.3% knew the victim/bully, but have no close relationships, and 20.4% and 34.1% did not know the victim and bully, respectively. Among those who reported their relationship with the victim, 52.9% of relatives, 60.6% of close friends, and 47.8% of classmates defended the victim. Similarly, among those who reported their relationship with the bully, 61.1% of relatives, 49.1% of close friends, and 47% of classmates defended the victim.

The Chi-Square test revealed that there is a significant association between the relationship with the victim and bystander’s reaction, χ 2 (4, 475) = 32.79, p  < 0.001, phi = − 0.263; and between relationship with the bully and bystander’s reaction, χ 2 (4, N = 475) = 9.847, p  = 0.043, phi  = − 0.114.

The qualitative data through interview indicated that bystanders’ close relationship with the victim or/and bully as key determinant of defending upon witnessing school bullying. For instance, Debasu said “I have entered (involved in defending) because both the perpetrators and the victims were my friends.” A grade eight student named Binyam stated, “Students who are relative or close friends…to the victim/bully would not have any role other than separating the bully and the victim.” Hermela also noted that relatives, friends, and teachers are defenders during victimization.

On the other hand, not being a friend of the bully or the victim was reported as a possible reason for bystanders’ passive bystanding. For instance, Hermela mentioned “bystanders’ not being the friend of the bully or the victim as one reason for bystanders to surround and watch bullying events. Had the bystanders been friends of the victim/bully, they would have intervened or they would have called a teacher.”

The extent to which students defend or passively watch during bullying incidents

The findings of this study revealed that a larger proportion of students remained passive upon witnessing school bullying. Fifty five percent of bystanders were involved in passive bystanding behavior, and 38% of them involved in defending behavior.

The interview data also supported the findings of the quantitative data. All participants of the interview reported that many bystanders most often stood by passively, and only some of them defended the victim. Many participants concisely stated that when students in school witness bullying incidents, most of them often stand and observe while a small number of others decide to defend.

These findings are consistent with prior studies [ 14 , 17 ]. For instance, a study conducted on college students who recalled bullying events occurring in junior high school and high school students with the same method reported that 59% of bystanders chose to remain passive upon witnessing bullying situations, and 31% of them were involved in defending on behalf of the victims [ 17 ]. Similar findings were also reported in an observational study conducted in two Toronto school children in Canada [ 14 ]. Even the percentages are very close to the ones this study found.

There are various explanations attributed to the surpassing of passive bystanders to defenders in East Gojjam Administrative Zone. One reason for passivity of bystanders during bullying incidents may involve the gradual decline of helping relationships due to urbanization. In the past, people do not often standby and watch when one individual victimized another. Findings in Yetmen, East Gojjam, revealed that when conflicts arise within and between households, they were usually resolved by neighbors. If neighbors cannot solve the problem, relatives of the two parties consider the problem and try to address it. If this level of conflict resolution fails, the elder of the community get involved [ 28 ]. So, helping each other during an emergency was the norm. Due to urbanization, the norms of helping relationships are changing somehow in the current East Gojjam. Another possible explanation for more passive bystanders to defenders involves fear of revenge. If the perpetrator is older and/or physically stronger than the bystander, the bystanders are more likely to remain passive. Student bystanders may believe that defending on behalf of the victim could lead the older/or stronger bully to attack the defender later. Many other personal and situational factors (e.g., lower level of bystander’s self-efficacy, empathy, lower number of close friends, bullying experiences, high moral disengagement) may also be used to explain greater proportions of passive bystanders to defenders in bullying situations [ 17 , 20 , 22 , 26 , 33 ].

The quantitative findings demonstrated that there were no significant difference between boys and girls in defending and passive bystanding behaviors upon witnessing a boy victimizing a boy, a boy victimizing a girl, and a girl victimizing a boy.

According to the interview data, both boys and girls can intervene when a boy victimizes a boy. But, their style of intervention may differ. Boys may intervene directly when witnessing physical bullying, whereas girls may intervene indirectly. Many participants said that boys, teachers, and adults directly intervene when a boy physically victimizes a boy. One possible reason for the direct intervention of more boys than girls was that if a girl intervenes directly when a boy victimizes a boy, rumors of love between the girl and the victim will spread. In the culture of the study area, having a boyfriend for a girl and a girlfriend for a boy is not a commonly accepted norm at that age level. If they establish such kinds of friendship, they do not disclose it to others. If other students know the relationship, they become the target of the rumor. So as to avoid being the target of the rumor, the girl will decide to use indirect strategies to help the victim.

Another possible explanation for more direct defending of boys than girls in physical bullying was that boys were more often socialized and culturally expected to defend directly than girls. Let alone defending on behalf of the victim, boys are expected to be a winner in any fight by their families and are not accepted by families if beaten up by anyone. If they fail to win the fight, their parents could further beat them. Though girls’ involvement in separating the bully and the victim is less direct, they frequently call defenders by screaming.

The finding also indicated that when a boy victimizes a girl, a girl victimizes a girl, and a girl victimizes a boy, most of the interview participants reported that both boys and girls are engaged in defending. This finding partly contradicts some other findings [ 24 , 25 ]. To explain these findings further, future researches are needed.

The current study revealed that students who were reported to be close friends, classmates, and relatives of the victims appear to defend the victim more than persons who either knew the victim or did not know them. Consistent with the current study, five studies included in one systematic review have examined the association between friendship with students involved in bullying situations and defending [ 33 ]. The studies revealed that youth were more likely to defend when the victimized youth was their friend, relative to a neutral peer. Similarly, some studies [ 26 , 27 ] revealed the association between bystanders’ close relationship with the victim and helping. For example, suppose a bystander is watching one’s own friend being bullied. In that case, the situation evokes more distressing emotions of empathy, sympathy, guilt, or anger and a stronger moral obligation and responsibility to intervene to help one’s friend [ 27 ].

The findings from the interview data also corroborated the quantitative results. The study showed that after bystanders witnessed bullying incidents, they evaluate their relationships (friendship, kinship, and disliking) with the bully, victim, or both before deciding to defend or passively watch the bullying incident. If bystanders witness victims with intimate relationships (friendship and blood relationship), they are more likely to defend the victim. Participants mentioned being close friends, relatives, and teachers with the victim as contributing factors to defending.

The finding that students who were reported to be relatives, close friends, and classmates of the bully appear to defend the victim more than persons who know and those who did not know the bully was unexpected. The qualitative interview also supported this finding. Some interview participants disclosed that having a close relationship with the bully would motivate the bystander to assist the victim. If bystanders are close friends or relatives of the bully, they can enter with confidence to protect the victim believing that the bully will not attack them later. Another possible reason for bystanders who have close relationships with the bully to stop the bully could be the belief that the problem will worsen and affect the whole family and its relatives. However, one participant reported that if bystanders have a close relationship with the bully, they might assist the bully to harm the victim further. Thus, further studies are needed.

Limitations of the study

The current study has some limitations. First, the study participants were limited to young and middle adolescents in East Gojjam Administrative Zone. This could reduce the diversity of the sample and the generalizability of the findings. Had I included adults as well, the findings could have been more generalizable. Second, the quantitative and qualitative findings on defending and passive bystanding behaviors were based on self-report measures. In self-reporting data, study participants may not always provide honest evidences. Third, the current research was cross-sectional, where cause and effect relationships could not be inferred.

Fourth, it is expected that if the perpetrator is older and/or physically stronger than the bystander, the bystander is more likely to remain passive during the incident of bullying. However, the current study did not collect information on age and/or physical differences between bully and bystander. If future studies include age and physical differences between the bystander and the bully, it would have more insights into school bullying literature.

Practice of defending among students attending their education in governmental primary and secondary schools in East Gojjam Administrative Zone was low. Close social relationships (being close friends, relatives, and classmates) with the victim and bully were significantly associated with the practice of defending. The findings of our qualitative study also showed that the number of passive bystanders was larger than defenders during witnessing school bullying; and bystanders’ close relationship with the victim, or/and bully as key determinants of defending.

High prevalence of passive bystanding behavior demand prevention programs that can discourage bullying in schools among bystanders in bullying situations through encouraging defending behavior irrespective of bully-victim sex, and helping bystanders establish close social relationships with the victim or/and bully.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets that support the findings of this study are not publically available at present. The authors need to use the data for further works before data could be made available. Besides, we have not received consent from participants to share the data on the web but, will be available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Addis Ababa University for its financial support. We would also like to thank teachers at primary and secondary schools in East Gojjam Administrative Zone for their invaluable assistance in collecting data. Finally, we would like to acknowledge principals for facilitating the data collection and all participants of this study for their time and patience in responding to our interviews and questionnaires.

Addis Ababa University financially supported this study. However, the University did not have any role in the design of the study, data collection, and analysis, as well as in the interpretation of data and writing this manuscript.

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Eijigu, T.D., Teketel, S.Z. Bullying in schools: prevalence, bystanders’ reaction and associations with sex and relationships. BMC Psychol 9 , 183 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-021-00685-5

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Chains of tragedy: The impact of bullying victimization on mental health through mediating role of aggressive behavior and perceived social support

1 Institute of Educational Sciences, Hubei University of Education, Wuhan, China

Qiu-jin Zhu

2 School of Philosophy, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

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The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Bullying is a worldwide concern for its devastating consequences. The current study focused on bullying victims, examining the effects of being bullied on mental health and the chain of mediating mechanisms among adolescents. Specifically, this study attempts to explain the relationship between bullying victimization and mental health from the perspective of maladaptive behavior and perceived social support.

A total of 3,635 adolescents responded to questions on bullying victimization, aggressive behavior, perceived social support, and mental health measurements including anxiety, depression, and subjective well being scale combined.

(1) Bullying victimization was significantly correlated with aggressive behavior, perceived social support, and mental health, including anxiety, depression, and subjective well being. (2) Bullying victimization not only negatively predicts mental health levels but also has an indirect impact on mental health through three pathways: a separate mediating effect on aggressive behavior, a separate mediating effect on perceived social support, and a chain mediating effect on both.

The present results demonstrate that maladaptive behavior by bullying victims can lead to changes in their perceived social support and mental health problems. Violence begets violence and provides no constructive solutions, instead, produces a tragic chain of victimization. Further implications are discussed accordingly.

Introduction

Bullying victimization is defined as being the target of unwanted aggression and harm in various forms, such as verbal, physical, relational, social bullying, and electronic bullying (Olweus, 1993 ; Sun and Shi, 2017 ). Bullying is a universal phenomenon across different cultures (Chan and Wong, 2015 ; Liu and Lu, 2017 ). Globally, 246 million children reported experiencing bullying and school violence annually (UNESCO, 2019 ). Numerous studies have verified that being bullied has devastating consequences (Peng et al., 2020 ). Those victims of bullying are at an increased risk of low self-confidence, emotional impairment, low level of well being, poor mental health, and even attempts of suicide in both Western and Eastern countries (Cosma et al., 2017 ; Shaheen et al., 2019 ).

Bullying victimization generally leads to a lower level of mental health quality, and this relationship is also influenced by the victims' coping strategy, including the cognition and behavior an individual employs to reduce distress/tension or eliminate stressors (Scarpa and Haden, 2006 ). Previous research has explored bullying victims' coping strategies and the consequences, such as the use of humor, cognitive coping strategies, and help-seeking (Newman et al., 2011 ; Garnefski and Kraaij, 2014 ; Nixon et al., 2020 ; Xie et al., 2022 ). However, previous studies do not adequately consider the multiple coping strategies of bullying victims simultaneously nor examine the underlying relationship among these mechanisms.

According to the general aggression model (GAM), the experience of being bullied as a passive situational factor influences the likelihood of aggressive behavior by exerting influence on aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, and arousal levels, as well as the related appraisal and decision processes. Aggressive action as an outcome influences the social encounter, which usually causes negative social consequences, such as others' responding to the aggression, acting in retaliation, or staying away from the aggressor. At this point, when the individual's reappraisal process is activated, it can influence the present internal state variables (Anderson and Bushman, 2002 ; Allen et al., 2018 ). And the support deterioration model states that stressful events like being bullied deteriorate the perceived availability or the effectiveness of social support, which leads to mental health problems (Barrera, 1986 ). Thus, the current research investigates multiple coping strategies that affect the mental health of bullying victims, and the underlying relationship among these mechanisms. Specifically, this study attempts to examine bullying victims who conduct maladaptive behavior that would lead to a change in their perceived social support and then the level of mental health.

The experience of being bullied harms mental health

Bullying victims are at elevated risk for various externalizing and internalizing problems (Loukas and Pasch, 2013 ). The research found that different forms of bullying (physical, relational, verbal, and cyber) are associated with different harmful behaviors (self-harm, suicide attempts, and suicidal ideation) (Sinclair et al., 2022 ). Being bullied may also result in serious psychological maladjustment and emotional maladaptation. Being the target of bullying leads to the development of hostile attributions and internalizing negative peer messages, and victimization triggers internalized issues in individuals, such as anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and feelings of loneliness (Loukas and Pasch, 2013 ; Cross et al., 2015 ).

In recent years, researchers started to examine the impact of bullying on individual well being (Varela et al., 2018 ; Miranda et al., 2019 ). A cross-country study of 47,029 children and adolescents in 15 countries found that bullying had a significant negative impact on subjective well being across countries and at different ages (Savahl et al., 2019 ). In China, 636 boarding students of grades 4–6 in rural primary schools were investigated by questionnaire, including school bullying, subjective well being, school bonding, and positive psychological capital, and school bullying was negatively correlated with school bonding and subjective well being (Wu et al., 2022 ).

The dual-factor model of mental health suggests that the concept of a good mental health condition includes the absence of negative indicators (e.g., depression, anxiety, negative affect) and the presence of positive indicators (e.g., subjective well being, life satisfaction, positive affect), which is a more comprehensive and accurate assessment of individual mental health (Greenspoon and Saklofske, 2001 ; Suldo and Shaffer, 2008 ). And based on the above analysis, this study proposes H1 : Bullying victimization negatively predicts mental health levels, including levels of anxiety, depression, and subjective well being.

The impact of bullying victimization on mental health through the mediation effect of maladaptive behavior

Several studies have found victimization increases the risk of maladaptive behavior. Individuals who have suffered from bullying usually have no reasonable way to resolve the accumulation of psychological problems, such as panic, social anxiety, and depression, and this can generate explosive attacks and illegal anti-social behavior (Li, 2016 ; Liu and Lu, 2017 ). The longitudinal research from different cultures also showed that victimization has a long-term negative impact and produces maladaptive reactions. Bullying victims exhibit obstacles in interpersonal communication and produce behavior deviation (Liu and Zhao, 2013 ), and the experience of being bullied could significantly predict aggressive behavior, taking revenge, and getting involved in illegal and violent crimes and violent crimes in adulthood (Jackson et al., 2013 ; DeCamp and Newby, 2015 ).

Maladaptive behavior of bullying victims could produce mental health issues. Bullying victims scored higher on hostile interpretation, anger, retaliation, and ease of aggression than the other children (Camodeca and Goossens, 2005 ), and aggressive acts that would occur as impulsive behavior to cause harm to the source of frustration and defend themselves were positively associated with generalized anxiety symptoms and depressive symptoms (Pederson et al., 2018 ).

The experience of being bullied, maladaptive behavior, and mental health appeared to be closely linked. The bullying victims who engage in aggressive behavior are more likely to attribute hostile intent in ambiguous situations and react more aggressively to peer conflict, which further elicits peer rejection and behavior problems, and are the most maladapted and in greatest need of intervention (Bettencourt et al., 2013 ). Studies have found evidence that depression, anxiety, and loneliness were characteristics of aggressive victims (Shao et al., 2014 ); however, there is also some data which provide no evidence of unique social-emotional dysfunction of aggressive victims. Thus, properly accounting for potentially confounding influences on the internalizing problems is needed (O'Connor et al., 2019 ; O'Connor, 2021 ). The impact of victimization on mental health through maladaptive behavior needs to be examined further. As a result, this study proposes Hypothesis H2 : Bullying victimization can impact mental health levels through the mediating role of aggressive behavior.

The impact of bullying victimization on mental health through perceived social support

Social support is defined as social interactions or relationships that provide individuals with the assistance or support that embed individuals within a social system to provide love, care, or a sense of attachment to a valued social group. And perceived social support is the belief that these helping behaviors will occur when needed (Norris and Kaniasty, 1996 ). If individuals believe they are loved and valued and can depend on others, they are more likely to have help-seeking behavior (Lakey and Cohen, 2000 ).

Perceived social support may be viewed as a variable that has wide-ranging effects on physical and mental well being (Scarpa and Haden, 2006 ). Research reported that adolescents' perceived social support was significantly negatively correlated with suicidal ideation in cyberbullying victimization (Xu et al., 2021 ). The research which explored the perceived social support in crime victims proposed that chronic victimization erodes the victim's perception of social support and in turn, leads to heightened levels of distress and is detrimental to the victim's well being (Yap and Devilly, 2004 ).

Even worse, it has been found that most bullying victims do not actively report these experiences to parents and teachers, and do not seek help in the case of low perceived social support, which creates a vicious cycle of bullying and victimization (Haataja et al., 2016 ; Yablon, 2017 ). The data indicated that only one in four chronically victimized students turned to school staff for help, and 30% of bullying victims kept silent about their problems (Smith and Shu, 2000 ; Sitnik-Warchulska et al., 2021 ).

Thus, understanding the social context in which bullying occurs and the individual's perceived social support in different sources is vital to comprehend both the unique associations between bullying victims and mental health, and facilitate the development of prevention and intervention activities (Noret et al., 2020 ). Based on the above literature, this study proposes Hypothesis H3 : Bullying victimization can impact mental health levels through the mediating role of perceived social support.

The relationship between maladaptive behavior and perceived social support

Evidence suggests that the motivation for aggressive behavior is resorting to control or getting higher social status among peers, but it is the distorted relationship chains (Juvonen and Graham, 2014 ; Sun and Shi, 2017 ). The victim's aggressive behavior could be from mimicking the parents and other adults in the family or social setting (Bandura, 1974 ). Some of them are isolated from social groups during early childhood, forming interpersonal bonds through inappropriate behaviors, such as aggression (Olweus, 1978 ). Published data have identified that bullying victims with aggressive behavior do not share any social benefits with the high social status of bullies, but they have a higher level of distress and peer rejection (Juvonen et al., 2003 ; Chen and Zhang, 2018 ).

Meta-analysis summarizes that bullying victims who engage in aggressive behavior are concurrently associated with a range of adjustment difficulties, including loneliness, school-related fear, anxiety or avoidance, low self-esteem, and fear or avoidance of social interactions (Reijntjes et al., 2010 ). The feeling of neglect in peer relationships may impede their ability to build solid prosocial ties with others and limit their opportunities to gain sufficient social support. For instance, children engaging in bullying perpetration often reported a low quality of parental relationships, which are associated with further psychosocial difficulties in adolescent development (Sitnik-Warchulska et al., 2021 ). Another study in China also found a significantly negative correlation between bullying and perceived social support (Yang, 2020 ). The gradual alienation from peers may also impact bullying victims' mental health, such as anxiety and depression. On this basis, this study proposes Hypothesis H4 : Aggressive behavior and perceived social support play a chain mediating role between bullying victimization and mental health.

Therefore, the current study explores the impact of the experience of being bullied and their maladaptive behavior on mental health and whether perceived social support plays a vital role in the relationship. We investigated the chain mediating effect of bullying victims' aggressive behavior and perceived social support in the relationship between the experience of being bullied and mental health among adolescents. From the adaptation perspective to understand the perplexing role of bullying victims, we try to underline the mechanism of bullying victims' dysfunctional behavior and provide empirical evidence for intervention programs. The relationship path diagram proposed in this study is illustrated in Figure 1 as follows.

Relationship path map of bullying victimization, aggressive behavior, perceived social support, and mental health.

Materials and methods

Participants and procedure.

Eight middle schools were randomly selected in the Hubei province of China. The research ethics committee approved the study at the Hubei University of Education, and it was conducted with the consent of the school and the adolescents' guardians. The students were told that none of their responses would be revealed to anyone and that they could stop participating at any time without penalty. All participants completed an online questionnaire in Chinese. A total of 3,635 valid online questionnaires were obtained. Among students who participated in the survey, 1,757 were male, and 1,878 were female, 968 were studying in grade junior one, 930 were in grade junior two, 583 were in grade junior three, and 547 were in grade senior one, and 607 were in grade senior two. The demographic information of the participants is shown in Table 1 .

Demographic information in the bullying victimization score of adolescents.

Measurements

Bullying victimization.

The bullying victimization is measured by the Olweus Bully/Victimization Questionnaire (OBVQ). The Chinese version of OBVQ which was adopted in current research, was revised with good validity and reliability among adolescents (Xie et al., 2015 ). The OBVQ is comprised of three dimensions namely physical bullying, verbal bullying, and relational bullying. The scale has 12 items. Each item is rated on a six-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (never happened this semester) to 6 (happened every day this semester). The higher score of OBVQ represents a higher degree of victimization experience. In this study, the Cronbach's α value of the questionnaire was 0.93.

Aggressive behavior

The aggressive behavior was measured by a tool to measure aggressive behavior extracted from externalizing problem behavior for adolescents developed by Zhang et al. ( 2011 ). In this study, seven questions were selected and adapted as required, such as “fighting ”, “destroying public property or other people's property for no reason”, “verbally abusing others”, etc., using a five-point Likert scale. The subjects were asked to rate the frequency of the occurrence of these behaviors in the last six months. The mean scores of the seven items were calculated with higher scores indicating more aggressive behavior. Previous studies have shown that the questionnaire has good reliability and validity in the Chinese cultural context (Yu et al., 2011 ). In this study, the Cronbach's α value of the questionnaire was 0.71.

Perceived social support

Zimet et al. ( 1988 ) developed the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS) to measure the perceived adequacy of social support received from family, friends, and significant others. The MSPSS includes 12 items (e.g., “I can count on my friends when things go wrong”). Respondents report their agreement on a 7-point Likert-type scale with higher total score meaning higher perceived social support. Previous studies showed that the scale had a good reliability and validity when used with Chinese adolescents (Yang and Han, 2021 ). The Cronbach's α value of the Chinese MSPSS used in this study was 0.96.

The Chinese version of the 9-item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) was used to measure the severity of depressive symptoms. A total score ranged from 0 to 27 (higher points indicating more severe depressive symptoms), with each item that can earn 0 to 3 points (0 = Not at all to 3 = Nearly every day). Depressive symptoms were classified by severity into five groups, namely, minimal (scores of 0-4), mild (5-9), moderate (10-14), moderately severe (15-19), and severe (20-27) (Kroenke et al., 2001 ). In this study, the average depression score was 3.05, and the standard deviation was 4.56, indicating that the participants' overall depressive symptoms were relatively mild. The Chinese version of PHQ-9 has been widely used, and previous studies showed that the scale had good reliability and validity when used with Chinese adolescents (Leung et al., 2020 ). In this study, the Cronbach's α value of the questionnaire was 0.93.

Anxiety symptoms were measured using the Chinese version of the Generalized Anxiety Disorder scale (GAD-7; Tong et al., 2016 ). Each item has four response options ranging from 0 to 3 (0 = Not at all to 3 = Nearly every day). Each participant can obtain a total score from 0 to 21, with higher score indicating more severe anxiety symptoms. Cut points of 5, 10, and 15 might be interpreted as representing mild, moderate, and severe levels of anxiety on the GAD-7 (Spitzer et al., 2006 ). In this study, the average depression score was 2.98, and the standard deviation was 3.94, indicating that the participants' overall depressive symptoms were relatively mild. The Chinese version of GAD-7 can be used in the Chinese context with good reliability and validity (Zeng et al., 2013 ; Tong et al., 2016 ). This scale had good internal consistency, with a Cronbach's α value of 0.93.

Subjective well being

Subjective well being was measured using the two components: Index of well being and Index of General Affect (Campbell, 1976 ). Ratings for each item in the overall index ranged from 1 to 7. The Index of General Affect consists of eight items that describe the connotation of emotions at different levels, while the Index of well being had only one item. The total score of the Index of Well being and the Index of General Affect was calculated by adding the average scores of its two parts (weight 1.1), with scores ranging from 2.1 to 14.7. In this study, the average subjective well being score was 12.30, and the standard deviation was 3.18.

Common method biases

All measurement items were processed by non-rotational exploratory factor analysis, applying the Harman single-factor test method. Based on the results of the analysis, a total of 3 common factors with eigenvalues greater than 1 were extracted, and the first common factor could be used to explain 38.77% of the total variation, which did not reach the standard threshold of 40%. Thus, this study has no unacceptable deviation caused by the same method for data collection (Podsakoff et al., 2003 ).

Descriptive statistics and correlation coefficients of variables

Table 2 shows the results of descriptive statistics and correlation data of the research variables. Bullying victimization not only shows significant positive correlation with aggressive behavior, depression, and anxiety, but also shows significant negative correlation with perceived social support and subjective well being. Aggressive behavior not only shows a significant positive correlation with depression and anxiety, but also shows a significantly negative correlation with perceived social support and subjective well being. Perceived social support shows a significant positive correlation with subjective well being, and a significant negative correlation with depression and anxiety. Moreover, depression is positively correlated with anxiety, and negatively correlated with subjective well being. Last, anxiety has a significant negative correlation with subjective well being.

Correlation analysis of study variables.

M, Mean; SD. standard deviation.

** P <0.01.

Bullying victimization and mental health: Chain mediating effect test

Chain mediational analysis explored the impact of bullying victimization on mental health through aggressive behavior and perceived social support. Bootstrapping analyses (5,000 re-samples) were conducted for testing the mediational model (Hayes, 2013 ).

The results showed that the total effect (βs = 0.456, 0.434, and −0.336, t s = 29.287, 27.522, and −20.375, All p < 0.001) and the direct effect (βs = 0.318, 0.295, and −0.162, t s = 19.722, 18.041, and −9.822, All p < 0.001) of bullying victimization on depression, anxiety, and subjective well being were all significant. Bullying victimization significantly predicts aggressive behavior (β = 0.264, t = 16.507, p < 0.001), and aggressive behavior significantly predicts depression, anxiety, and subjective well being (βs = 0.118, 0.142, and –.093, t s = 7.992, 9.531, and −6.169, All p < 0.001), indicating that aggressive behavior played a mediating role between bullying victimization and depression, anxiety, and subjective well being separately. Similarly, bullying victimization significantly predicts perceived social support (β = −0.332, t = 20.800, p < 0.001), and perceived social support predicts depression, anxiety, and subjective well being (βs = −0.281, −0.264, and 0.391, t s = −18.452, −17.149, and 25.245, All p < 0.001), indicating that perceived social support played a mediating role between bullying victimization and depression, anxiety, and subjective well being separately. Meanwhile, aggressive behavior can also predict perceived social support (β = −0.110, t = −6.898, p < 0.001). Therefore, aggressive behavior and perceived social support had a chain mediating effect between bullying victimization and depression, anxiety, and subjective well being separately among Chinese teenagers ( Tables 3 – 6 ).

Regression model of the effect of bullying victimization on mental health among Chinese teenagers.

Results of the mediating effect analysis of bullying victimization and depression, anxiety, and subjective well being in Tables 4 – 6 showed that Bootstrap's 95% CI of total indirect effect did not contain 0 [All Bootstrap 95% CI: 0.114, 0.166; 0.115, 0.165; −0.202, −0.149], accounting for 30.26, 32.03, and 51.79% of the total effect. Notably, three indirect effect pathways influenced the relation of bullying victimization and depression, anxiety, and subjective well being. First, the mediating effect values of Path1 (Bullying victimization → Aggressive behavior → Depression, Anxiety, and Subjective well being) were 0.032, 0.039, and −0.026 separately, accounting for 7.02, 8.99, and 7.74% of the total effect. Second, the mediating effect values of Path2 (Bullying victimization → Perceived social support → Depression, Anxiety, and Subjective well being) were 0.097, 0.092, and −0.136 separately, accounting for 21.27, 21.20, and 40.48% of the total effect. Third, the mediating effect values of Path3 (Bullying victimization → Aggressive behavior → Perceived social support → Depression, Anxiety, and Subjective well being) was 0.009, 0.008, and −0.012 separately, accounting for 1.97, 1.84, and 3.57% of the total indirect effect. Note that the chain mediating model is shown in Figures 2A–C .

Mediating effect analysis of bullying victimization and depression.

Mediating effect analysis of bullying victimization and subjective well being.

(A) The mediating effect path map of bullying victimization and depression. * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, and *** p < 0.001. (B) The mediating effect path map of bullying victimization and anxiety. * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, and *** p < 0.001. (C) The mediating effect path map of bullying victimization and subjective well being. * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, and *** p < 0.001.

Mediating effect analysis of bullying victimization and anxiety.

The initial objective of the research was to identify the impact of bullying victimization on mental health, and the serial mediating roles of aggressive behavior and perceived social support among adolescents. As indicated by the results of this study, the experience of being bullied significantly increased the level of mental health issues, such as higher levels of anxiety and depression, and lower levels of subjective well being. The relationship results are consistent with previous studies and verified Hypothesis 1 in the study (Juvonen and Graham, 2014 ).

The present study also discovered that aggressive behavior as a maladaptive reaction had significant mediating effects on the relationship between the experience of being bullied and mental health, with its mediating role accounting for 7.02, 8.99, and 7.74% of the total effect for anxiety, depression, and subjective well being. The Hypothesis 2 is confirmed. In addition, these results verified the negative outcome of aggressive behavior for bullying victims, which demonstrated that bullying victims' crude responses would aggravate the mental health issue. Violence begets violence provides no constructive solutions.

Meanwhile, the current study also found significant mediating effects of perceived social support in the relationship between the experience of being bullied and mental health, with its mediating effect accounting for 21.27, 21.20, and 40.48% of the total effect for anxiety, depression, and subjective well being. The present results are congruent with the latest research in the area of bullying victims and prove Hypothesis 3 (Lin et al., 2020 ). Perceived social support from parents, friends, and other relatives is a vital protective factor to disengage bullying victims from mental health issues.

Previous studies do not adequately consider the multiple coping strategies of bullying victims simultaneously and examine the underlying relationship among these mechanisms. The current study explored the impact of bullying victims' aggressive behavior to perceived social support, and whether aggressive behavior and perceived social support serially mediated the relationship between bullying victimization and mental health. The aggressive behavior of bullying victims may produce feelings of isolation in interpersonal relationships and is harmful for victims' mental health status. The results support Hypothesis 4 that the higher level of bullying victimization would raise the possibility of mental health issues through maladaptive aggressive behavior and lower the level of perceived social support. It has also been confirmed that there is a close correlation between aggressive reaction and perceived social support (Yang, 2020 ). The current study's outcome revealed the basic psychological processes of an individual being bullied and helped us in understanding how their variety of responses led to disastrous outcomes. Teenager bullying victims may adopt simple and rough maladaptive behavior, which aggravate the individual's mental health problems. This process will also weaken the individual's perception of positive resources. This mechanism is a kind of interlocking “Tragic Chain”.

The research revealed the process of how bullying victim's maladaptive coping strategies generates mental health issues through aggressive behavior and perceived social support in a large sample of Chinese adolescents. It is a risk factor for the mental health development of teenagers with the experience of being bullied. That is, the impulsive aggressive behavior of bullying victims would reduce their perceived social support and put their mental health status in danger. It implied that a violent response to violence produces chains of tragedy in bullying situations. Recent research in the related area also discovered the similar phenomenon that forgiving rather than revenge can regain the feeling of humanity after the victimization experience (Schumann and Walton, 2022 ).

Furthermore, the results of the present study support the implementation of bully prevention programs and actions, including: enhancing individual strategies effectively counteract bullying, and increasing empathy toward victims; attaching importance to the social support from peers, school staff, parents, and other stakeholders, guide them to improve assistance afforded to victims, and other relative interventions (Salmivalli et al., 2011 ; Roca-Campos et al., 2021 ). The mediating chain effect of the study sheds light on the underlying processes that the victim's maladaptive behavior would reduce the perceived social support, and then deteriorate mental health. The increasing understanding of these processes supports detailed application to reduce the insensitivity of social resources and mental health problems caused by the experience of being bullied and, through modifying the maladaptive aggressive behavior, alleviates the bullying's negative influence to a certain extent, then breaks the chains of tragedy.

Limitations and future orientation

The current research has some deficiencies and limitations, which may be addressed in the future. First, the present study was a cross-sectional design study, it cannot clarify the causal relationship between variables. Therefore, further research should be conducted to better clarify the relationship between variables through experimental design and longitudinal study. Second, the current research results are in the context of Chinese cultural background. In a collective culture, individuals' survival and development needs depend more on interpersonal relations (Yum, 1988 ). Future studies could explore whether there is a cultural difference in the mechanism of maladaptive reactions of bullying victims.

Bullying and victimization is a growing area of research in psychology. The present study provides further scientific evidence for intervention after the experience of being bullied at the behavioral and cognitive levels. The Chains of Tragedy of bullying victims who conduct maladaptive behavior would lead to a change in their perceived social support and mental health problems, reminding us to draw attention to the sequential effect of multiple variables at work in bully prevention.

Data availability statement

Ethics statement.

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by Ethics Committee of Hubei University of Education. Written informed consent to participate in this study was provided by the participants' legal guardian/next of kin.

Author contributions

YG: conceptualization, collected the data, writing—review and editing, data curation, and worked on the final version of the manuscript. XT: writing—review and editing, data curation, and worked on the final version of the manuscript. QZ: conceptualization, collected the data, writing—formal analysis, data curation, and worked on the final version of the manuscript. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

This work was supported by Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China Humanities and Social Sciences Youth Foundation under Grant (No. 19YJCZH044).

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher's note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Indian government initiatives on cyberbullying: A case study on cyberbullying in Indian higher education institutions

• Published: 04 July 2022
• Volume 28 , pages 581–615, ( 2023 )

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• Manpreet Kaur   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7680-3075 1 &
• Munish Saini   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4129-2591 1  

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In the digitally empowered society, increased internet utilization leads to potential harm to the youth through cyberbullying on various social networking platforms. The cyberbullying stats keep on rising each year, leading to detrimental consequences. In response to this online threat, the Indian Government launched different helplines, especially for the children and women who need assistance, various complaint boxes, cyber cells, and made strict legal provisions to curb online offenses. This research evaluates the relevant initiatives. Additionally, a survey is conducted to get insights into cyberbullying in higher education institutions, discussing multiple factors responsible for youth and adolescents being cyberbullied and a few measures to combat it in universities/colleges.

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1 Introduction

Cyberbullying is harassment done to the victim to cause harm via any electronic method, including social media resulting in defamation, public disclosure of private facts, and intentional emotional distress (Watts et al., 2017 ). It can be related to sending and posting cruel texts or images with the help of social media and other digital communication devices to harm a victim (Washington, 2015 ). It is a repeated behavior done by the individual with the help of social media, over the gaming, and messaging platforms that target mainly to lower the victims' self-esteem.

In the past decade, Cyberbullying has been an emerging phenomenon that has a socio-psychological impact on adolescents. With the advancement of digital technology, youth is more attached to social media, resulting in cyberbullying. With the increasing usage of techno-savvy gadgets, social media applications are highly prevalent among the youth, which can be advantageous and disadvantageous. It allows sharing posts, photos, and messages personally and privately among friends, while on the other hand, it involves an increase in cyberbullying by creating fake accounts on the apps (Ansary, 2020 ).

In July 2021, 4,80 billion people worldwide were on social media, that's almost 61% of the world's total population depicting an annual growth of 5.7% as 7 lac new users join per day (Digital Around the World, 2021 ). As the number of users increases, there is a surge in cyberbullying; according to a UNICEF poll, more than 33% of youngsters are reported as victims of online bullying in 30 countries worldwide (UNICEF, 2020 ). Moreover, it is seen that one in five has skipped school due to fear of cyberbullying and violence. According to NCRB, 50,035 cases of cybercrime were reported in India in the year 2020, among which 1614 cases of cyberstalking, 762 cases of cyber blackmailing, 84 cases of defamation, 247 cases of fake profiles, and 838 cases of fake news were investigated. NCRB data Footnote 1 reported that cybercrimes in India increased by 63.48% (27248 cases to 44548 cases) from 2018 to 2019, which upsurged by 12.32% in 2020 (44548 cases to 50035cases).

Multiple cases of cyberbullying were reported across the country. As per news reports, in November 2016, a 23-year-old Ooshmal Ullas, MBBS student of KMCT Medical College in Mukkam, Kerala, committed suicide by jumping due to being cyberbullied over a Facebook post and injured her spine, legs, and head. Footnote 2 One more incident was reported on 9 January 2018 where a 20 years old Hindu woman killed herself after facing harassment on WhatsApp over her friendship with a Muslim man in Karnataka. Footnote 3 Another case was witnessed, a 15-year-old boy connected with the 'Bois locker room', an Instagram group where they share photos of minor girls and exchange lewd comments, was arrested by Delhi police on 4 May 2020. Footnote 4 An incident occurred on 26 June 2014 a 17 years old girl committed suicide after Satish and Deepak, her friends, morphed her photos and posted them on Facebook along with her cell phone number. Footnote 5 Many such cases are reported every year, and this rising number of suicides due to cyberbullying is alarming and worrisome.

The primary cause of cyberbullying is anonymity, in which a bully can easily target anyone over the internet by hiding their original identity. The psychological features play an eminent role in determining whether a person is a victim or a bully. A pure bully has a high level of aggression and needs succorance, whereas the pure victim has high levels of interception, empathy, and nurturance (Watts et al., 2017 ). It has been found that various factors are responsible for becoming a cyberbully. According to Tanrikulu (Tanrikulu & Erdur-Baker, 2021 ), Personality traits are responsible for cyberbullying behavior. The primary cause is online inhibition, in which a person bullies others with the motives of harm, domination, revenge, or entertainment. Other causes are moral disengagement as the findings imply that, regardless of the contemporaneous victimization status, moral disengagement has an equal impact on bullying perpetration for those who are most engaged. Pure bullies have more moral disengagement than those bullies/victims who aren't as active in bullying (Runions et al., 2019 ). The next one is Narcissism , which means individuals consider social status and authority dominant over their human relations. The last is aggression, which refers to overcoming negativities and failures by force, triggering them to do cyberbullying for satisfaction. Similarly, there are some personality traits associated with cyberbullying participants as a study (Ngo et al., 2021 ) examined three groups of online users where the first one is the "Intervene" group which believes in uplifting the morale of victims by responding to cyberbullying acts while others are the "Ignore" group that doesn't involve in reacting to the cyberbullying acts and just ignores the victims or leave the cyberspace and the third one is "Join in" that either promote the bullying or just enjoy watching cyberbullying act without any participation. The adolescents belonging to intervene group may play a critical role in reducing cyberbullying behavior and its consequences.

Social acceptance also plays a vital role in reducing bullying. It has been observed that among students who lack socialization activity, an individual contributes a high incidence rate of bullying that leads to victimization. Yubero carried out a study that depicts individuals feeling more comfortable in online environments that are not accepted by their peers and hence are more exposed to cyberbullying victimization. Apart from this, the relationship between loneliness and cyberbullying is more prevalent because lonely youth devote quality of time to the internet hence facing cyberbullying (Yubero et al., 2017 ). In this situation, students could either defend themselves or rely on cyber bystander intervention. A cyber bystander is one offering assistance to the victim, either individually or socially, and they are more inclined to act if they feel more empathy (Wang, 2021 ). Since interfering publicly may have detrimental consequences, cyber bystanders are more worried about being retaliated against or being the next victim.

Parental support and monitoring also help to escape cyberbullying victimization. It has been observed that parents who employed autonomy-supportive measures, such as understanding the adolescent's viewpoint, providing alternatives, and giving justifications for prohibitions, had youngsters who reported lower cyberbullying than parents who used dominating measures (especially using guilt, shame, and conditional regard) (Legate et al., 2019 ).

Cyberbullying is one of the significant problems that need to be eradicated. Due to cyberbullying, youngsters face many issues related to their health like depression, low self-esteem, suicidal thoughts, and even it leads to low academic performance, etc. Several aspects are considered responsible for cyber victimization like social media, online hours, parental monitoring, awareness, social engagement, etc. The incidences of cyberbullying are elevating day by day even after the strict crime-fighting measures by state and central authorities. But the implementation of specific rules and regulations against cyberbullying crime may alter the future scenario. The Indian Government is quite aware of the issue of cyberbullying faced on social media, and the Government carries out many remedial interventions like women and child helpline numbers. Moreover, the Government provides legal implementations and acts that are trying to curb the issues of cyberbullying.

2 Aim and objective

This study aims to evaluate the initiatives taken by the Indian Government at the forefront of this noble battle to stop cyberbullying incidences and to find out various factors that make youth more vulnerable to cyberbullying. The following objectives were expected to be accomplished:

Enunciating the problem of Cyberbullying in higher education institutions.

Assessing the initiatives of the Indian Government, legal provisions for cyberbullying, and their amendments.

Evaluate the responses of higher education students to cyberbullying questionnaire.

To examine the factors responsible for cyber victimization and a few measures to combat cyberbullying.

This study is divided into two modules, as shown in Figs. 1 and 2 , to achieve the aforementioned objectives. The first module focuses on explaining and exploring cyberbullying on various online platforms via digital devices, as well as preventative actions done by our Government and different cyberbullying legislation in India. In the second module, we conducted an online survey to access and examine the responses of University/College students.

Module 1- Outline of Research

Module 2-Case Study

3 Organization of paper

This paper is organized as follows, the Section  4 covers the review of research work on Cyberbullying in higher education institutions. The Section  5 highlights various merits and demerits associated with the internet, social media, and cyberbullying faced. Initiatives taken by the Indian Government in response to cyberbullying are elaborated in Section  6 . The Section  7 provides insight into the survey conducted on students of higher educational institutions. It comprises data collection, data pre-processing, methods, and algorithms employed in conducting and evaluating the responses of the participants. A detailed analysis of the results is mentioned in the "Discussion" section. In the later part of the study, measures to combat cyberbullying, major conclusions, and future recommendations are specified.

4 Related work

In the context of cyberbullying, several studies have been conducted in various countries at college and school levels, examining the different parameters responsible for cyberbullying victimization and the laws against cyberbullying. Different countries have their legal provisions to tackle the situation. A study by (Çevik et al., 2021 ) has discussed factors contributing to cyberbullying and victimization, which are problematic internet usage, school burnout, and parental monitoring. As the long hours of internet usage have resulted in the establishment of fake friendships, low academic profile, aggression, low self-esteem, and loneliness. School burnout includes students lacking interest in studies, exhaustion over studies has resulted in high usage of internet sources, increasing the risk of peer bullying. Parental monitoring plays a crucial role in the lives of adolescents, but a lack of coordination is witnessed between the adolescent and parents, leading to cyberbullying and victimization.

Yubero (Yubero et al., 2017 ) surveyed a sample of 243 Spanish university students in the social science stream, and the results confirmed Only 9.8% of higher education students experienced cyberbullying on the campus, which is much lower than reported by other studies, it may be due to the time frame selection of case study or its definition. Various parameters that may be considered a prime cause of being a victim have been examined. As a result, not much correlation was found between the loneliness of a student and cyberbullying victimization; self-esteem and cyberbullying victimization. But a negative correlation was seen between perceived acceptance by peers and cyberbullying victimization. So, it concludes that emphasis must not only be laid upon preventive measures but also on educating or training peers to help each other and building good relationships with people from whom they can seek advice. Whereas, in Ghana, 878 students took part in this study, where 83% of students have experienced cyberbullying at least once, which is much higher than the previous study result. It seems that cyberbullying is acceptable everyday behavior among Ghanaian youth, even don't feel about reporting it, and not much difference between the personality traits of victims and non-victim seen (Sam et al., 2019 ).

Students can also use a few precautionary measures to reduce cyberbullying by changing their profile settings, as blocking and deleting are considered highly used protective decisions to prevent inappropriate actions over a social networking site like Facebook. Chapin (Chapin, 2016 ), has used the precaution adoption process model to promote precautionary behavior to lower the risk associated with the health due to cyberbullying. According to Chapin, it is seen that many students are aware of the act of bullying but don't take any action.

Cyberbullying has long-term effects, and bullying behavior may continue much longer than expected. In a study, 638 Israeli undergraduate students participated, and various cyberbullying problems were evaluated. The study demonstrated that students experiencing cyberbullying face academic problems, anxiety, career problems, depression, family problems, interpersonal problems, self-esteem, substance abuse, and suicidal ideation. 57.4% of participants reported that cyberbullying among the youth will enter the workplace, which will continue throughout their lifetime (Peled, 2019 ).

In educational institutions, social networking platforms are beneficial, as Alamri et al. (Alamri et al., 2020 ) surveyed 192 students of King Faisal, a Saudi Arabian University. This survey was based on the use of SMA's (Social Media Applications) for education sustainability in the higher education system. In their research, they proposed a Theory acceptance Model used in conjunction with constructivism theory. In this model, they developed 14 hypotheses for the adoption of SMA's in students' learning systems and analyzed positive assessment of students for the adoption of SMA's in their higher education. Al-Rahmi et al. also discussed the use of Social media for Collaborative learning and information sharing among the students of the higher education system, in which a survey was conducted among the 538 university students. Students gave positive outcomes towards using SM (social media) for collaboration and student learning, highlighting the perceived enjoyment and ease. But at the same time, it has been observed that it may be affected due to cyberstalking, cyberbullying, and social media addiction (Al-Rahmi et al., 2020 ).

Ho et al. depicted the relationships between social support, cyberbullying victimization, and depressive symptoms and specialized their results, particularly studying the behavior of Vietnamese students (Ho et al., 2020 ). This research revealed that those students who are cyberbullied develop a higher risk of depressive symptoms. Still, social support, for instance, parental, peer, and special person support, can be considered a significant factor that can protect learners from developing such symptoms of depression. Also, while analyzing the survey results on 606 Vietnamese University students, it was found that social support is negatively correlated with cyberbullying, and social support is the only factor that helped those students come out from depression caused by cyberbullying.

Based on a cohort study performed in Hue city, 648 students were called from different schools. Only 9% of students were reported to be cyberbullied, while 17.6% suffered school bullying (Nguyen et al., 2020 ). Parental support has shown a protective relationship promoting the well-being among youth, more understanding and accepting attitude of parents is associated with reducing the consequences of cyberbullying that are mental issues, self-harm, and suicidal behaviors, including suicidal ideation, suicidal planning, and suicidal attempts in adolescents.

To assess risk factors and their impact in Myanmar, Khine et al. (Khine et al., 2020 ) conducted a cross-sectional study at a Medical university in Myanmar. The survey included 412 students in it, and the survey was based on factors leading to cyberbullying victimization during the last 12 months. The results were analyzed based on multiple logistic regression analyses. During the research, it was found that non-resident students or students studying at university for less than three years had a greater risk of being cyberbullying victims. The work also discussed the antagonistic relation between cyberbullying and academic performance and the positive relationship between cyberbullying and substance abuse, such as smoking and drinking alcohol. The research aimed that counseling services, cyber safety educational programs, and awareness of cyberbullying are urgently needed for university students of Myanmar.

Discussing another social networking platform, Aizenkot and Kashy-Rosenbaum have done a crossectional study to detect cyberbullying victimization in WhatsApp classmate groups in which 4477 students participated to complete the questionnaire. Here they (Aizenkot & Kashy-Rosenbaum, 2020 ) concluded that 56.5% of the students reported being victimized at least once, and 30% experienced it more than twice, while 18% (approx.) were victimized due to verbal violence. Other forms of victimization observed were offensive responses, insults, group violence, selectivity, particularly forced removal, and denied entry to WhatsApp groups. It leads our attention toward social media applications that distress the students.

Even During the covid 19 pandemic, when people were very much relied on online platforms due to social distancing and strict quarantine, they were suffering from depression and behavioral and mental problems. At the same time, especially the residents of Hubei, China, were facing all these problems and excessive cyberbullying, agitation, stigma, and racism peaked due to the first case of covid being reported in the city. This online bullying has severe psychological effects, and people were opting for various coping strategies. So here, the efforts must be taken unitedly by the worldwide online media, the health care workers, and the Government to prevent the secondary disaster of the pandemic in which cyberbullying was one of the major issues of concern for China (Yang, 2021 ).

5 Social media and cyberbullying in higher education institutions

Web 2.0 has initiated social media users, especially youngsters, to inculcate their viewpoints and express their thought processes in a virtual environment. Social media is a crucial platform that has encouraged students to expand interaction and has leveled up their performance. Despite its indispensable assets, liabilities cannot be overlooked in any condition (Sarwar et al., 2019 ). Cyberbullying has expanded with the higher usage of techno-savvy gadgets. The present times have modified common bullying into the involvement of harm, cruel thinking, and blackmailing through networking sites to the victims, especially on college campuses resulting in an increasing number of dropouts and suicides (Washington, 2015 ).

Higher command of mobile phones by adolescents has resulted in easy access to social networking sites without any fear. It has been increasingly contributing to cyberbullying, which has long-term adverse effects. Very few believe that it has a positivity that students become tough and develop a tendency of resilience and self-advocacy. Furthermore, it has been visualized that students do not know whether their institutions have a cyberbullying policy, and most institutions are not even prepared for handling such situations (Luker & Curchack, 2017 ).

Nowadays as the graduates are highly active over the internet for knowledge sharing, collaborative learning, and research activities which is beneficial yet resulted in the high indulgence of youth in cyberbullying, leading to negative impacts like aggressiveness, depression, low self-esteem, and also suicidal thoughts (Rasheed et al., 2020 ). Although there have been a myriad number of profits availed by everyone in the status quo, many people still undergo the undesirable effects that may alter one's privacy, security, and emotional health status. From bygone days, it has been witnessed that Cyberbullying is an urgent issue on the social platform that can turn out either short-range, long-range, temporary, or permanent effects on one's life (Abaido, 2020 ). According to Yoshida (Yoshida, 2021 ), different kinds of online behaviors are shown by university students on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. They form different communities based on their knowledge or depending upon fan following while swinging their interest from one topic to another. They share their viewpoints on these online platforms where different audiences are reading them. Also, they lack sociability skills and have less knowledge about these online communities. Consequently, this incapability may lead to cyber victimization.

Even the young social media users of color have faced a lot of racial discrimination over the online platforms leading to mental health risks resulting in depressive symptoms, anxiety, and illicit drug use (Tao & Fisher, 2022 ).

Online gaming among young adults is prevailing at a high level with time as a good source of entertainment, but it's being observed to be one of the leading causes of bullying. Hence, online games have resulted in more aggression, violence, conflicts, emotional distress, mental torture, and physical arousals where family and community can act as an inevitable source to reduce the addiction to the internet and strengthen their mental health (Huang et al., 2021 ).

Moreover, students being cyberbullied do not share such incidences with their parents because they fear losing internet access. So, parents could not be assumed as their support system. The other approach is complaining, where a shocking dimension has been observed: there are no policies or federal laws dealing with cyberbullying directly; a federal system covers only a few aspects of cyberbullying (Washington, 2015 ). Another study has also concluded that victims are unable to express any kind of violent cybercrime behavior faced them, presuming that it can result in limited access to internet sources and gadgets by their parents. The victims also perceive that adults cannot understand the issues faced by them. Hence, this depicts a huge gap between teachers, parents, and adolescents (Ngo, et al., 2021 ).

Due to Cyberbullying on-campus, students are experiencing various adverse effects, including feelings of sadness, embarrassment, humiliation, desire for vengeance, and physical and mental retaliation (Cassidy et al., 2017 ). Despite strict rules and awareness, students do not come forward to report cyberbullying. They are afraid, feel self-ashamed, cry, become depressed, suffer from anxiety, experience insomnia, or even miss school (Watts et al., 2017 ).

Cyberbullying is considered one of the potential risks of relying on online technologies and has been one of the significant technology abuse examples in the past decade due to its harmful and sometimes deadly impacts. Counseling acts as a tonic and curative approach that may aid the cyberbullying sufferers in overcoming their fears and issues faced by them. Initiating a hotline or a mobile application can also turn into a valuable perspective. To foster counseling, short seminars and discussion sessions must be taken out regularly among the scholars. Bystanders should also take some initiative to eradicate online bullying situations by breaking their silence at the very right time (Abaido, 2020 ).

6 Indian government initiatives and legal provisions

Various laws of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) 1860 and the Information Technology Act, 2000 (IT Act) listed under legal provisions can be used to fight cyberbullies. A National Cybercrime reporting portal has been established for complaints, and a few more government initiatives are discussed.

6.1 Legal provisions

6.1.1 it act, 2000.

IT ACT, 2000 Footnote 6 came into power to provide legal identification regarding the exchange of data electronically. In computer-related offenses, up to 3 to 5 years imprisonment and rupees one lac fine or both can be charged and, in some cases, even more. Under IT Act, sections 66 A, 66 C, 66 D, and 66 E, punishment is given to the person involved in any crime of insulting or fraud or privacy violation, etc., utilizing the internet, social media, and other digital media devices. IT act, section 67, 67A, and section 67 B deal with publishing and transmitting material containing the sexually explicit act, etc., in electronic form. All these sections of IT Acts are explained in Table 8 of the Appendix.

6.1.2 The Indian penal code 1860

The Indian Penal Code (IPC) Footnote 7 is the official criminal code of India that covers all substantive aspects of criminal law, which came into existence in the year 1862 in all British Presidencies. IPC Sections 292A, 354 A, 354 D, 499, 507, and 509 punish people who indulge in blackmailing, harassment, stalking, threatening, intruding, etc. (for details of IPC laws refer to Table 8 of Appendix).

6.1.3 POCSO ACT, 2012

Protection of children from sexual offenses (POCSO) is a complete law for protecting children below 18 years from the heinous acts of sexual assault, sexual harassment, and pornography.

6.2 Government initiatives

6.2.1 the nirbhaya funds scheme.

It is an initiative of the Government of India under the Nirbhaya funds scheme for ensuring the safety of women and children. The ministry of Home affairs generated a single number (112) Footnote 8 which was under the Emergency response support system (ERSS), to cope with any emergencies where immediate assistance from police, fire, and rescue, or any other help is required. https://112.gov.in/

6.2.2 Cybercrime prevention against women and children scheme (CCPWC Scheme)

Under the CCPWA scheme, Footnote 9 for cybercrime prevention and setting up of Cyber forensic training labs grant of INR 87.12 Crore was released to states/UTs. Moreover, INR 6 crores were given to enhance police and prosecutors' training sessions. Under the CCPWA scheme, different units are established that are responsible for reporting online criminal acts and their investigations, analyzing cybercrime reports, and detecting any alarming cybercrime situation. Various components of the CCPWA scheme are given in Table 9 of the Appendix.

6.2.3 Indian cybercrime coordination centre (I4C) scheme

To prevent unnecessary use of social space, I4C acts as an essential tool to fight against cybercrime. Moreover, it is supported by fast pace technological advancements and international agencies to work on several activities. Its objective is to deal with different issues faced on online media, giving special attention to women and children victims and creating awareness among youth. Various components of the I4C scheme are mentioned in Table 10 of the Appendix .

6.3 Cybercrime reporting portals & helplines

6.3.1 national cyber crime reporting portal.

NCCR portal is an initiative of the Government of India that submits online complaints by the victims who have faced criticism, especially women and children. Footnote 10 They provide immediate action on the filed complaints with the help of local police. Since the technology has been overstepping every conventional method, it has also outrun the offline process of filing cybercrime complaints. The cybercrime complaints can be registered on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal, which facilitates the nationwide cybercrime complaints and makes it feasible for the victims/complainants to have access to the cybercrime cells and all the information related to cybercrimes at their fingertips. The written complaint can also be filed by registering the crime-faced victim at a nearby cyber crime cell. Cyber Crime Portal State-wise, Nodal cyber cell officers and grievance officers' contact details and e-mail IDs are provided on the website https://cybercrime.gov.in/ . Footnote 11

6.3.2 Portal for women and children

Various helpline numbers and complaint portals for women and children are listed in Table 1 .

6.4 Anti-bullying or cyberbullying laws in India for schools and colleges

With the high increase in bullying in schools, especially in boarding schools in India, the HRD ministry has launched anti-ragging committees to reduce the rate of bullying. These committees work on punishing students who are indulged in the activities along with rustication in case of high involvement in bullying. The University Grants Commission comes forward with anti-ragging rules in universities and colleges with proper UGC regulations on pulling out the rate of ragging in higher institutions. Footnote 12

6.5 Other portals & awareness campaigns

The Ministry of Home Affairs has launched a centralized online cybercrime registration portal that has helped victims to register a complaint online rather than visiting the police station. Along with that Delhi and Indore police has a cyber cell to make people aware regarding filing a complaint online by the following link:

http://www.cybercelldelhi.in/

http://www.indorepolice.org/cyber-crime.php

https://ifflab.org/how-to-file-a-cyber-crime-complaint-in-india/

Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal launched the cyber safety awareness campaign in Assam on the occasion of the foundation day of the Assam police, which joined with cyber security and formed a Cyber Peace Foundation (CPF).

Awareness Campaign on Cyber Security By DSEJ

Jammu has made an awareness campaign for up to 2 Lakh stakeholders of the School Education Department on cyber hygiene and security held on 15 January 2021 along with online as well as offline counseling sessions on a large scale covering cyber grooming, cyberbullying, phishing, safeguarding social media accounts, online banking frauds, lottery frauds, remote access scams, social media privacy policy, etc. Many such awareness campaigns are organized nationwide by the respective Governments.

7 A Case study based on a survey

In this section, to investigate the problem of Cyberbullying in higher educational institutions, a survey has been conducted among university/college-going students that provide clear insights into the data analysis and case study outcomes.

7.1 Data analysis methodology

It includes the manual about designing the questionnaire for the survey, the process of collecting data, pre-processing data, techniques used to conduct the survey, and finally, applying algorithms to the collected data for evaluating the outcomes.

7.1.1 Designing the questionnaire

An online survey was conducted to gain insights into the feedback given by students on the cyberbullying faced by students of higher education institutions in India. The survey contains a questionnaire designed to collect information on the cyberbullying experience, various issues faced by students related to cyberbullying, the dependence of cyberbullying victimization on other parameters, institutional support, and feedback from respondents to stop cyberbullying. According to Lesley Andres, while preparing for analysis, we should identify the research problem questions and locate ourselves in the research design and process for designing an effective survey questionnaire (Andres, 2012 ). The quality of data analysis through survey questions depends on various factors like topics covered in the questionnaire, wording, format, and organization (Singh et al., 2021 ), (Williams, 2003 ).

In this study, a total of 72 questions were classified into five sections: the first is about general information and computer knowledge, the second one is related to cyberbullying victimization, the third is for cyberbullying and cyber-bystander, fourth discusses the actions and effects of cyberbullying victimization, and the last one is about institutional support and suggestion. A google form was prepared, and the specific link was shared over the e-mails, and social media platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram, etc. The database was collected over three weeks, and due to the length of the questionnaire, 220 responses were received. 80% of respondents belong to the age group of 17 to 24. The general information about the participants, moreover their devices in use, and social networking sites being used most frequently are listed in Table 2 . 60% of our participants are hostellers, where most of the students are doing their bachelor's degrees. WhatsApp is the most popularly used application among the students, being used by 88% of users, and 60% (approx.) of users have observed cyberbullying at their campuses.

7.1.2 Data pre-processing

To remove the anomalies of the database collected in the survey few steps like data cleaning, filtration, removing duplicate responses, and the language translation are done (Maier et al., 2018 ). For statistically evaluating the responses, such as finding the correlation between various parameters, the Likert scale was used to convert responses to equivalent numerical values. Furthermore, the textual answers or the suggestions obtained from users are also pre-processed manually and with the help of algorithmic techniques of R package libraries for grammatical correction, removal of numbers, special characters, misleading information, and using google translator for conversion of regional language to English wherever required.

7.1.3 Outcomes of survey questions

In a survey question, it was asked to give their opinion on which gender is bullied more :

32.3% believe that females are bullied more than males, 10.5% believe that males are bullied more, 47.7% believe that both are bullied equally, and 9.5% prefer not to say. But the actual results of the survey go with the belief of the majority, where we find out that 54% of males are bullied, and approximately 51% of females are bullied. In fact not a significant difference between their bullying percentages.

Definition of cyberbullying: An understanding by respondents

To have an idea, according to the respondents' about what cyberbullying is? According to the responses received, more than 50% of the respondents were clear about it, and the majority believe that threatening someone, taking or sharing someone's embarrassing photographs, and posting something hurtful on social media are major cyberbullying acts. Table 3 depicts the rest of the percentage of the views about Cyberbullying definition.

Views on cyberbullying: Is it a normal part of the online world, and nothing could be done to stop it: Here, the views of male and female respondents do not deviate much. For both of them, it is unacceptable. 70% of the respondents disagree with the view that it is normal we can't stop it, and only 15% of the respondents take it as a normal activity, as shown in Fig. 3 .

Cyberbullying is a normal part of the online world

Actual percentage facing bullying classified under different categories and factors:

In Table 4 , the percentage distribution of bullied and non-bullied participants is mentioned depending on various factors like gender, social media usage hours, computer proficiency, area of residence, parent's talk, and their qualification. According to the number of hours of social media usage, on average, students use it for 4 h, and respondents using it for more than 4 h are bullied more than others. In addition, more than half of the participants have good computer knowledge, but not much dependency is seen between the computer proficiency and the percentage bullied by implementing the Chi-Square test using the Likert scale in Rstudio (Mircioiu & Atkinson, 2017 ). A p-value of 0.135 has been obtained, which is insignificant for showing a relation between computer proficiency and bullying percentage (Rana & Singhal, 2015 ). A weak relation is found between parents' talk and bullying; those whose parents frequently talk about cyberbullying are bullied a little bit less as compared to those whose parents never or very rarely talk about it. No correlation is found between the area of residence, and parental qualification of the students bullied.

When you were bullied, it was related to:

Of the respondents who have been cyberbullied due to multiple reasons, the majority of victims do not know the reason, and the most prevalent reason is their physical appearance and religion. Due to their sexual orientation and race, they have also faced bullying, and disability is also one of the reasons. The percentage of various reasons is given in Fig. 4 .

Reasons for cyberbullying

Questions related to CYBER VICTIMIZATION, CYBERBULLYING, and CYBER BYSTANDER:

Out of total female respondants, 51.30% of females faced bullying, 11.30% were unsure, and 37.39% were not bullied. In the case of males, 55.24% of males faced bullying, 14.24% were unsure, and 30.48% were not bullied at all. Among the persons with disabilities, 83% of males and 75% of females having any type of disability faced cyberbullying.

Out of the total bullies, 64.40% of bullies are male, and 35.60% of bullies are female. 18.26% of all the female participants accepted that they had bullied someone, and approximately twice the women's percentage, i.e., 36.19% of male participants have bullied someone. But in the case of the cyber bystanders, there is not much difference in their percentages. 44.34% of the female participants and 56.19% of male participants were cyber bystanders, respectively. Various questions and their response percentages related to cyber victimization, cyberbullying, and cyber bystanders are listed in Table 5 .

Actions are taken after being Cyberbullied & Effects on victims:

In the survey conducted, more than half of the students (51.8%) are not aware of cyberbullying laws, and 58.2% have no clue where to report or what action should be taken against the bully. It has been seen that among the cyber victims, 65.15% of students know the bully.

Various persons can experience cyberbullying, and according to the responses, among the students bullied, 40.20% of cyberbullying was done by their friends, 9.28% by their relatives or cousins, 31.95% was done by their peer group, 25.77% by any senior, 14.43% by a junior and 53.60% by unknown. As mentioned in Table 6 , most cyberbullying victims feel comfortable discussing the matter with their friends or with nobody, only one-quarter of the percentage discuss it with their parents.

In Table 6 , various questions related to cyberbullying victims, their reaction toward a bully, their parent's reaction, how the cyberbullying affected studies and work, and the victim's feelings are mentioned with percentages. Most of the victims felt angry and depressed, and around half of the victims asked the bully to stop this behavior.

As shown in Fig.  5 , the R studio corrplot function is used to find correlations among various parameters, and it is observed that both the work and health of the cyberbullying victim are greatly affected.

Correlation graph

In further detailed questioning, it is observed that 62% of cyberbullying victims ignore the messages of bullies so that he/they would lose interest, whereas 25% have sent threatening messages to bullies about doing such acts. Approximately 27% seek online advice on being bullied. Due to lack of awareness, only 40% of the victims save the cyberbullying messages or images as evidence. 32.4% of victims changed their contact details like phone number, e-mail address, chat name, or profile information visibility on social networking sites. 79% of the victims have blocked the bully so that he/she could not contact more.

Institutional support

It has been observed that higher education institutions do not provide much support to the students and make them aware of this online behavior, as 68.2% of the colleges and universities are not taking any initiative to make students aware by conducting any awareness tutorial or campaign. Only 42.8% of students who were bullied have taken guidance from university. Furthermore, 68.6% of the students have no idea where to report or to find the anti-bullying policy in their institution. Approximately 69.5% think their institutions are not doing enough to tackle the problem.

7.1.4 Topic modeling to extract relevant topics

For analysis of the feedback given by students to stop cyberbullying in institutions, using the R framework, LDA has been used. To extract the optimum number of topics in the feedback database, we used Griffith's 2004 (Griffiths & Steyvers, 2004 ) and Cau Juan's 2009 (Cao et al., 2009 ) metrics for our study in the R framework. Griffith represents an approach where the number of topics is optimal when the log-likelihood for data becomes maximum, whereas Cau Juan is used for measuring the stability of the topic and the minimum value on the graph represents the optimal number of topics. As from Fig.  6 number of topics lies between 4 to 9; in the upper graph minimum value is to be selected and from the lower one maximum value is to find the range of an optimal number of topics.

Determining the optimal number of topics

The latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) is a statistical model that enables unidentified groups to explain why some sections of the data are related (Blei et al., 2003 ). If observations are words gathered into documents, it is assumed that each document is a mix of a small number of subjects and that each word's occurrence is due to one of the document's themes called topics. The time complexity of LDA is O(mnt  +  t 3 ) and memory requirements of O(mn  +  mt  +  nt) , where m is the number of samples, n is the number of features, and t  =  min (m,n). It is impossible to use LDA when both m and n are big (Cai et al., 2008 ). The working of LDA is shown in the Algorithm . As there does not exist any prior information on the number of topics in our corpus, we used LDAvis, which generates interactive charts where each bubble represents the topic, and topic per word distribution is represented in the bar graph plot, selection of a bubble highlights the words and bars accordingly. The prevalence of topics depends upon the bubble size. For these graphs, the "optimum" value of λ was about 0.6, which resulted in a 70% likelihood of right identification (values of λ around 0 and 1 resulted in estimated proportions of correct replies closer to 53 and 63 percent, respectively). This is evidence that ordering words according to relevance (rather than strictly in decreasing order of probability) can increase subject interpretability (Sievert & Shirley, 2014 ).

LDA has extracted the discussion topics from the set of views database submitted by students to tackle this problem, explore all the main keywords, and highlight areas that need improvement. The findings indicate the formation of five clusters, the most frequent and interdependent keywords with other clusters or topics as depicted in Fig.  7 . The number of clusters lies in the predicted range of optimal number of topics. From the topic modeling analysis, "Awareness" is the most frequent term and critical factor in curbing cyberbullying. The classification of most frequently used words and the keywords grouped according to LDA are given in Table 7 .

LDAvis topic extraction graph

8 Discussion: Analysis of conducted survey

With the advancement of technology, social media has become a vital part of students' lives, either for their studies or entertainment. The major challenge is protecting the students from cyberbullying that can significantly affect their work and studies. Our focus is on examining cyberbullying among college/university students. For this, we divided our research into two modules. In the first one, we analyzed the Indian Government initiatives. While exploring legal provisions, it is found that so many laws, online portals and helplines are available. Strict laws implemented against cyberbullying are covered under IT Act 2000, IT Act Section 66A, IT Act Section 66 B, IT Act Section 66C, IT Act Section 66D, IT Act Section 66E, IT Act Sect. 67, IT Act Section 67A, IT Act Section 67B; under Indian Penal Code 1860, IPC Section 292 A, IPC Section 354A, IPC Section 354D, IPC Section 499, IPC Section 507, and POCSO Act 2012. Under various schemes like the Nirbhaya fund scheme, the Government launches a women and helpline number 112 for emergency response. Under CCPW Scheme, multiple labs and units have been established for cybercrime online reporting, the investigation by professional teams, and research and development. I4C scheme has also established many units for creating awareness, reporting, and inspection. MHA has established National Cybercrime reporting portals both online and offline. Moreover, the Ministry of Women and Child Development has generated a women's helpline number 118 and also a dedicated e-mail address to redress their grievances. Separate Childline 1098, NCW helpline, Mahila bol helpline, and many state government portals are available. Various awareness campaigns are launched at the state as well as international levels. In second module, a case study was performed on cyberbullying in higher education institutions.

Section-wise analyses of the conducted survey

General information: 97% of the higher education institutional students (respondents) have electronic gadgets, except the few either do not have internet connectivity or a personal device. Even in the UNICEF case study, it was found that 99 percent of both urban and rural internet users aged 12 + years used mobile phones to access the internet. Footnote 14 WhatsApp and Instagram are the most widely used social networking sites that make them more vulnerable to experience cyberbullying. The responses of the participants depict that they are not much aware of the cyberbullying term, the legal provisions, and other governmental policies against cyberbullying. At the same time, it is observed that the majority of students reacted strongly to stop this behavior.

Cyberbullying victimization and dependency of Cyberbullying on various demographic parameters: According to the survey results, more than half of the respondents have experienced cyberbullying, which is similar to the percentage obtained in a study by Aizenkot and Kashy-Rosenbaum (Aizenkot & Kashy-Rosenbaum, 2020 ). It is concluded that males are cyberbullied more than females. Moreover, the person with a disability is the most affected as 80% of them face cyberbullying. Higher hours spent on social networking sites also lead to cyberbullying victimization. This case study found that Parental awareness and discussing online issues with youngsters have played a vital role in preventing them from being bullied, which resembles the conclusion of a study conducted in Vietnam by Ho et al. (Ho et al., 2020 ). The majority of the participants are not aware of the reason for being bullied but based on physical appearance and religion, cyberbullying is most prevalent among students. Approximately half of the participants have experienced cyber defaming.

Cyberbullying and Cyber Bystander: 18.26% of the female participants accepted that they had bullied someone, and 36% of males accepted it. The survey results depict that half of the participants are cyber bystanders. The most prevalent type of cyberbullying in this survey is leaving someone without friends by either blocking or eliminating them from social groups, and similar victimization was observed in a study by Aizenkot and Kashy-Rosenbaum (Aizenkot & Kashy-Rosenbaum, 2020 ). Cyber-by-standing is more common in male students, as one-third of the students have witnessed someone posting something wrong on social media to embarrass a classmate or use abusive language. Peer bullying is commonly seen among university students.

Actions taken and the affect of cyberbullying on the victim: Only 42% of the victims report to the police, and 36% of the students get back to the bully either personally or virtually. Cyberbullying has affected both the physical and mental health of the victim, and they experience aggressiveness and depression at most times. It also affects their relationship with friends and family and their work and studies. Also, the participants said that they have stopped using various social networking sites, restricted their privacy settings, and adopted other necessary measures to avoid bullying.

Institutional support and suggestions : Cyberbullying Awareness is the need of the hour, various institutions have cyberbullying policies, but the students are not aware of that. Students need guidance, and awareness sessions and campaigns should be organized at the college/ university level. As per students' suggestive measures, there should be proper counseling sessions, teacher support, guidance to tackle online issues, a complaint portal, strict laws, and concrete action against the bully. Institutions should also teach the ethics of social media usage.

9 How to combat cyberbullying

Cyberbullying can be significantly reduced with effective interpersonal communication among the peer group, and also bystanders can play a vital role in preventing cyberbullying if they intervene immediately on behalf of victims (Rafferty & Vander Ven, 2014 ). From the case study, it has been seen that the majority of students were cyber bystanders; they should come forward and encourage reporting such issues. The students are not much aware of the cyberbulling policies, so as suggested by Watts (Watts et al., 2017 ) anonymous reporting should be introduced, and internet etiquette should be studied.

It has been analyzed that colleges/universities are not doing enough to deal with this problem. In educational institutions, policy development is a pressing need that may be addressed using focus groups to identify effective remedies for cyberbullying. In addition, institutional leaders should consider a cyberbullying policy in terms of circumstances, and aside from that, leaders may improve their workers' knowledge abilities by conducting surveys and investigative sessions on cyberbullying (Luker & Curchack, 2017 ). The study depicted that approximately 70% of the respondents feel that institutions are not doing enough to curb cyberbullying so there is a need for university professionals to effectively analyze and mitigate unfavorable internet interactions on their campuses. All students and faculty members require assistance and counseling (Cassidy et al., 2017 ).

Creating awareness is the primary need as per students' feedback. The government has launched various portals, helplines for helping women and children, cyber cells, and reporting portals for online issues but students are not much aware of these initiatives and legal provisions. There is a need to raise awareness. Insulting someone or defaming or making fun over social media are the most prevalent among educational institutions. The study findings by (Ngo et al., 2021 ) and (Hutson et al., 2018 ) have suggested several measures to curb cyberbullying. To begin, educational campaigns should be conducted to boost awareness and attitudes against cyberbullying across youth, parents, and teachers, inspiring them to become proactive in mediating and combating cyberbullying practices. Knowledge and practices on cyberbullying, communication and internet usage skills, education on digital citizenship, prosocial behaviors, empathy, and coping techniques with cyberbullying should all be included in these programs. From the case study it is observed that 70% victims feel angry, 43% depressed and one-third feel lonely and helpless. So, regular training sessions should be held to assist teenagers in developing the skills and talents necessary to actively cope with cyberbullying, assist other victims, and prevent them from being involved in cyberbullying themselves. Furthermore, institutions, healthcare providers, and leaders should promote parents' participation in suspecting and addressing cyberbullying and its implications among youngsters. This positive parent–child interaction may inspire them to seek help when confronted with adversity. In addition, Parents must exercise restraint and active mediation to raise awareness, as teenagers lack understanding of online threats and the ability to self-regulate their internet activities owing to a lack of experience (Steinfeld, 2021 ).

Also, the student Services at universities should design interventions where they concentrate not just on prophylactic work with techniques to eliminate cyberbullying but also on fostering relationships with individuals from whom victims may seek assistance with their online concerns (Yubero et al., 2017 ). Cyberbullying can be significantly reduced with effective interpersonal communication among the peer group, and also bystanders can play a vital role in preventing cyberbullying if they intervene immediately on behalf of victims (Rafferty & Vander Ven, 2014 ). As observed in cyber victimization questionnaire, cyberbullying faced by the majority is insulting someone, saying something untrue about a person or making fun of others over social media, or excluding others from online groups. Peer assistance initiatives appear to be successful in this regard where with proper training, students assist in educating their peers about using technology responsibly and cyberbullying by relating their experiences and strategies to avoid and address it.

A convenient, user-friendly, and cost-effective conversation bots (chatbots) can be used in anti-bullying programs to raise awareness regarding bullying and help change students' attitudes toward bullying problems (Oh et al., 2020 ). Moreover, to avoid consolidation and limit the impact on victims, all colleges should broaden their harassment policies, including cyberbullying; these protocols must include precise steps to be taken if such episodes are discovered. In the future, therapeutic assistance and victim protection should be included in protocols.

10 Conclusion and recommendation

With the technical advancement, and adoption of blended learning as a new paradigm in higher education, social media users are also increasing day by day, and the most significant impact is seen on the youngsters. Lack of knowledge about the ethics of using social media and the easy availability of the internet lead to cyberbullying. While the social networking sites act as a boon to the students, providing them an environment of collaborative learning even in the pandemics like covid19, at the same time, it may lead to cyberbullying victimization by exposing them to the hate and aggressive behavior on online platforms. Students have misused social media to humiliate or harass other students. So, regardless of the convenience offered by social media, the constant exposure to and communication with online technologies make the users susceptible to certain online interactions that may be beneficial at some point but put their safety and emotional and psychological well-being at risk. Over time, the Indian Government has launched various schemes (Nirbhaya Scheme, CCPW Scheme, I4C Scheme), online reporting portals (National cybercrime reporting portal), helpline numbers for women and children, and amended the required legal provisions of the IT Act and Indian Penal Code 1860 against the cyberbullying. State governments have also launched various awareness campaigns. As per UGC regulation, educational institutions have also stricken their anti-bullying policies. But the success of these initiatives depends upon the responses of the participants of the survey. It has been seen that the students are not much aware of all these laws against cyberbullying. More than half of the participants have faced cyberbullying, and many of them admitted that they had bullied others also. Cyberbullying victimization is dependent upon various factors like parents' guidance, the number of hours of social media usage, etc. Parental advice and lesser usage of social media may prevent the students from being bullied. Peer bullying is the most prevalent among college/university male students, and Cyberbullying has affected the students psychologically as well as physically; moreover, it degraded their performance at work/studies. Anger and depression are the major problems experienced by the victims. Two-thirds of the students are unaware of the cyberbullying policies and laws. After analyzing the results, it is suggested that the institutions and authorities organize seminars and counseling sessions to create awareness. They should follow strict measures to tackle cyberbullying, take appropriate actions, and establish complaint portals at the college/university level. The study covers a lot about the initiatives, provides insights into the current cyberbullying situation at higher education institutions in India, and concludes that more campaigns and seminars should be conducted to make students aware of all these legal provisions. At the same time, the study has a few limitations also: Firstly, based on popularity, only a few government initiatives and legal provisions have been listed, only national-level portals and helplines are mentioned, and State-wise programs and campaigns are not discussed. Secondly, the sample chosen may have many constraints due to the length of the survey; only limited responses are received, and the respondents may belong to the same environment and face similar problems. In the future, we will try to overcome these limitations.

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The case of a persistent bully, from victim to perpetrator

by University of South Australia

The new kid, the class clown, the popular kid, the troublemaker, or the loner. We all know children and young people who may be labeled in this way. In fact, many of these stereotypes have been depicted in Hollywood films.

But if your child falls into one of these categories, new University of South Australia research shows that not only may they be at risk of being bullied, but they perhaps, could be engaging in bullying others themselves now or in the future.

In a unique case study published in Pastoral Care in Education , researchers at UniSA's Center for Research in Educational and Social Inclusion have explored the lived experiences of a self-identified persistent bully—a voice that is scarce in literature—to gain a deeper understanding of the factors that may contribute to this anti-social aggressive behavior. The case study was an adult, preservice teacher who voluntarily shared his school-life experiences of bullying for the research.

Through a qualitative, exploratory case study, researchers identified three important social and behavioral "turning points" that served to steer a child toward bullying others, and eventually sustained his bullying behavior. These turning points included:

• Peer rejection and a lack of belonging.
• Striving to belong through bullying.
• Social positioning, status and reputation achieved through bullying.

Each year in Australia, 543,000 perpetrators instigate more than 35 million bullying incidents and almost 25% of students (about 910,000) experience bullying while at school. About 24% of victims are "bully-victims"—both victim and perpetrator of bullying.

UniSA researcher and education expert, Dr. Deborah Green, says the study highlights the acute need to address bullying by focusing and understanding the individual and their motivation.

"Bullying has been researched globally for decades, yet one in four children are still bullied in schools. This equates to more than one incident of bullying every week in every school around Australia," Dr. Green says.

"The trauma associated with bullying is felt both immediately and long after students have completed school, even up to 20 years later. The estimated costs associated with bullying are $2.3 billion.

"Clearly, traditional interventions and sanctions are not working for some students, so it's vital that we look for alternative solutions, particularly for those who persist in bullying others.

"In this study, we've investigated a rarely-heard voice—that of the bully—which revealed some very insightful findings about how and when his behavior changed. We call these turning points as they indicate when a change in behavior occurs. They also represent opportunities for intervention.

"Through this case study, we see how each turning point created a chain reaction of behaviors and responses which ultimately shapes the bullying trajectory, reinforcing the emerging bullying behavior until it was persistent.

"Sadly, although not uncommonly, this child started out as a victim of bullying. Then in an attempt to connect with students he began acting up, demonstrating bullying behaviors to others.

"Ironically, this generated a sense of social standing within his peer group , which led him to detention where he forged a friendship group—the 'detention kids'—and a heightened sense of status and belonging.

"Like all of us, he wanted to feel connected and like he belonged; he wanted a friend. But at each turning point, this need was filled by negative behaviors, rather than positive ones.

"In the end, the only way he knew to engage and connect with his peers was through bullying."

Dr. Green says that this study highlights the need for teachers, counselors, and well-being leaders to reflect on the individual needs of young people who are engaging in persistent bullying and support them in what may have led to this behavior.

"We encourage teachers and counselors to be aware of peer dynamics and social structures of their classes, so that they can better understand and respond to social issues " and call for "this to be further embedded into initial teacher education training," Dr. Green says.

"The negative impact of social rejection on a child's well-being must be recognized sooner, always remembering that the bullying may have started not to inflict harm, but to fill an innate need to connect with others.

"Early intervention and individualized and proactive preventative approaches should foster acceptance, recognition, safety and belonging.

"For some students, bullying appears to be adaptive, meeting an individual's social goals of belonging, status and identity. If we can interrupt the cycle of bullying, we could prevent significant and often lifelong harm for victims and those who engage in bullying."

Provided by University of South Australia

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