youtube bullying case study

Dolly Everett's suicide leads teen to create 'powerful and relevant' cyberbullying ad

A striking new ad about cyberbullying, directed by a 15-year-old girl, has been lauded as "brave", "disturbing" and "relevant" less than two years after the suicide of Amy 'Dolly' Everett shocked the nation .

Key points:

• Film shows a girl receiving texts like "kill urself" as oblivious parents sit by
• Dolly's parents hope it shows others how cyberbullying can creep into the home
• Film's teen director says every high schooler on social media has experience with it

Dolly was just 14 when she died early last year after being tormented by cyberbullies.

Now, stirred by her death, teenager Charlotte McLaverty has created a powerful short film that depicts how modern bullying is more than just sticks and stones in the playground.

It follows a teen girl in school uniform holding her phone, which pings with the notification sound every time another girl throws a rock at her.

The settings are all at home, including in the bedroom, bathroom and around the kitchen table as oblivious parents sit by.

As the film goes on more kids are given stones to throw and texts rapidly appear on the victim's phone, with messages like "why don't u just go kill urself".

"I was hoping to relate to how it feels to be cyberbullied for most teens," Charlotte told the ABC.

"The rocks being thrown was like the visual representation of what it feels like.

"The fact that the bully is there with her and none of the parents or children realise what's happening."

One in five young people report being cyberbullied in any one year, according to research by the advocacy organisation Dolly's Dream, which was established by Dolly's parents last year.

The organisation has this week launched a new internet hub to help parents better understand and deal with online safety, including bullying.

Australia's eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, also operates a cyberbullying reporting scheme for people aged 18 or under, and can issue an order to have material taken down.

Since July 2015 it has handled more than 1,300 complaints about cyberbullying of young Australians and says it has had a 100 per cent compliance rate from social media sites.

Dolly's mum Kate Everett said she hoped the ad would inspire teens to speak up.

"Dolly left us with a message that was 'speak, even if your voice shakes'," she said.

"I hope it reveals to parents how cyberbullying can happen anywhere, even at the dining table or watching TV with the family."

'Not like a punch in the face'

Charlotte's ad is being billed as a project that is "by teens, for teens" and she said part of the problem was cyberbullying was sometimes missed, even by the victims.

"It's not like a punch in the face. It's constant, relentless comments," she said.

"And it's harder to know — a punch in the face is like, 'Oh I'm being bullied'. You come home with a black eye.

"These type of comments, it's such a grey area, it's hard to know if you're even being cyberbullied, but you're hurt."

"It's so difficult, that's why we need to start talking."

Charlotte said the technology hadn't been around long enough to know if the issue had become better or worse, but she was adamant it was pervasive.

"Everyone who's had social media for over a year has either witnessed, experienced or been a victim or a bully," she said.

"Everyone who has social media can have some sort of story about it."

The ad was publicly released this week but has already been welcomed by viewers who described it as "so relevant" and "fantastic", with some saying it should be shown in every high school.

"Powerful and disturbing ... it's sad that this happens and brave that this has been made," one person wrote in response.

"The young girl who created this represents the situation so accurately," wrote another.

The film ends with the victim catching one of the thrown rocks and staring down her bully.

"Just to give a little bit of hope at the end of the film," Charlotte said.

• X (formerly Twitter)

Related Stories

'dolly saw the good in everybody she met': mourners gather to remember nt teen.

Is there a better way to talk about suicide? Quentin Bryce thinks so

• Community and Society

Bullying: A Case Study Revisited

Cruelty and its impact, years later.

Posted April 9, 2015

• How to Handle Bullying
• Find a therapist to support kids or teens

Several years ago, a teacher shared a scenario that exemplified how crafty and insidious bullying can be. I blogged about it at the time and reprinted the story here—as well as a followed up with the young victim:

From the outside, the abuse looked innocuous enough—kids around a table in the cafeteria, singing fragments of popular songs and laughing . Nothing to catch the attention of monitors—until another student bade a young teacher to listen carefully to the lyrics. Muse’s popular song was only tweaked, becoming "Far away / you can’t be far enough away / far away from the people who don’t care if you live or die." Instead of Lady Gaga’s lyrics, the kids chanted “you are so ugly / you are a disease. The boys don’t even want what you’re givin’ for free. No one wants your Love / Ew, yuck, ew / you’re such a joke.” Instead of Beyonce’s, “If you like it then you should’ve put a ring on it,” they sang “you’re a f*#% up and loser put a bag on it.” The repertoire was extensive, and new songs were added every week.

By and large, the students were careful to write lyrics that would pass censorship and not attract attention to themselves for profanity. They delighted in their own cleverness, and in their ability to get many uninvolved bystanders to sing a chorus as they waited in the food line. In other words, the humiliation of one girl became a popular bonding experience, and ad-libbing new lyrics was a way to get positive peer attention.

As they saw it, it was all just a joke. Ha Ha. Can’t she take a little joke?

Recently, I tracked down the victim (she is at a top-tier college) and she agreed to reflect on her experiences. I first asked whether she remembered the correct lyrics to those songs, all these years later. My mistake. I assumed the alternate lyrics were seared into her brain. Instead, she told me she had forgotten the revised songs, and would not have recalled the lyrics had I not transcribed them, years ago. When I asked whether she had ever gotten an apology , or if one would change anything now, she didn’t think there was any need.

Gratifying as it was to see her doing well, these were not the responses I anticipated. But as parents and educators think about bullying, it is important to keep in mind that not all incidents—not even all ongoing cruelties that clearly affect a young adult—will scar her for life. And that we may, at times, do a disservice to young people by rushing in to fix what we perceive as threatening, undermining their own abilities to handle it.

Our inability to gauge resilience is complicated by the fact that much cruelty lies in intersubjective nuances that are equally impossible to grasp, let alone gauge. However, much of the capacity for reparation lies in those nuances as well.

To my mind, singing cruelly revised songs (and encouraging others to sing along) was ongoing abuse, one that called for an intervention. However, "loud singing on the bus" was the only concrete issue that was ever addressed. The victim herself refused any involvement of school authorities, and—as she appears to be thriving—it seems this was the "right call" on her part. (Was it that she could not quite define herself as a victim? That she was handling her "victimization" in ways that adults could not see? That the teacher saw to it that ringleaders got in trouble for unrelated offenses? That—appearances to the contrary—she is burdened by insecurity and secret shame ?)

Interviewing this young woman prompted me to track down, and reconsider, something Clive Seale wrote almost two decades ago:

“in the ebb and flow of everyday interactions, as has been conveyed so effectively in the work of [Erving] Goffman, there exist numerous opportunities for small psychic losses, exclusions and humiliations, alternating with moments of repair and optimism . [Thomas] Scheff (1990) has sought to understand this quality of everyday interaction as consisting of cycles of shame and pride as the social bond is alternately damaged and repaired. The experience of loss and repair is, then, a daily event. In this sense “ bereavement ” (and recovery from it) describes the continual daily acknowledgement of the problem of human embodiment.” (1998)

To adults looking on, cruel song lyrics certainly seem a large "ebb" in the flow of this young student’s life—one requiring intervention. Her story, however, reminds us that as we forge ahead, looking for ways to protect our children against bullying, we must simultaneously enable them to negotiate the "ebbs" in life. A first step in this may simply involve helping them identify the "flow." This is not to lessen active response to bullying, or to sweep it under the rug, but to teach our children to challenge the negative self-narratives that form around bullying experiences. And—perhaps more importantly—to teach them that as bystanders, they contribute to the narratives of others (either implicitly or explicitly). At the risk of sounding Pollyannaish, the identification of counter-factual evidence may go far in challenging this negativity. It turns out, this is precisely what this young women was able to—though a group of friends outside the school environment, who not only raised awareness of, but contributed to, her flow.

Laura Martocci, Ph.D . is a Social Psychologist known for her work on bullying and shame. A former faculty member and dean at Wagner College, her current work centers around identity (re)construction and the transformative potential in change.

• Find a Therapist
• Find a Treatment Center
• Find a Psychiatrist
• Find a Support Group
• Find Teletherapy
• United States
• Brooklyn, NY
• Chicago, IL
• Houston, TX
• Los Angeles, CA
• New York, NY
• Portland, OR
• San Diego, CA
• San Francisco, CA
• Seattle, WA
• Washington, DC
• Asperger's
• Bipolar Disorder
• Chronic Pain
• Eating Disorders
• Passive Aggression
• Personality
• Goal Setting
• Positive Psychology
• Stopping Smoking
• Low Sexual Desire
• Relationships
• Child Development
• Therapy Center NEW
• Diagnosis Dictionary
• Types of Therapy

Understanding what emotional intelligence looks like and the steps needed to improve it could light a path to a more emotionally adept world.

• Coronavirus Disease 2019
• Affective Forecasting
• Neuroscience

ITS PSYCHOLOGY

Learn All About Psychology

• Neuro Psychology
• Educational Psychology
• Research Psychology
• Mental Disorder
• Personality Disorder
• Relationship
• Social Skills

19 Cases of Bullying among Real and Overwhelming Youth

Table of Contents

Last Updated on April 13, 2023 by Mike Robinson

We present 19 cases of real bullying and cyberbullying characterized by their fatal outcomes and the lack of training of education professionals.  The cases and stories of bullying in schools and outside them with cyberbullying have multiplied in recent years.

Bullying can cause severe mental distress. The cases of adolescents and minors who take their own lives due to the different types of bullying should be alarming to educational professionals. Schools must implement immediate and decisive actions to curtail this unacceptable behavior trend. 

1-Miriam, eight years old

Miriam is an eight-year-old girl who goes to elementary school. She loves animals, so she always has pictures of them in her books. She even has a backpack shaped like a puppy.

Her companions laugh and make fun of her, comparing her with the animals on the stickers on her backpack because she is overweight. Also, since she is “fat,” they take her money and snacks at recess.

Although she has told the teachers repeatedly, they have not done much to change the situation. To try to improve the situation, Miriam stopped eating and is in the hospital for anorexia.

2-Tania: Fourteen years old.

Tania, a 14-year-old teenager, has tried to commit suicide due to her high school classmates’ continuous threats, robberies, and aggressions. The situation has not changed despite filing 20 complaints against 19 of her classmates.

In January 2014, she was admitted to the hospital for 15 days due to an overdose of Valium pills. Despite her attempted suicide, the threats are still ongoing.

3-Diego: Eleven years old

It is a recent case of school bullying in Spain; Diego, an eleven-year-old boy, was a victim of this practice in a school in Madrid.

His mother remembers that her son told her he did not want to go to school, so his mood was always very sad; once, he lost his voice because of a blow he had suffered at school from his classmates.

The day he committed suicide, his mother went to pick him up at school, and he ran frantically to the car to get out safely. Later that evening, he killed himself.

4-Jokin Z: Fourteen years old

It was one of the first cases of bullying that came to light in Spain. After being bullied for months, he decided to commit suicide. The parents felt helpless. They tried for two years to prevent this tragedy and remove the suffering of their teenage son.

As a result of his suicide, eight students had charges brought against them. The parents were also arrested. However, only one individual was convicted. 

5-Jairo: Sixteen years old

Jairo is a 16-year-old boy from a town in Seville who faced severe bullying because of his physical disability. He has a prosthetic leg due to a wrong operation. His classmates continually make fun of him and his disability.

Not only did they trip him, but they also tried to take it off in the gymnastics class. On the other hand, in the social networks, there were photos of him manipulated with computer programs with bad words that made Jairo not want to go to school.

Due to the suffering caused by this type of behavior, Jairo asked to change schools and is currently at another institute.

6-Yaiza: Seven years old

At seven years old, Yaiza suffered bullying from her classmates. They insulted her continuously, to the point that Yaiza had difficulty convincing herself that what her classmates told her was false.  Not only did they insult her, but they also stole her breakfast and even once threw a table at her.

She was fortunate to have a teacher who was involved in the issue of bullying and helped make changes at the school. The teacher brought attention to bullying to better understand why these practices occur in schools.

7-Alan: Seventeen years old

This seventeen-year-old teenager was bullied by his classmates because he was a transsexual. He took his life on December 30, 2015, after taking pills mixed with alcohol.

It was not the first time he tried since he had been receiving therapy numerous times because he had suffered for years. As in other cases, Alan was no longer in school, but that was not enough.

8-Ryan: Fourteen years old

After years of psychological aggression, in 2003, Ryan, then fourteen years old, decided to commit suicide. He did so because he was supposedly gay. It all started because a friend of his published online that he was homosexual.

Because of this, he did not stop receiving jokes, ridicule, and humiliation from his classmates. This case helped to approve the Harassment Prevention Act in Vermont of the US States months after his death.

9-Arancha: Sixteen years old

This 16-year-old girl decided to throw herself from the sixth floor. The reason was the bullying she suffered from classmates in Madrid.

Arancha suffered from motor and intellectual disabilities, which was more than enough for her class to bully her. Although her parents reported this fact to the police, it was not enough to prevent the fatal outcome.

Minutes before launching herself from the building, she said goodbye to the people closest to her by sending them a message through WhatsApp, saying, “I was tired of living.”

10-Lolita: Fifteen years old

Lolita is currently under medical treatment due to the depression she suffers, which has paralyzed her face. This young woman from Maip, Chile, was bullied by four classmates at her school.

Her classmates mocked and humiliated her in class, which seriously affected her. According to the mother, the school knew about her daughter’s mistreatment and did nothing to prevent it.

11-Rebecca: Fifteen years

The case of Rebecca from the state of Florida is an example of cyberbullying. She decided to take her own life in 2013 due to the continuous threats and humiliations suffered by colleagues on social networks.

She and her mother had informed the teachers at school of this situation. Unfortunately, they did not work to stop the attacks on her. She posted on her profile days before her death, “I’m dead. “I cannot stand it anymore.”

12-Phoebe Prince: Fifteen years old

This 15-year-old Irish immigrant girl was harassed by nine teenagers who had criminal charges brought up in 2010. She was bullied physically and psychologically, and there was cyberbullying through cell phones and the internet.

Phoebe was humiliated and assaulted for three months in high school until she ended up hanging herself. The people who harassed her continued to do so even after her death.

13-Rehtaeh: Fifteen years old

This girl from Halifax, Nova Scotia, decided to hang herself in her bathroom after suffering cyber bullying. Her schoolmates and strangers took part in the bullying. Rehtaeh got drunk at a party, where, apart from raping her, they photographed her while it happened.

This photo began circulating everywhere, so even kids she did not know asked her to sleep with them on social networks. Her classmates also insulted her and made fun of her.

14-Oscar: Thirteen years old

This minor, who is 13 years old and in the first year of secondary school, decided to ingest liquid drain cleaner for pipes for the sole purpose of not going to school. Oscar was harassed not only by his classmates but also by one of his teachers.

Oscar could not contain the urge to go to the bathroom due to a urinary problem. His teacher never let him go, so he once urinated on himself.  From that moment on, he had to deal with the treatment he received from his teacher and his classmates, who made fun of him and insulted him repeatedly.

15-Monica: Sixteen years old

Mónica lived in Ciudad Real (Spain) and was 16 years old when she decided to commit suicide because of the treatment she received at school from her classmates. They would insult her on the bus, threaten her, and publish photos and nasty comments on social networks.

She decided to commit suicide to end all the hell that her classmates made her go through. Even though her father, one day before he took his own life, complained to the head of studies about what was happening to his daughter.

16-María: Eleven years old

This girl from Madrid (Spain) suffered harassment from her classmates at a religious school. Her classmates not only made fun of her but even physically mistreated her.

Teachers disputed these claims and did not defend her or take measures to stop them from happening. Because of this, she tried to overdose on pills without success.

17-Amanda: Fifteen years old

Amanda, a Canadian-born minor, committed suicide after posting a video on social media reporting that she was suffering bullying.

It all started when he sent a topless photo of herself to a stranger on the webcam; from that moment, insults and harassment began on the internet.

This bullying lasted three years. Amanda even changed schools to rebuild her life, but it did not help. The abuse caused anxiety and acute depression that led her to consume drugs.

18-Zaira: Fifteen years old

Here is another victim of bullying from classmates. In the case of Zaira, it all started when they recorded her with a cell phone while she was in the bathroom.  These girls spread the video among all the school’s classmates and others outside her school. 

Because of these recordings, Zaira had to take the continuous teasing of her classmates and even physical abuse. Thanks to a lower-class classmate, she faced bullying, and this story had a happy ending.

19-Marco: Eleven years

This child had spent five years enduring the harassment he suffered from his classmates. They made fun of him because he was supposedly overweight, although, in reality, he was not.

They humiliated him on many occasions, and once, they even took off his clothes in gym class.  A teacher knew what was happening to him and did not take action. Marco is currently in another school after telling him everything that happened to his parents.

Conclusions About Bullying

These 19 cases are only 19 of many in our schools. These examples show the flaws that exist in education systems worldwide. The education system professionals are not doing enough to address these abuses.

Despite all we know about bullying, there still needs to be more information about its prevention and action. The schools are not prepared to face this type of situation, leading them to ignore this behavior in their students and leave the families alone with this problem.

Also Read:  11 Human Body Games for Children

To reduce the number of suicides due to school bullying in children, we must educate everyone involved. By providing adequate training, people will know what guidelines to follow in these situations to prevent adolescent suicide.

Related Post

10 activities for children with down syndrome.

The 6 Most Common Bone Marrow Diseases

What is Solomon Syndrome? 7 Guidelines to Combat It

The Role of Dopamine in Love

Child Aggression: Symptoms, Causes and Treatments

What is Vicarious Learning?

Long Words Phobia (Hipopotomonstrosesquipedaliofobia)

21 Activities for Children with ADHD

Cognitive Stimulation: 10 Exercises for Adults and Children

Aggressive Communication: Features and Examples

The 10 Most Common Neurological Symptoms

Mental Hygiene: What it is and 10 tips to have it

The 4 Major Stress Hormones

Mythomania Symptoms, Causes and Treatment

• The Ultimate Guide to Overcoming Driving OCD

• Why Happiness Is a Choice: How to Live a Fulfilling Life

• A Guide on How to Rebuild Your Life After Trauma

• Understanding Trauma Bonding and Its Effects

Its Psychology

Quick Links

• Privacy Policy
• Terms and Conditions
• About Its Psychology

Recent Posts

• The Battle of Resistance vs Resilience: How to Build Mental Toughness

Need help dealing with violent or distressing online content?  Learn more

Cyberbullying: scenarios

Instructions on how to use these scenarios .

These scenarios are designed to be used with students to start skill-building conversations or with teachers for professional learning.

Using these scenarios in professional learning situations

• Cut the individual cards out and discuss the scenarios using the questions as a basis for discussion.
• Work in groups and identify where in the curriculum students can be taught skills to protect them from this risk.
• Use the scenarios for parent information evenings to build parent skills and knowledge.

Using these scenarios with students

• Give students scenarios to read, either in groups or individually.
• Students look at the scenario from the character's perspective and answer the questions provided.
• Once the students have read the scenario ask them to reflect on their own skills in managing this type of risk online.

Scenario 1: That’s mean

Name: thanh.

Thanh has been sharing videos of his cake creations on his parents’ YouTube account. He and his parents decided it would be safe because YouTube doesn’t allow comments on videos featuring kids under the age of 13. However, some children in his class posted links to his videos in a Google doc and are making mean comments on it.

What should Thanh do? 

Possible responses:

• Thanh should report the content to his teacher or an ‘askable or trusted adult’. 
• Thanh could talk to someone he feels safe with and discuss what to do next.
• Thanh could ask his parents to remove the videos from YouTube.
• Thanh could ask the students in his class to remove the mean comments. 

Teachers can help Thanh and other students be prepared for this online risk by:

• teaching strategies that students can use when they feel uncomfortable or need help with a situation
• explicitly including online safety in lessons on friendship and relationships
• teaching technical skills to take screenshots of bullying comments
• ensuring all students understand how to report and manage cyberbullying incidents
• communicating information about how to access counselling to discuss strategies for self-care e.g. Kids Helpline, Parentline.  

Scenario 2: WhatsApp

A group of students in Kobe’s class have been invited to join the same WhatsApp group. At first, it was to chat about a soccer game, but the students enjoyed using WhatsApp. Soon it seemed like everyone was in the chat. Kobe wasn't asked, and a friend showed him a message posted in the group which said 'Kobe is a cry baby. No one let him in the chat.'

How could Kobe’s friends help him?

Suggested responses:

• His friends could send Kobe an encouraging direct message.
• His friends could encourage the group to include Kobe for example they could say: ‘Kobe comes up with great ideas for projects. Let’s include him.’

Teachers can help Kobe and other students be prepared for this online risk by:

• discussing social media age restrictions and the benefits and risks of using social media
• explicitly including online safety in lessons on relationships and wellbeing
• working with students in the class to include other students online and offline
• discussing how students can access support if they don’t feel comfortable talking to their teacher e.g. Kids Helpline ,  a school counsellor.

Scenario 3: Image-based abuse or cyberbullying

Amy broke up with Joe (16 years old) a few months ago. Joe says he is really upset and can't get over her. Even though Amy has asked him to give her some space, he sends her direct messages on social all the time. Amy is shocked when Joe sends her some nude images taken of her when they were in a relationship. He doesn't include a message with the photos. (Source: YeS project)

How can Amy and Joe get support?

• Amy could use Youth Law Australia to get information about sexting laws in their state.
• Amy could talk to a trusted adult or teacher about the situation and problem solve how to get support.
• Amy could report any issues to the social media company first, if she feels she needs help - she can use The eSafety guide  to find out how. See eSafety's reporting pages for advice, support and FAQs.
• Amy might ask a teacher/counsellor to help her report the issue. eSafety’s guide to explicit images in schools provides specific guidance for schools on how to do this safely. 
• Amy could contact the eSafety image-based abuse team (for complaints about sharing nude images without consent ) or the cyberbullying team (for complaints about posts that seriously harass, threaten, humiliate or intimidate). The teams work together closely, so if Amy is unsure about the category they will help her work it out. They can assist with liaising with social media companies, as well as providing advice and referrals to support services. 
• Joe could explore eSafety young people to get strategies to help him take action to turn the situation around.  

Teachers can help Amy, Joe and other students be prepared for this online risk by:

• including online examples in lessons on respectful relationships, consent and wellbeing
• ensuring all students understand social media standards and the consequence for misuse even in private communications
• ensuring all students understand how to report an online safety issue to the social media company and when to escalate to the eSafety Commissioner. See eSafety's reporting pages for advice, support and FAQs.
• helping all students know where to go for help if they have been called a bully or shared an intimate image without someone's consent
• promoting appropriate counselling and support services to all students. 

Cyberbullying scenarios

eSafety acknowledges all First Nations people for their continuing care of everything Country encompasses — land, waters and community. We pay our respects to First Nations people, and to Elders past, present and future. 

First Nations people should be aware that this website may contain images and voices of people who have died.

Find information and resources for First Nations people.

Read our Reconciliation Action Plan .

Get the latest info to your inbox

What's on

Find the latest webinars, events and campaigns

Ask a general question about our work

Keep up to date across all our platforms

• Disclaimer and copyright
• Accessibility
• Privacy policy
• Freedom of information

Watch CBS News

A 15-year-old boy died by suicide after relentless cyberbullying, and his parents say the Latin School could have done more to stop it

By Megan Hickey

April 25, 2022 / 10:44 PM CDT / CBS Chicago

CHICAGO (CBS) -- A 15-year-old boy named Nate Bronstein was enrolled at one of the most prestigious private schools in Chicago and had a promising future — that is, until his parents say he became a victim of relentless cyberbullying by his classmates.

Nate took his own life. 

And in an exclusive interview with CBS 2 Investigator Megan Hickey, his parents allege that the Latin School of Chicago could have done more to stop it. 

Rose and Robert Bronstein never fathomed that they'd be speaking about their son, Nate in the past tense.

"I still can't process it," said Rose Bronstein.

"He definitely wanted to go to a college that had big time sports," said Robert Bronstein. "He loved to make people laugh, and laugh himself."

And of the school, Rose added, "It's a toxic culture – so toxic that we lost our son from it."

The Bronsteins' 10th-grader was a super-sharp, funny kid; A pillar in their family of five. He was a new transfer last fall to the Latin School of Chicago, at 59 W. North Blvd. in the Gold Coast.

But he was bullied by his classmates to the point that he didn't want to live to see his future. 

"It had been kept from us, so that's why we were completely, completely taken off guard when this happened," said Robert Bronstein.

The Bronsteins had concerns about their son adjusting to a new school — and according to a 68-page lawsuit just filed in the Circuit Court of Cook County, they raised those concerns repeatedly with administrators. 

Bronstein Complaint (Filed 4.25.22) by Adam Harrington on Scribd

But according to the filing, they had no idea about the extent of the cyberbullying that tormented Nate. 

But the Bronsteins say Latin did. 

"Our son would still be alive today if Latin would have done their job and reported to us what had gone on within the school," said Rose Bronstein.

The Bronsteins say they were never told that on Dec. 13, 2021, Nate asked for a meeting with his dean of students to report that several students were bullying him via a text message thread provided to CBS 2, and on Snapchat.

One of those Snapchats, according to the lawsuit, encouraged Nate to kill himself.  Another used a phrase that's understood to be an indirect death threat. 

The dean listened, but took no disciplinary action, according to the filing. 

And exactly one month later, Nate's father found him hanging from a shower in the bathroom in their home. A noose was tied around his neck. 

Again, he was just 15. 

 "We would have known, and we would have protected him, and he'd still be here today," said Rose Bronstein.

It wasn't until after Nate died that the family was made aware of the texts, the Snapchats, the taunting — from another parent at Latin. And that's a problem — a legal one in the State of Illinois. 

Illinois General Assembly Public Act 098-0669 requires that every school in the state, including private schools, have an anti-bullying policy.

That policy must include information about how bullying should be reported and how it is to be investigated, and also that bullying incidents must be reported to the parents of those involved. 

"When there's an alleged incident of bullying, they are supposed to notify the parents of both parties involved," said Vitto Mendez, one of the leading experts in the country on state anti-bullying laws and their effectiveness.

Vitto Mendez confirmed that school administrators in the state of Illinois are legally obligated to report incidents of bullying to the family members of those involved.

Anna DiPronio Mendez is the executive director of the National Association of People Against Bullying, and she can speak to why notification is so important.  Her son Daniel's school knew about his bullying, but she was never notified until after he took his own life in 2009. 

He was just 16.  

"It's one of my biggest regrets that I've lived with to this day is why was I not contacted? Why was I not told?" she said.

In the weeks and months following Nate's death, students, parents, and even a current employee of the school reached out to tell the family they were not alone in their concerns about an alleged cover-up culture at Latin. 

You don't have to look much farther than Instagram to see public testimonials to that effect. 

The Survivors of Latin Instagram account was a public account with close to 3,000 followers. According to the creator, the 121 pages' worth of stories involve "anti-Blackness, xenophobia, racism, classism, sexual assault, homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny."

The Instagram page was taken down as of Monday night, but a Survivors of Latin Facebook page remained in place .

"Look, our son was 15, and his perception of what he can and can't handle isn't necessarily accurate – but that's why the policies exist, and that's why, now, the law exists – to involve parents," said Robert Bronstein. "The school has to err on the side of a lot of transparency," 

To be clear, the family isn't suing Latin for the money. They've pledged to donate any money gained through legal proceedings to anti-bullying and anti-suicide charities. They say they're speaking out because remaining silent would disrespect their son's memory. 

"You can't allow this to go on, because it's going to happen to another child," said Robert Bronstein.

The Bronsteins never got to watch their son grow up. But they hope they might give other parents the chance to step in. 

"We need transparency into what they did and didn't do while he was a student there, and after the fact," said Robert Bronstein, "because if this can be allowed to just be swept under the rug, then it's going to happen again — and we're not going to be complicit in that."

We reached out to the Latin School with several questions upon the filing of the lawsuit. The school issued the following statement late Monday:

"Our school community deeply grieves the tragic and untimely passing of one its students. It is a loss that impacts our whole community. Our hearts go out to the family, and we wish them healing and peace. With respect to their lawsuit, however, the allegations of wrongdoing by the school officials are inaccurate and misplaced. The school's faculty and staff are compassionate people who put students' interests first, as they did in this instance. While we are not, at this time, going to comment on any specific allegation in this difficult matter, the school will vigorously defend itself, its faculty and its staff against these unfounded claims."

If you or someone you know is concerned about suicide, you can contact the 24/7, confidential National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255. You can also reach the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, or go  here  to online chat. More helpful resources can be found  here . 

Megan Hickey is a member of the 2 Investigator team, focusing on topical investigative stories.

Featured Local Savings

More from cbs news.

20-year-old stabbed during attempted robbery on CTA platform in The Loop

Man robbed, sexually assaulted in River North

CPD seek 4 suspects in robbery at CTA Red Line Belmont stop

2 men found guilty in 2015 murder of 7-year-old Amari Brown

Open Access is an initiative that aims to make scientific research freely available to all. To date our community has made over 100 million downloads. It’s based on principles of collaboration, unobstructed discovery, and, most importantly, scientific progression. As PhD students, we found it difficult to access the research we needed, so we decided to create a new Open Access publisher that levels the playing field for scientists across the world. How? By making research easy to access, and puts the academic needs of the researchers before the business interests of publishers.

We are a community of more than 103,000 authors and editors from 3,291 institutions spanning 160 countries, including Nobel Prize winners and some of the world’s most-cited researchers. Publishing on IntechOpen allows authors to earn citations and find new collaborators, meaning more people see your work not only from your own field of study, but from other related fields too.

Brief introduction to this section that descibes Open Access especially from an IntechOpen perspective

Want to get in touch? Contact our London head office or media team here

Our team is growing all the time, so we’re always on the lookout for smart people who want to help us reshape the world of scientific publishing.

Home > Books > Adolescences

The Dark Side of YouTube: A Systematic Review of Literature

Submitted: 11 June 2021 Reviewed: 17 August 2021 Published: 06 September 2021

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.99960

Cite this chapter

There are two ways to cite this chapter:

From the Edited Volume

Adolescences

Edited by Massimo Ingrassia and Loredana Benedetto

To purchase hard copies of this book, please contact the representative in India: CBS Publishers & Distributors Pvt. Ltd. www.cbspd.com | [email protected]

Chapter metrics overview

498 Chapter Downloads

Impact of this chapter

Total Chapter Downloads on intechopen.com

Total Chapter Views on intechopen.com

The prolific use of social media platforms, such as YouTube, has paved the way for the potential consumption of inappropriate content that targets the vulnerable, especially impressionable adolescents. The systematic review of literature has identified 24 papers that focused on the “dark side” of YouTube for adolescent users. The analysis showed that eight themes emerged: the glamorization of smoking, the promotion of alcohol use, videos that focused on body image/health, videos on bullying, self-harm/suicide, advertising, drugs and general vulnerabilities. The results revealed that videos that contain smoking and alcohol frequently feature sexualized imagery. Smoking videos also frequently feature violence. Smoking and alcohol are also often featured in music videos. The analysis also showed that researchers call for awareness, more strict advertising guidelines and promotion of health messages especially in terms of body image/health, self-harm/suicide and bullying. It is recommended that parents regulate the YouTube consumption of their younger adolescent children, as children do not always understand the risks associated with the content consumed, or might get desensitized against the risks associated with the content.

• Adolescents
• Vulnerabilities

Author Information

Marie hattingh *.

• Department of Informatics, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa

*Address all correspondence to: [email protected]

1. Introduction

In [ 1 ] it was reported that the main reasons adolescent use social media is for information sharing, alleviating boredom, escapism, to interact socially with peers, building social capital and to receive feedback on their appearances. Therefore, adolescents’ participation in social media platforms is an important aspect for “social participation” [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ]. However, research has also shown that social media use can have an impact on the emotional state of the adolescent and the extent to which they can be influenced by peers [ 5 ]. Although, research on adolescents’ use of social media is widely reported, this research is focusing on one social media platform, YouTube. YouTube is a video sharing platform that allows content creators to share videos easily, and viewers can view most videos without subscription, registration or restriction.

According to [ 6 ] 80% of parents survey in the United States of America (USA) indicate that their children younger than 11 years of age watches videos on YouTube. According to [ 7 ] 85% of USA boys and 70% of USA girls between the ages 13 and 17 years of age use YouTube on a daily basis.

In [ 3 ] it was shown that adolescents develop a familiarity with the YouTubers (both as content creators and viewers) as they can identify with what they represent. This prolific use of YouTube by adolescents, and even pre-adolescent children, expose children to a variety of content: good and bad. Although it has been reported that adolescent do access YouTube content “for good” such as incidental learning [ 8 ], informal learning [ 9 ], dealing with anxiety [ 10 ], practicing safe sexual health [ 11 ] and to obtain information regarding medical procedures [ 12 ] to name a few, unfortunately a number of studies have reported on using YouTube “for bad”.

This chapter reports on a systematic review of literature on the negative aspects associated with YouTube, specifically concerning adolescents.

The chapter is structured as follows: Section 2 provides a description of the research methodology, Section 3 provides the data analysis and results. The results are discussed in Section 4 and the chapter is concluded in Section 5.

2. Research methodology

This study employed a systematic review of literature as the methodology. Two research platforms (ProQuest and Ebscohost) were used to access scholarly articles. The ProQuest platform included 12 databases (including ProQuest Central, Health & medical Collection, healthcare Administration database, Nursing and Allied Heath Database and Psychology Database) and the Ebscohost platform included multiple databases (including APA PscyArticles, APA PsycInfo, Family and Society Studies Worldwide, Health Source – consumer edition, Health source: Nursing/academic edition, humanities source, MEDLINE,) In both instances the search terms used were “YouTube” AND “(adolescents or teenagers)”. In both instances “YouTube” had to appear in the title of the paper and “adolescents/teenagers” needed to appear in the abstract of the paper. This search criteria ensured that the search was focused on the YouTube social media platform, with the user segment of adolescents or teenagers. The only filtered aspect was that only peer reviewed scholarly articles should be included.

Duplicate paper

Not written in English

Not focusing on “dark side” aspects

Table 1 illustrates that the final results obtained was a review of 24 papers. These 24 papers.

Search results.

Thematic Analysis [ 13 ] was employed to analyze the content of each of the 24 papers. Phase one is concerned with the researcher familiarizing herself with the data. This was accomplished by reviewing the articles obtained in the search and applying the exclusion criteria. Phases two to five almost occurred in parallel. Phase two was concerned with coding which involves the identification of the theme addressed by the paper. Eight main themes were identified and is illustrated in Table 2 . The third phase was concerned with sub-themes. For example, it emerged that YouTube videos featuring smoking also features violence and sexualized imagery. Phase four was concerned with reviewing the themes. This phase involved identifying links between sub-themes, for example it emerged that YouTube videos featuring alcohol also featured sexualized content. This is illustrated in Figure 1 . Phase five was self-evident, as the eight themes that emerged was very well-defined in terms of the context in which it was presented. Phase six is concerned with the write up of the data. This was done in two phases, first by providing a short description on each of the studies and then discussing the results in Section 6.

Themes identified from paper.

Themes and sub-themes.

3. Data analysis and result

Thematic analysis uncovered eight major themes. The themes that were uncovered are detailed in Table 2 .

Figure 1 illustrate how the themes (in yellow) are connected with the sub themes (in blue). The themes and sub themes have emerged from the literature where the authors discussed the theme in terms of the sub themes. For example, Kim et al. [ 14 ] conducted a content analysis of smoking fetish videos on YouTube and discovered videos containing smoking glamourizes the activity and it also contains a lot of sexualized imagery and violence. They call for guidelines to manage videos as young children have access to videos that should have parental guidance (PG) ratings.

Likewise, YouTube videos featuring alcohol, also contained sexualized imagery, were present in a number of music videos [ 18 ] where the use of alcohol was glamourized [ 20 ] and advertised [ 19 ].

Each of these themes will be discussed below.

3.1 Smoking

Four of the twenty four articles discussed the promotion and “eroticized” nature [ 14 ] of smoking. In [ 14 ] 200 videos were sampled from 2300 videos obtained by using the search words “smoking fetish” and “smoking fetishism”. Their analysis revealed (at 4 November 2007) 2220 smoking fetish videos. Using the same search term (“smoking fetch”) it was observed by looking at the playlists only, that there are over 7000 smoking fetish videos now 1 . Their analysis further showed that although some content was not available for under 18-year old’s, 85.1% of the content was available to everybody. Their study further found that almost 60% of the smoking fetish videos were sexually charged with scantily clad women. They also recommended stronger rating for the videos as it contained sexuality and violence.

In [ 16 ] it was tested whether health messages that informs adolescents of the risks of smoking had an impact on their perception of smoking. Their research showed that smoking exposure to adolescents on YouTube correlates with an apparent increased prevalence of smoking.

In [ 15 ] it was investigated how tobacco was presented in music videos. The results showed that, at that time (2015), the music videos contained 203 million representations of tobacco products where adolescents were exposed four times more than adults to tobacco products per head of the UK population. The research also showed that for both alcohol and tobacco girls were more.

In [ 17 ] it was explained that adolescents perceive cigars to be less harmful than cigarettes. As a consequence, smokers remove the tobacco binder through a process known as “freaking”. The results of their multi-study indicated that adolescents participate in freaking because they believe it ‘Easier to smoke’ (54%), ‘Beliefs in reduction of health risks’ (31%), ‘Changing the burn rate’ (15%) and ‘Taste enhancement’ (12%). Study 2, which concentrated on the comments of freaking videos, indicated that adolescents were unaware or not understanding the risks associated with smoking.

3.2 Alcohol

The alcohol theme is associated with the presence or consumption of alcohol in YouTube videos. Four papers reported on the extent to which alcohol was present in YouTube videos.

Further to what was reported above, [ 15 ] also investigated how the presence of alcohol was presented in music videos. The results showed that, at that time (2015), the music videos contained 1006 million representations of alcohol products where adolescents were exposed five times higher for alcohol than for tobacco and four times higher than adults for alcohol representations per head of the UK population. Exposed than boys.

In a further study of Cranwell et al. [ 18 ] analyzed “lyrics and visual imagery” of “49 UK Top 40 songs and music videos”. They found that the presence of alcohol in music videos were often accompanied with sexualized imagery or the objectification of women., that the use of alcohol was part of the image, lifestyle and sociability of the video actors and finally the videos promoted excessive drinking with no regards to consequences. Their study concluded, with a caution to the role of advertisers play in the promotion of music video product placements. The placement of alcohol in the videos are often not in line with the “advertising codes of practice”.

Managing the advertising content on social media, has received some attention. In [ 19 ] it was investigated whether organizations conform to their digital marketing standards, even on social media. Specifically, the study focused on the extent alcohol is advertised/promoted on YouTube to viewers that are under the legal drinking age. The also, found that alcohol companies’ digital marketing is not sufficient to protect underage viewers from viewing advertisements that promotes the consumption of alcoholic beverages.

In [ 20 ] it was further reported that alcohol use was presented as a fun, social activity with underage drinkers. A content analysis on 137 YouTube videos were conducted and concluded that YouTube is an effective platform to advertise alcohol use to adolescents.

3.3 Body image/health

The body image/health theme is concerned with the way body image/health information is communicate and perceived on YouTube. Three papers reported on the dissemination of body image/health data on YouTube.

In [ 21 ] an experimental study was conducted to examine the effects of health advice on “adolescent girls’ state of self-objectification, appearance anxiety and preference on products that can be used to enhance appearance”. The study used YouTube videos to inform adolescent girls on healthy behaviors. The results from 154 adolescent girls showed that younger girls tend to self-objectify more. Furthermore, the younger adolescent girls’ self-objectification mediated the effects on appearance anxiety and the use of products to improve their appearance.

In [ 22 ] misinformation spread on YouTube regarding anorexia was investigated. Three doctors analyzed 140 videos on YouTube regarding anorexia. They classified content as “informative, pro-anorexia, or other”. It was found there were less pro-anorexia videos than informational videos creating awareness on anorexia, but pro-anorexia videos were more liked by the viewers. The researchers advocated for more awareness on truthfulness of YouTube videos, especially concerning beauty and lifestyle advice. They recommended that celebrities should be employed to create awareness of anorexia.

In [ 23 ] it was reported on adolescents accessing YouTube videos to learn about weight loss. They reported that adolescents showed negative feelings regarding body image. The exploratory research analyzed 50 videos that were identified by searching with the key word “diet”. Their analysis concluded that the videos did not show appropriate guidelines to safely lose weight as it was made by non-qualified people. They recommended that policies by government should be in place, or at least be present on the YouTube platform to guide the information being made available on YouTube.

3.4 Bullying

Bullying is concerned with the actions to cause physical or emotional harm to another party. Four papers reported on the extent of bullying content visible in YouTube videos. In [ 2 , 31 ] it was identified as a common theme as part of digital vulnerabilities of adolescents. However, two papers focused exclusively on bullying.

In [ 24 ] investigated the degree to which bullying content is present on YouTube. They found that 89 videos showed violence, 38 videos presented content related to suicide. Only 56 videos were promulgating positive messages related to finding help. They concluded that professional agencies should work towards spreading messages to stop bullying behavior.

In [ 25 ] it was reported that YouTube is the most popular social networking platform among Canadian adolescents. This research reported on the analysis of 55 video logs (vlogs) about bullying. They recommended that YouTube can be used as a platform to disseminate and discuss bully behavior.

3.5 Self-harm/suicide

Self-harm/suicide theme is associated with activity to inflict injuries on themselves, or in extreme cases take their own lives. Four papers reported on these types of activities. In [ 32 ] research on the “blue whale challenge” was reported. The “blue whale challenge” encouraged adolescents to self-harm and eventually kill themselves. Through a thematic analysis of comments on 60 publicly posted YouTube videos, they learnt that although the comments were focused on raising awareness of the risks of the challenge, it might encourage vulnerable individuals to partake in the challenge. They advocated for “safe messaging guidelines” to create awareness to social media users on the risks associated with content that promote self-harm/suicide.

In [ 26 ] reference is made to another challenge, namely Tide pod, which encourages non-suicidal self-harm. The analysis of 413 YouTube videos that featured content on self-harm/suicide revealed that 80% of the videos promoted awareness regarding the risks. Other results indicated that an anlysis of the comments revealed that 2.9% of the comments encouraged suicide, 2.1% of the comments were on how to fight suicidal thoughts, 5.4% of the comments were related to the poster wanting to commit suicide and 5.8% of the comments were negative. They concluded that further research is needed to investigate the negative impact social media platforms can have on the mental health of adolescents.

In [ 27 ] the 50 most popular videos depicting self-harm was analyzed. It was revealed that 58% of the videos did not warn viewers of the potential sensitive content to be displayed. The analysis showed that 42% of the videos were portraying a neutral message with regards to self-harm, 27% of the videos discouraged self-harm. However, 23% of the videos provided “mixed messages” regarding self-harm and 7% of the videos encouraged self-harm. They concluded their research by recommending that teachers and parents need to be made aware of self-harm content on YouTube to which vulnerable adolescents can be exposed to.

In [ 28 ] 65 videos that demonstrated the asphyxiation game was analyzed. Results showed that 90% of the videos featured males. The videos demonstrated different asphyxiation techniques, including hypoxic seizures (55%) and the sleeper hold (88%). The researchers concluded that YouTube provides a platform for adolescents to view videos on choking and that continued exposure to such videos might normalize the act of choking. They advocated for increased awareness of this to alert youths to the risks associated with the choking games.

3.6 Advertising

Product advertisement on YouTube, is not always regulated by the same digital marketing guidelines as formal digital marketing platforms. Two papers spoke directly about the advertisement of products in YouTube videos.

Further to the promotion of alcohol in [ 19 ] to underage drinkers, as reported above, another paper investigated the presence of product placement in microcelebrities’ YouTube videos.

In [ 29 ] 1961 comments were analyzed and it revealed that the followers of the specific YouTube channel accepted the commercial content promoted by the star of the YouTube channel. However, they cautioned that viewers are not always aware of product placement, due to lack of transparency, and that viewers might have a skewed view of the life of microcelebrities and the extent to which their lifestyles are supported by industry.

Three papers, [ 2 , 30 , 31 ] reference drugs as being a theme in YouTube videos. Although [ 2 , 31 ] referenced the presence of drugs as a general theme, [ 30 ] explained in detail the effect of Salvia, a short-acting hallucinogenic drug that adolescents in the United States used. The research focused on the analysis of self-taped videos of the use of Salvia. It was reported that the onset of the drugs’ effects was quick, within 30 seconds and lasted for approximately 8 minutes. The research concluded that YouTube was an effective medium to showcase the effect of drug use.

3.8 Vulnerabilities

Through content analysis [ 2 , 31 ] found that YouTube content creators focused on four major themes of: sex, bullying, pregnancy and drugs. These four themes presented the vulnerabilities adolescents are exposed through YouTube content. They concluded that the language used in the YouTube content was aimed at adolescents. Furthermore, they found that the videos that adolescents made themselves, were more often watched by other adolescents. Videos that were made by institutions to promote a certain “positive” message, were not well watched, or distributed.

4. Discussion

The analysis of the 24 articles provided eight “dark side” themes associated with YouTube content that adolescents engage with. These “dark side” themes describe the typical dangers that adolescent can be exposed to when viewing YouTube videos.

It was apparent that a number of videos featured sexualized imagery, in addition to the promotion of smoking and alcohol consumption [ 14 , 18 ]. The promotion of alcohol to underage drinkers were also revealed [ 19 , 20 ].

It was quite interesting to observe that the context in which smoking and alcohol was promoted was through music videos. Often in the music videos, smoking and the consumption of alcohol was perceived as fun, and socializing activities [ 18 ].

A number of papers reported that certain YouTube videos do attempt to create awareness of the risks and dangers associated with some activities promoted on YouTube [ 26 , 32 ]. However, the research reported mixed results. For example, in [ 22 ] it was reported that there are fewer pro-anorexia videos observed from the sample than informational videos that caution against anorexia, however the pro-anorexia videos were more “liked” than the informational videos.

A common theme that emerged from the research was: “regulation”. In [ 14 ] it was stated that the regulation of smoking advertisements, and smoking fetishism is not sufficient. Strong regulations on advertising was also mentioned in [ 19 ]. Advertising Agencies need to be made aware, or realize that the viewers of YouTube content are becoming younger [ 6 ], and potentially more vulnerable due to the desensitizing effect of over consumption of YouTube content. The promotion of inappropriate products, such underage drinking and smoking, and the potential unawareness of a young viewer of intentional product placement [ 29 ] need to be more effectively regulated. Adolescents are greatly influenced by social media influencers [ 33 ] or microcelebrities [ 29 ] and although the intention of these influencers or microcelebrities are not always negative, they might unintentionally promote negative behavior. Furthermore, the use of “corrective messages” [ 16 ] to counteract the effect of making smoking socially acceptable. This was also advocated by [ 24 ] who argued that governmental institutions or professional organizations invest in the promulgation of “positive messages” to prevent bullying and assist adolescents who are/have been bullied.

Parents need to be aware of the availability of potentially harmful content on YouTube (also other video sharing platforms such as Tic Toc). Often, the harmful videos do not limit underage or vulnerable viewers to access the content. Although it was shown that some videos to promulgate health messages, parents need to ensure that their children do not get desensitized due to the over consumption of content. Children often do not understand the risks associated with certain “fun” activities such as freaking [ 17 ] or games [ 26 , 32 ].

Adolescents’ motivation of social media use in general can provide the explanation of the impact it can have on adolescent well-being. In [ 1 ] it was shown that motivation for social media use which include passing the time or escapism are inversely related to well-being and body satisfaction and well-being respectively. Therefore, apart from the “negative message” received on social media, such as YouTube, the reason for “escaping” or “passing the time” using social media can further have a detrimental effect on adolescent well-being.

5. Conclusions

YouTube (and similar video sharing platforms) is a popular social media platform for adolescents. Although not all the content on YouTube is problematic, this research has shown that there is truly worrisome content on YouTube which adolescents, especially young adolescents have free access to. Although social media use in general need to be regulated, parents need to regulate the content that their younger adolescents consume of YouTube as the do not always understand the risks associated with the content presented. Also, due to the presentation of some content as “fun” and “sociable”, it can normalize viewers into believing that it is acceptable to partake in illustrated activities.

Apart from “being aware” of potential harmful content on YouTube which can have a detrimental impact on the well-being of adolescents, regulating authorities need to capitalize on the prolific viewership of YouTube by promoting “positive messages” on YouTube.

Furthermore, although the focus of the study was on uncovering the themes that can promulgate “negative messages”, parents, users and regulators need to be aware that the motivations of adolescents’ YouTube use might in itself be harmful to their well-being.

Due to the limited number of empirical studies conducted on the “dark themes of YouTube”, future research can be dedicated to uncovering the impact these dark themes have on the well-being of adolescents.

• 1. Jarman HK, Marques MD, McLean SA, et al (2021) Motivations for Social Media Use: Associations with Social Media Engagement and Body Satisfaction and Well-Being among Adolescents. J Youth Adolescence. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-020-01390-z
• 2. Montes-Vozmediano M, García-Jiménez A, Menor-Sendra J (2018) Teen videos on YouTube: Features and digital vulnerabilities. Comunicar, English ed 26:61-69. http://dx.doi.org.uplib.idm.oclc.org/10.3916/C54-2018-06
• 3. Claire B, Link to external site this link will open in a new window, Florence M, et al (2020) Searching for Oneself on YouTube: Teenage Peer Socialization and Social Recognition Processes. Social Media + Society 6:. http://dx.doi.org.uplib.idm.oclc.org/10.1177/2056305120909474
• 4. Weinstein E, Kleiman EM, Franz PJ, et al (2021) Positive and negative uses of social media among adolescents hospitalized for suicidal behavior. Journal of Adolescence 87:63-73. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2020.12.003
• 5. Fabris MA, Marengo D, Longobardi C, Settanni M (2020) Investigating the links between fear of missing out, social media addiction, and emotional symptoms in adolescence: The role of stress associated with neglect and negative reactions on social media. Addictive Behaviors 106:106364. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2020.106364
• 6. (2021) 25 YouTube Statistics that May Surprise You: 2021 Edition. In: Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard. https://blog.hootsuite.com/youtube-stats-marketers/ . Accessed 22 May 2021
• 7. (2019) 73+ YouTube Statistics Everyone Should Know in 2021. In: TechJury. https://techjury.net/blog/youtube-statistics/ . Accessed 23 May 2021
• 8. Hattingh M (2017) A Preliminary Investigation of the Appropriateness of YouTube as an Informal Learning Platform for Pre-teens. In: Xie H, Popescu E, Hancke G, Fernández Manjón B (eds) Advances in Web-Based Learning – ICWL 2017. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 101-110
• 9. Dyosi N, Hattingh M (2018) Understanding the Extent of and Factors Involved in the Use of YouTube as an Informal Learning Tool by 11- to 13-Year-Old Children. In: Wu T-T, Huang Y-M, Shadiev R, et al (eds) Innovative Technologies and Learning. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 351-361
• 10. Xiaoli Gao, Hamzah SH, Kar Yung Yiu C, et al (2013) Dental Fear and Anxiety in Children and Adolescents: Qualitative Study Using YouTube. Journal of Medical Internet Research 15:18-18. https://doi.org/10.2196/jmir.2290
• 11. Ohlrichs Y, Roosjen H (2017) Youtube Series Support Dutch Girls in Choosing a Contraceptive Method. Journal of Sexual Medicine 14:e275–e275. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsxm.2017.04.327
• 12. Clerici CA, Veneroni L, Bisogno G, et al (2012) Videos on rhabdomyosarcoma on YouTube: an example of the availability of information on pediatric tumors on the web. Journal of pediatric hematology/oncology 34:e329–e331. https://doi.org/10.1097/MPH.0b013e31825886f8
• 13. Braun V, Clarke V (2012) Thematic analysis. pp 57-71
• 14. Kim K, Paek H-J, Lynn J (2010) A Content Analysis of Smoking Fetish Videos on YouTube: Regulatory Implications for Tobacco Control. Health Communication 25:97. http://dx.doi.org.uplib.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/10410230903544415
• 15. Cranwell J, Opazo-Breton M, Britton J (2016) Adult and adolescent exposure to tobacco and alcohol content in contemporary YouTube music videos in Great Britain: a population estimate. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 70:488. http://dx.doi.org.uplib.idm.oclc.org/10.1136/jech-2015-206402
• 16. Romer D, Jamieson PE, Jamieson KH, et al (2017) Counteracting the Influence of Peer Smoking on YouTube. Journal of Health Communication 22:337-345. http://dx.doi.org.uplib.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/10810730.2017.1290164
• 17. Nasim A, Blank MD, Cobb CO, et al (2014) How to freak a Black & Mild: a multi-study analysis of YouTube videos illustrating cigar product modification. Health Education Research 29:41-57. https://doi.org/10.1093/her/cyt102
• 18. Cranwell J, Britton J, Bains M (2017) “F*ck It! Let’s Get to Drinking--Poison our Livers!”: a Thematic Analysis of Alcohol Content in Contemporary YouTube MusicVideos. International Journal of Behavioral Medicine 24:66-76. http://dx.doi.org.uplib.idm.oclc.org/10.1007/s12529-016-9578-3
• 19. Barry AE, Johnson E, Rabre A, et al (2015) Underage Access to Online Alcohol Marketing Content: A YouTube Case Study. Alcohol and Alcoholism 50:89-94. https://doi.org/10.1093/alcalc/agu078
• 20. Mayor S (2017) YouTube videos promote positive images of alcohol, finds study. BMJ: British Medical Journal (Online) 358:. http://dx.doi.org.uplib.idm.oclc.org/10.1136/bmj.j4365
• 21. Aubrey JS, Speno AG, Gamble H (2020) Appearance Framing versus Health Framing of Health Advice: Assessing the Effects of a YouTube Channel for Adolescent Girls. Health Communication 35:384-394. http://dx.doi.org.uplib.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/10410236.2018.1564955
• 22. Syed-Abdul S, Fernandez-Luque L, Jian W-S, et al (2013) Misleading Health-Related Information Promoted Through Video-Based Social Media: Anorexia on YouTube. Journal of Medical Internet Research 15:. http://dx.doi.org.uplib.idm.oclc.org/10.2196/jmir.2237
• 23. Gurgel CA, Polo GP, dos Santos MSRF, et al (2017) Videos About Diets Broadcast on Youtube: A Communication Channel Very Accessed by Adolescent. Annals of Nutrition & Metabolism 71:544
• 24. Basch CH, Ruggles KV, Berdnik A, Basch CE (2017) Characteristics of the most viewed YouTube™ videos related to bullying. International Journal of Adolescent Medicine and Health 29:1872-4. http://dx.doi.org.uplib.idm.oclc.org/10.1515/ijamh-2015-0063
• 25. Caron C (2017) Speaking Up About Bullying on YouTube: Teenagers’ Vlogs as Civic Engagement. Canadian Journal of Communication 42:645-668. http://dx.doi.org.uplib.idm.oclc.org/10.22230/qc2017v42n4a3156
• 26. Dagar A, Falcone T (2020) High Viewership of Videos About Teenage Suicide on YouTube. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry 59:1-3.e1. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2019.10.012
• 27. Potera C (2011) YouTube Self-Harm Videos Under Scrutiny. AJN The American Journal of Nursing 111:20. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.NAJ.0000398530.98917.3f
• 28. Linkletter M, Gordon K, Dooley J (2010) The Choking Game and YouTube: A Dangerous Combination. Clin Pediatr (Phila) 49:274-279. https://doi.org/10.1177/0009922809339203
• 29. de Carvalho BJ, Marôpo L (2020) “I’m Sorry You Don’t Flag It When You Advertise”: Audience and Commercial Content on the Sofia Barbosa Youtube Channel. Comunicação e Sociedade 37:93-107. https://doi.org/10.17231/comsoc.37 (2020).2394
• 30. Lange JE, Daniel J, Homer K, et al (2010) Salvia divinorum : Effects and use among YouTube users. Drug & Alcohol Dependence 108:138-140. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2009.11.010
• 31. Jiménez AG, Link to external site this link will open in a new window, Vozmediano MM (2020) Subject matter of videos for teens on YouTube. International Journal of Adolescence and Youth 25:63-78. http://dx.doi.org.uplib.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/02673843.2019.1590850
• 32. Khasawneh A, Link to external site this link will open in a new window, Madathil KC, et al (2020) Examining the Self-Harm and Suicide Contagion Effects of the Blue Whale Challenge on YouTube and Twitter: Qualitative Study. JMIR Mental Health 7:. http://dx.doi.org.uplib.idm.oclc.org/10.2196/15973
• 33. van Eldik AK, Kneer J, Lutkenhaus RO, Jansz J (2019) Urban Influencers: An Analysis of Urban Identity in YouTube Content of Local Social Media Influencers in a Super-Diverse City. Front Psychol 10:2876. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02876
• 30 May 2021

© 2021 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Continue reading from the same book

Edited by Massimo Ingrassia

Published: 09 November 2022

By Jocelyn Lachance

232 downloads

By Loredana Benedetto, Ilenia Schipilliti and Massimo...

89 downloads

By Doina-Carmen Manciuc, Cristina Sapaniuc, Alexandra...

179 downloads

Advertisement

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 )

Cite this article

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

20k Accesses

15 Citations

Explore all metrics

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.

Similar content being viewed by others

Cyberbullying in the University Setting

Exploratory Research to Identify the Characteristics of Cyber Victims on Social Media in New Zealand

Destructive Digital Ecosystem of Cyber Bullying Perfective Within the Information Technology Age

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

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.

https://ncrb.gov.in/en/Crime-in-India-2020

https://www.india.com/news/india/mbbs-student-commits-suicide-in-kerala-facebook-post-hints-at-cyber-bullying-2639753/

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-42617237

https://www.firstpost.com/india/delhi-police-arrests-instagram-group-admin-in-bois-locker-room-case-27-other-members-identified-8337451.html

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/37211521.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

https://legislative.gov.in/actsofparliamentfromtheyear/information-technology-act-2000

https://legislative.gov.in/sites/default/files/A1860-45.pdf

https://112.gov.in/

https://www.mha.gov.in/division_of_mha/cyber-and-information-security-cis-division/Details-about-CCPWC-CybercrimePrevention-against-Women-and-Children-Scheme

https://cybercrime.gov.in/Webform/crmcondi.aspx .

https://cybercrime.gov.in/

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.myadvo.in/blog/must-read-what-is-cyber-bullying-or-anti-bullying-laws-in-india/amp/

https://indiaeducationdiary.in/mega-awareness-campaign-on-cyber-security-by-dsej-concludes/

https://www.unicef.org/rosa/media/16511/file/India%20Case%20Study.pdf

Abaido, G. M. (2020). Cyberbullying on social media platforms among university students in the United Arab Emirates. International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 25 , 407–420. https://doi.org/10.1080/02673843.2019.1669059

Article   Google Scholar  

Aizenkot, D., & Kashy-Rosenbaum, G. (2020). Exposure to cyberbullying in WhatsApp classmates‘ groups and classroom climate as predictors of students‘ sense of belonging: A multi-level analysis of elementary, middle and high schools. Children and Youth Services Review, 108 , 104614. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2019.104614

Alamri, M. M., Almaiah, M. A., & Al-Rahmi, W. M. (2020). Social media applications affecting students’ academic performance: A model developed for sustainability in higher education. Sustainability, 12 (16), 6471. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12166471

Al-Rahmi, W., Yahaya, N., Alturki, U., Alrobai, A., Aldraiweesh, A., Omar Alsayed, A., & Kamin, Y. (2020). Social media – based collaborative learning: the effect on learning success with the moderating role of cyberstalking and cyberbullying. Interactive Learning Environments , 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1080/10494820.2020.1728342

Andres, L. (2012). Designing and doing survey research . SAGE.

Book   Google Scholar  

Ansary, N. S. (2020). Cyberbullying: Concepts, theories, and correlates informing evidence-based best practices for prevention. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 50 , 101343. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2019.101343

Blei, D. M., Ng, A. Y., & Jordan, M. I. (2003). Latent Dirichlet Allocation. Journal of Machine Learning, 3 , 993–1012.

MATH   Google Scholar  

Cai, D., He, X., & Han, J. (2008). Training Linear Discriminant Analysis in Linear Time. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICDE.2008.4497429

Cao, J., Xia, T., Li, J., Zhang, Y., & Tang, S. (2009). A density-based method for adaptive LDA model selection. Neurocomputing, 72 , 1775–1781.

Cassidy, W., Faucher, C., & Jackson, M. (2017). Adversity in University: Cyberbullying and Its Impacts on Students, Faculty and Administrators. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 14 . Retrieved from https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/14/8/888

Çevik, Ö., Ata, R., & Çevik, M. (2021). Bullying and victimization among Turkish adolescents: the predictive role of problematic internet use, school burnout and parental monitoring. Education and Information Technologies, 26 , 3203–3230. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-020-10410-1

Chapin, J. (2016). Adolescents and cyber bullying: The precaution adoption process model. Education and Information Technologies, 21 , 719–728. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-014-9349-1

Digital Around the World. (2021). Retrieved from DataReportal – Global Digital Insights: https://datareportal.com/global-digital-overview

Griffiths, T. L., & Steyvers, M. (2004). Finding scientific topics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 101 , 5228–5235.

Ho, T. T., Li, C., & Gu, C. (2020). Cyberbullying victimization and depressive symptoms in Vietnamese university students: Examining social support as a mediator. International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijlcj.2020.100422

Huang, J., Zhong, Z., Zhang, H., & Li, L. (2021). Cyberbullying in social media and online games among Chinese college students and its associated factors. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18 , 4819. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18094819

Hutson, E., Kelly, S., & Militello, L. K. (2018). Systematic review of cyberbullying interventions for youth and parents with implications for evidence-based practice. Worldviews on Evidence-Based Nursing, 15 , 72–79. https://doi.org/10.1111/wvn.12257

Khine, A. T., Saw, Y. M., Htut, Z. Y., Khaing, C. T., Soe, H., Swe, K. K., & Thike, T. (2020). Assessing risk factors and impact of cyberbullying victimization among university students in Myanmar: A cross-sectional study. PLOS ONE, 15 , e0227051.

Legate, N., Weinstein, N., & Przybylski, A. K. (2019). Parenting strategies and adolescents’ cyberbullying behaviors: Evidence from a preregistered study of parent-child dyads. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 48 , 399–409. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-018-0962-y

Luker, J. M., & Curchack, B. C. (2017). International perceptions of cyberbullying within higher education. Adult Learning, 28 , 144–156. https://doi.org/10.1177/1045159517719337

Maier, D., Waldherr, A., Miltner, P., Wiedemann, G., Niekler, A., Keinert, A., . . . Adam, S. (2018). Applying LDA Topic Modeling in Communication Research: Toward a Valid and Reliable Methodology. Communication Methods and Measures , 93-118. https://doi.org/10.1080/19312458.2018.1430754

Mircioiu, C., & Atkinson, J. (2017). A comparison of parametric and non-parametric methods applied to a likert scale. Pharmacy . https://doi.org/10.3390/pharmacy5020026

Ngo, A. T., Tran, A. Q., Tran, B. X., Nguyen, L. H., Hoang, M. T., Nguyen, T. H., . . . Ho, C. S. (2021). Cyberbullying among school adolescents in an urban setting of a developing country: Experience, coping strategies, and mediating effects of different support on psychological well-being. Frontiers in Psychology, 12 , 930. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.661919

Nguyen, H. T., Nakamura, K., Seino, K., & Vo, V. (2020). Relationships among cyberbullying, parental attitudes, self-harm and suicidal behavior among adolescents: Results from a school-based survey in Vietnam. BMC Public Health, 20 , 476. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-020-08500-3

Oh, E. Y., Song, D., & Hong, H. (2020). Interactive computing technology in anti-bullying education: The effects of Conversation-Bot’s role on K-12 students’ attitude change toward bullying problems. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 58 , 200–219. https://doi.org/10.1177/0735633119839177

Peled, Y. (2019). Cyberbullying and its influence on academic, social, and emotional development of undergraduate students. Heliyon . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2019.e01393

Rafferty, R., & Vander Ven, T. (2014). “I Hate Everything About You”: A qualitative examination of cyberbullying and On-Line aggression in a college sample. Deviant Behavior, 35 , 364–377. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2013.849171

Rana, R., & Singhal, R. (2015). Chi-square test and its application in hypothesis testing. Journal of the Practice of Cardiovascular Sciences , 69–71.

Rasheed, M. I., Malik, M. J., Pitafi, A. H., Iqbal, J., Anser, M. K., & Abbas, M. (2020). Usage of social media, student engagement, and creativity: The role of knowledge sharing behavior and cyberbullying. Computers & Education, 159 , 104002. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2020.104002

Runions, K. C., Shaw, T., Bussey, K., Thornberg, R., Salmivalli, C., & Cross, D. S. (2019). Moral disengagement of pure bullies and bully/victims: Shared and distinct mechanisms. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 48 , 1835–1848. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-019-01067-2

Sam, D., Bruce, D., Agyemang, C., Amponsah, B., & Arkoful, H. (2019). Cyberbullying victimization among high school and university students in Ghana. Deviant Behavior, 40 , 1305–1321. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2018.1493369

Sarwar, B., Zulfiqa, S., Aziz, S., & Chandia, E. K. (2019). Usage of social media tools for collaborative learning: The effect on learning success with the moderating role of cyberbullying. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 57 , 246–279. https://doi.org/10.1177/0735633117748415

Sievert, C., & Shirley, K. E. (2014). LDAvis: A method for visualizing and interpreting topics. Workshop on Interactive Language Learning, Visualization, and Interfaces at the Association for Computational Linguistics . https://doi.org/10.13140/2.1.1394.3043

Singh, M., Adebayo, S. O., Saini, M., & Singh, J. (2021). Indian government E-learning initiatives in response to COVID-19 crisis: A case study on online learning in Indian higher education system. Education and Information Technologies, 26 , 7569–7607.

Steinfeld, N. (2021). Parental mediation of adolescent Internet use: Combining strategies to promote awareness, autonomy and self-regulation in preparing youth for life on the web. Education and Information Technologies, 26 , 1897–1920. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-020-10342-w

Tanrikulu, I., & Erdur-Baker, Ö. (2021). Motives behind cyberbullying perpetration: A test of uses and gratifications theory. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 36 , NP6699–NP6724. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260518819882

Tao, X., & Fisher, C. B. (2022). Exposure to social media racial discrimination and mental health among adolescents of color. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 51 , 30–44. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-021-01514-z

UNICEF. (2020). Retrieved from https://www.unicef.org/ : https://www.unicef.org/end-violence/how-to-stop-cyberbullying

Wang, S. (2021). Standing up or standing by: Bystander intervention in cyberbullying on social media. New Media & Society, 23 , 1379–1397. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820902541

Washington, E. T. (2015). An overview of cyberbullying in higher education. Adult Learning, 26 , 21–27. https://doi.org/10.1177/1045159514558412

Watts, L. K., Wagner, J., Velasquez, B., & Behrens, P. I. (2017). Cyberbullying in higher education: A literature review. Computers in Human Behavior, 69 , 268–274. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.12.038

Williams, A. (2003). How to … Write and Analyse a Questionnaire. Journal of Orthodontics, 30 , 245–252.

Yang, F. (2021). Coping strategies, cyberbullying behaviors, and depression among Chinese netizens during the COVID-19 pandemic: A web-based nationwide survey. Journal of Affective Disorders, 281 , 138–144. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2020.12.023

Yoshida, M. (2021). Investigation of university students’ behaviour in a Heterarchical twitter community. Education and Information Technologies, 26 , 3155–3174.

Yubero, S., Navarro, R., Elche, M., Larrañaga, E., & Ovejero, A. (2017). Cyberbullying victimization in higher education: An exploratory analysis of its association with social and emotional factors among Spanish students. Computers in Human Behavior, 75 , 439–449. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.05.037

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Computer Engineering and Technology, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, Punjab, India

Manpreet Kaur & Munish Saini

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Manpreet Kaur .

Ethics declarations

Research involving human participants and/or animals.

This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

Conflict of interest

The author declares that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Publisher's note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Kaur, M., Saini, M. Indian government initiatives on cyberbullying: A case study on cyberbullying in Indian higher education institutions. Educ Inf Technol 28 , 581–615 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-022-11168-4

Download citation

Received : 24 February 2022

Accepted : 14 June 2022

Published : 04 July 2022

Issue Date : January 2023

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-022-11168-4

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Cyberbullying
• Government initiatives
• Higher education
• Social media
• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• HHS Author Manuscripts

LGBTQ bullying: a qualitative investigation of student and school health professional perspectives

V. a. earnshaw.

a Department of Human Development and Family Sciences, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA

D. D. Menino

b Division of General Pediatrics, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

J. Perrotti

c Safe Schools Program for LGBTQ Students, Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, Boston, MA, USA

T. N. Barnes

d Center for Research in Education and Social Policy, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA

D. L. Humphrey

S. l. reisner.

e Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

f Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

g The Fenway Institute, Fenway Health, Boston, MA, USA

Notes on contributors

David D. Menino is a Clinical Research Specialist at Boston Children’s Hospital.

Lauren M. Sava is a Clinical Research Specialist at Boston Children’s Hospital.

Jeff Perrotti is the Founding Director of the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s Safe Schools Program for LGBTQ Students.

Tia N. Barnes is an Assistant Professor in Human Development and Family Sciences and a Senior Researcher at the Center for Research in Education and Social Policy at the University of Delaware.

Layne D. Humphrey is the Assistant Center Director of the Center for Research in Education and Social Policy at the University of Delaware.

Sari L. Reisner is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, as well as a Research Scientist at The Fenway Institute at Fenway Health.

Researchers and practitioners have recently called for greater involvement of school health professionals (SHPs; e.g., school psychologists, nurses, guidance counselors) in interventions to identify and address bullying of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) students. To inform future interventions, this study explored the perspectives of LGBTQ students and SHPs on LGBTQ bullying and SHPs’ responses to LGBTQ bullying. Five online, asynchronous focus groups were held in 2018 with 28 LGBTQ students and 19 SHPs recruited from Massachusetts, US. Methods were guided by Rapid Qualitative Inquiry. Results revealed a disconnect in perceptions of LGBTQ bullying among LGBTQ students versus SHPs, with LGBTQ students reporting a range of often significant verbal, social, and physical bullying experiences and SHPs reporting minimal awareness of LGBTQ bullying at their schools. Transgender students reported bullying related to their gender identity, including verbal, physical, and sexual harassment, deadnaming (referred to by their birth name), and misgendering (called an incorrect pronoun). LGBTQ students of color reported bullying based on their race/ethnicity and pronounced social isolation. LGBTQ students reported mixed experiences with reporting bullying to SHPs. Intervention efforts are needed to enhance communication between LGBTQ students and SHPs, and to strengthen SHPs’ skills to respond to LGBTQ bullying.

Introduction

Bullying of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) students occurs frequently and is harmful ( Earnshaw et al., 2017 ; Kosciw, Greytak, Zongrone, Clark, & Truong, 2018 ). Bullying involves unwanted aggressive treatment from peers that repeats, or is likely to repeat, over time and occurs within a power context ( Gladden, Vivolo-Kantor, Hamburger, & Lumpkin, 2014 ). For LGBTQ youth, this bullying may be associated with their sexual orientation and/or gender identity (i.e., LGBTQ bullying), as well as other characteristics such as their race/ethnicity ( Kosciw et al., 2018 ). Bullying undermines students’ physical and mental health, and the effects of bullying on health are long-lasting ( Gini & Pozzoli, 2013 ; Juvonen & Graham, 2014 ; The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), 2016 ; Vaillancourt, Hymel, & McDougall, 2013 ). Moreover, stigma-based bullying, or bullying associated with a socially devalued characteristic such as minority sexual orientation or gender identity, is particularly harmful ( Russell, Sinclair, Poteat, & Koenig, 2012 ).

School health professionals (SHPs) have the potential to play an important role in identifying and supporting LGBTQ students experiencing bullying ( Espelage, 2016 ; Graybill & Proctor, 2016 ). Yet, their perspectives on LGBTQ bullying and their current roles in responding to LGBTQ bullying have been under-examined. Greater understanding of these perspectives can inform interventions to prepare SHPs to respond to LGBTQ bullying. We therefore characterize LGBTQ bullying and SHP responses to LGBTQ bullying from the perspectives of both LGBTQ students and SHPs in the current study. We compare SHP perspectives to those of LGBTQ students to explore the extent to which their points of view on LGBTQ bullying diverge.

LGBTQ bullying

Most LGBTQ students experience some form of bullying. In response to a national survey conducted by the Gay, Lesbian, & Straight Education Network (GLSEN) in 2015, 85% of LGBTQ students reported that they had experienced verbal bullying (i.e., harmful verbal or written communications such as name calling), 88% had experienced social or relational bullying (i.e., behaviors intended to harm relationships and reputations such as gossip), 60% had been sexually harassed (i.e., harassment of a sexual nature such as unwanted touching), and 34.7% had experienced physical bullying (i.e., use of physical force such as hitting) in the past year ( Kosciw et al., 2018 ). Bullying is associated with poor mental health, including symptoms of depression, low self-esteem, and suicidal ideation ( Friedman, Koeske, Silvestre, Korr, & Sites, 2006 ; Russell & Joyner, 2001 ) as well as poor physical health, including negative physical health symptoms (e.g., abdominal pain, headache, skin problems) and high blood pressure ( Fekkes, 2006 ; Gini & Pozzoli, 2013 ; Rosenthal et al., 2015 ).

LGBTQ students are diverse, representing a wide range of sexual orientations, gender identities, races/ethnicities, and other characteristics. Some evidence suggests that transgender students have more negative school experiences than cisgender students (i.e., students whose gender identity aligns with their sex assigned at birth; Kosciw et al., 2018 ). Similar to stigma experienced by transgender adults ( Nadal, Whitman, Davis, Erazo, & Davidoff, 2016 ), bullying of transgender students may involve deadnaming (i.e., using the birth name of a student who has since changed their name) and/or misgendering (i.e., referring to a student with a pronoun or word that does not correctly reflect their gender identity).

Recent work has underscored the importance of adopting an intersectional lens when characterizing bullying experienced by LGBTQ students ( Daley, Solomon, Newman, & Mishna, 2007 ; Dominski, 2016 ; Earnshaw et al., 2017 ). Intersectionality recognizes that individuals live with multiple characteristics and identities, which may represent positions of oppression and/or privilege, that shape their experiences and outcomes ( Cole, 2009 ; Crenshaw et al., 1991 ; Rosenthal, 2016 ). Applied to LGBTQ bullying, an intersectional lens draws attention to how bullying may be experienced differently depending on LGBTQ youth’s intersecting identities. For example, LGBTQ students of color describe experiencing bullying related to both their race/ethnicity and sexual orientation and/or gender identity ( Daley et al., 2007 ). An intersectional lens additionally allows researchers to consider how intersections of identities and characteristics impact access to social capital (e.g., school practices and policies) that influences student outcomes ( Mink, Lindley, & Weinstein, 2014 ). Understanding the nuances of intersectional bullying may enhance the ability of SHPs to identify and support LGBTQ students experiencing bullying.

School health professionals

SHPs, including school psychologists, nurses, social workers, guidance counselors, and adjustment counselors, play key roles in promoting the safety and wellbeing of students. SHPs are well-positioned to lead indicated preventive bullying interventions within schools, which target students who are currently experiencing bullying ( Earnshaw et al., 2018 ; Juvonen & Graham, 2014 ). As examples, SHPs can identify and support students currently experiencing bullying given that supportive relationships with adults at school can buffer students from the negative effects of stigma-based bullying ( Earnshaw et al., 2014 ). SHPs can also help LGBTQ students develop de-escalation techniques and other social-emotional skills that may help them respond to bullying.

Researchers and practitioners have recently called for greater involvement of SHPs in addressing LGBTQ bullying ( Earnshaw et al., 2017 ; Espelage, 2016 ; Graybill & Proctor, 2016 ). Yet, SHPs have been under-utilized within stigma-based bullying interventions to date, including LGBTQ bullying interventions. A recent systematic review identified only one stigma-based bullying intervention that involved SHPs ( Earnshaw et al., 2018 ). This intervention targeted students with disabilities, and showed some promise in reducing experiences of bullying among students and improving their self-concept ( Vessey & O’Neill, 2011 ). Greater understanding of SHPs’ perspectives on LGBTQ bullying, including the extent to which they are aware of LGBTQ students’ experiences of bullying, as well as their current involvement in addressing LGBTQ bullying can inform future efforts to involve SHPs in LGBTQ bullying interventions.

Current study

The current study was conducted to inform future intervention efforts to involve SHPs in identifying and supporting LGBTQ students who have been bullied. The specific goals were to characterize and compare the perspectives of LGBTQ students and SHPs on: (1) experiences of LGBTQ bullying, and (2) SHP responses to LGBTQ bullying. SHPs may need to address the unique needs of transgender students and LGBTQ students of color given that these students experience elevated rates of bullying in comparison to White LGBQ students ( Kosciw et al., 2018 ). The current study therefore additionally adopted an intersectional lens and sought to identify unique aspects of bullying experienced by transgender students and LGBTQ students of color.

Procedures and participants

Between January and April 2018, qualitative data were collected as part of a formative assessment to inform the development of an intervention to increase the capacity of SHPs to address LGBTQ bullying. Study procedures were guided by Rapid Qualitative Inquiry ( Beebe, 2014 ), which is closely derived from and often referred to as Rapid Assessment Process ( Beebe, 2001 , 2014 ; McMullen et al., 2011 ; Sabone et al., 2007 ) and is an intensive methodology for collecting, analyzing, and interpreting qualitative data to quickly develop a preliminary understanding of a situation. Rapid Qualitative Inquiry takes principles from ethnography but is targeted to reduce lengthiness of field work-analysis-translation ( Beebe, 2014 ). Rapid Qualitative Inquiry includes three foundational concepts. First, it aims to develop an insider’s perspective on an issue. The current study aimed to develop the perspectives of LGBTQ students and SHPs on the issue of LGBTQ bullying in schools. Second, Rapid Qualitative Inquiry relies on triangulation of data by incorporating data from multiple sources. The current study included data from both LGBTQ students and SHPs. Two focus groups with students were initially planned, including one with LGBTQ students broadly and one including transgender students specifically. Due to underrepresentation of students of color in these focus groups, an additional group was conducted comprised of LGBTQ students of color. Two focus groups were also conducted with SHPs. Third, data analysis is conducted iteratively (described below) and is team-based. The current study involved a team of individuals with diverse expertise and perspectives, including experts in psychology, public health, education, and counseling. Additionally, the team worked closely with a youth and community advisory board that included LGBTQ youth and SHPs who were compensated for their time.

Participants were recruited from LGBTQ and SHP organizations and networks in Massachusetts, as well as from the personal and professional networks of individuals on the youth and community advisory board. Individuals who were interested in participating contacted a member of the study team who screened them for eligibility by phone. Students were eligible to participate if they were between the ages of 13 and 24, identified as LGBTQ, and currently attended, or had attended, middle and/or high school in Massachusetts. Individuals who were former students were eligible up to age 24 given evidence that the effects of bullying last into young adulthood ( Russell, Ryan, Toomey, Diaz, & Sanchez, 2011 ). SHPs were eligible to participate in the study if they were age 18 or older, and currently served Massachusetts students in a school health-related capacity. All participants were required to speak English and have reliable internet access in order to be eligible to participate. Verbal consent was obtained via an initial phone conversation during which research staff reviewed he consent document and asked if the individual wanted to consent on the phone at that time or wait and decide, after which they were sent a PDF of the consent document. Obtaining parental consent to participate in a research study may discourage participation among LGBTQ youth who have not disclosed their sexual orientation and/or gender identity to their parents, thereby introducing sampling bias, or pose a risk to LGBTQ youth whose parents are not accepting of their LGBTQ identities ( Meezan & Martin, 2009 ). Therefore, a waiver of parental permission was obtained for students under the age of 18 years. Participants received a $50 gift card for their time. All procedures received institutional review board approval.

In total, 88 individuals expressed interest in the study and 55 enrolled (62.5%), including 34 LGBTQ students and 21 SHPs enrolled in the study. Several participants did not engage in the study (e.g., they did not respond to online prompts), and were therefore trimmed from the analytic sample. The final sample included 28 LGBTQ students and 19 SHPs, with participants representing most counties in Massachusetts and over half being outside the Boston area. Participants completed a brief online survey that included socio-demographic information; one LGBTQ student did not complete the survey. Participant characteristics are included in Table 1 .

Descriptive characteristics of study participants ( N = 46).

Notes: + One LGBTQ student who participated in the focus groups did not complete the socio-demographic survey (28 LGBQ students participated in focus groups, 27 had survey data).

Focus group protocols

Online, asynchronous focus groups were conducted. Online focus groups are recommended for research about sensitive topics with stigmatized, rare, and/or geographically dispersed populations ( Reisner et al., 2018 ). Asynchronous online focus groups operate like bulletin boards, wherein questions are periodically posted by researchers and participants can log on at times convenient for them to respond. Similar to an in-person focus group, participants are able to both respond directly to the researchers’ questions as well as read and respond to other participants’ posts. Participants do not need to be online simultaneously to chat in real time. In the current study, online focus groups lasted for four days and questions were posted in the mornings and evenings. Two members of the research team facilitated the groups by posting questions, probing, and monitoring discussion throughout the day. The platform was left open for an additional 1–2 days for final comments. Anonymity of participants was protected in several ways. First, participants were given a unique identification number that was the only identifier displayed in relation to their online responses. Second, no pictures or icons were displayed. Third, participants were asked not to disclose any potentially identifying information, including their name or the school where they attended or worked.

Examples of questions relevant to the current analyses that were posed to LGBTQ students included: “Please tell us about a time you or another LGBTQ student were bullied. What happened?” and “In regards to the experiences of bullying you described, did any adult at school intervene or try to stop the bullying? If so, what happened? What was the adult’s role at school?” Students were also asked “What specific issues have you noticed transgender students at your school facing?” and “What issues, if any, do you see non-White LGBTQ students facing at your school?” These questions were tailored to the perspectives of SHPs, with examples including: “Tell us about a time in which you witnessed a LGBTQ student being bullied. If you personally didn’t witness such an event, please describe any experience your colleagues may have had, if possible” and “Thinking back to your experience intervening in the bullying of a LGBTQ student, do you think you handled the situation effectively? Why or why not?” SHPs were also specifically asked about transgender students, including “What specific issues have you noticed transgender students at your school facing?” and LGBTQ students of color, including “What specific issues, if any, do you see non-White LGBTQ students facing at your school?” Probes were asked to clarify participant responses. Examples of probes include: “What do you mean by (component of participant response)?” “Can you talk a bit more about (component of participant response)?” “Can you provide an example?” How did you feel about (component of participant response)?”

Data analyses

Data analyses were also guided by Rapid Qualitative Inquiry ( Beebe, 2014 ), and were thus iterative and team-based. Each focus group yielded a transcript ranging from 131–204 pages in length, with size 17.5 font for prompts and 14.5 font for responses and single-spacing (for a total of 494 pages of transcript from the three youth focus groups and 318 pages of transcripts from the two SHP focus groups). Immediately following each focus group, initial findings were summarized and preliminary findings were identified by two members of the research team. These initial findings informed memos and data displays (e.g., charts organized by theme) which were shared with the full team. The team met to draw conclusions from each focus group. The team focused on reaching consensus around conclusions, and making contrasts and comparisons between participant groups. The study procedures and conclusions were refined with each additional focus group and as data analyses progressed. As a trustworthiness check, results were then shared with the youth and community advisory board to verify the conclusions drawn by the team. By following these analytic techniques, an understanding of experiences of and SHP responses to LGBTQ bullying from the perspectives of LGBTQ students and SHPs was developed.

Experiences of LGBTQ bullying

LGBTQ students and SHPs reported on several types of bullying experienced by LGBTQ students. Below, LGBTQ bullying is described from the perspectives of White LGBQ students, transgender students, LGBTQ students of color, and SHPs. The perspectives of three transgender students of color are included in both the transgender students and LGBTQ students of color sections, depending on content of the data (e.g., quotes describing bullying related to gender identity are included in the transgender students paragraph). Taken together, the majority of LGBTQ students reported witnessing and/or experiencing bullying (82%, n = 23) whereas over half of SHPs (68%, n = 13) reported never having witnessed bullying.

White LGBQ students

White LGBQ students primarily described experiencing and/or witnessing verbal bullying, including being called names and hearing offensive jokes. For example, one student stated that “I was called the f-slur many times, as well as told that I should be killed or ‘converted.’ I was too scared to tell anyone, even my parents, because I was not out yet” (White, pansexual female). Some physical bullying was also reported by White LGBQ students. One student witnessed physical bullying of another LGBQ student, stating “I knew someone who was physically pushed around frequently by the same kid. That bullying was relentless and the victim of that bullying did not come to school some days because of the harassment” (White, mostly gay male). Students were also aware of instances of cyberbullying on a range of chat and other social media platforms. The student who witnessed physical bullying also reported that “I knew someone who was harassed in an online group chat and told to kill themselves.”

Transgender students

Transgender students also described being called names and hearing offensive jokes. In contrast to LGBQ students, however, bullying reported by transgender students was characterized by more explicit targeting of their gender identity, and more extreme physical assault. Many transgender students highlighted being deadnamed and misgendered as common forms of verbal bullying. One student reported that another student “started using my dead name and the wrong pronouns and telling everyone that was my name and that I was really a girl” (White, bisexual transgender male). Another student reported that “I have seen consistent misgendering (some malicious, some just ignorance) of non-passing rans folks or those who use neopronouns [gender-neutral pronouns]” (race unidentified, heterosexual transgender male). Students transitioning from male to female were particularly vulnerable to physical sexual assault. One student noted that they had been “sexually assaulted (since I started growing breast buds, I’ve had multiple people grab me and feel me up)” and that “when I wear a skirt… students try to lift it/pull it down. I am groped weekly” (White, mostly lesbian transgender female). Physical bullying occurred in bathrooms. One student described being “kicked out of both bathrooms. I had a kid try to hit me once for trying to use the bathroom. I’ve been suspended for my own safety” (White, mostly gay transgender male).

LGBTQ students of color

LGBTQ students of color reported experiences of bullying associated with their race and/or ethnicity in addition to, or sometimes instead of, their sexual orientation and/or gender identity. These experiences also included name calling and offensive jokes. One student described experiencing race-and weight-based verbal bullying, stating: “I was not bullied for being LGBTQ … I was, however, bullied for being fat and for being dark skinned. I was called things like Oreo or African booty scratcher and people would make fun of me” (Black/African-American, bisexual transgender male). LGBTQ students of color experienced social isolation, and reported having a difficult time finding accepting friends. One noted that “I feel like White LGBTQ students have an easier time being accepted, while I have to deal with racism, queerphobia, and transphobia” (Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander and White, queer, gender non-conforming student). This student further remarked that “I, in school, was outcasted for being visibly trans and queer. In a school of almost two thousand people, I had no friends, no one to sit with, no one to hang out with.”

In contrast to the experiences of bullying reported by students, which were described as frequent and sometimes severe, over half of SHPs reported that they had not witnessed LGBTQ bullying at their schools. They noted that there have been “no instances at my school that I am aware of” (school nurse), “I have not been directly involved in any bullying [situations]” (guidance counselor), and “I have not witnessed nor been involved directly with any type of incident” (social worker). One SHP was aware of anti-gay language at their school, but did not label this as bullying. They stated:

I can’t think of a time when I witnessed or heard of a LGBTQ student being bullied. I do know that students talk about microaggressions, such as stating things are “gay”, as someone mentioned earlier and have talked about how these comments impact them over time. This might not be “bullying” per se… (school psychologist)

Despite not personally witnessing bullying, some SHPs were aware that LGBTQ students experienced bullying at school. One noted that “I have also known students to face bullying, teasing, targeting, and general unkindness from students” (school psychologist).

SHPs’ discussion of the intersectional nature of LGBTQ bullying was limited. They recognized that transgender students experienced bullying in bathrooms, although their reports on bullying in bathrooms were less extreme than those from transgender students. For example, one SHP noted that “some other students would leave the bathroom or make comments when this (transgender) student was there” (guidance counselor). SHPs did not report that transgender students experienced sexual harassment or intentional deadnaming and/or misgendering, or that LGBTQ students of color experienced bullying based on their race or ethnicity.

Responses to LGBTQ bullying

Students and SHPs characterized the ways in which SHPs responded to LGBTQ bullying. Responses from White LGBQ students, transgender students, and LGBTQ students of color were largely similar and so have been reported in aggregate.

Students reported that SHPs often do not personally witness LGBTQ bullying. One student stated that SHPs may be unaware of LGBTQ bullying because “school health professionals are not in regular contact with groups of students, where these jokes get made” (White, mostly gay male). When students reached out to SHPs for help with bullying, they received a range of responses. Students reported that SHPs were sometimes not helpful. One student reported an unsupportive interaction where the SHP questioned their sexual orientation and did not address the incident of bullying. This student stated that “when I went to guidance, they just asked if I was sure that I was bisexual and said they couldn’t do anything because I had no evidence like texts or comments” (Latina, bisexual female). Other students reported that SHPs were well-intentioned, but lacked the skills or knowledge to address LGBTQ bullying. One student noted that “the guidance counselor is a very kind lady, I just think she is clueless when it comes to these issues, and almost feels as if she can’t touch the issues or do anything about them” (White, queer transgender male).

SHPs reported that they responded to LGBTQ bullying in a variety of ways. SHPs directly addressed students perpetrating LGBTQ bullying. They noted that “I have always done my best to stop these comments as soon as I’ve heard them” (school nurse) and “I stressed the importance of not continuing with this behavior and spreading rumors. I talked about being more sensitive and tolerant of others and their differences, having more empathy and compassion” (guidance counselor). SHPs also reported providing emotional support to LGBTQ students who had been bullied. Some provided support immediately following incidents of bullying, including one SHP who reported that they had “consoled a first grader when she was told by an older student that she couldn’t use the girl’s bathroom because she is a boy. I felt terrible … I empathized that it probably didn’t make her feel good when another student called her a boy” (school nurse). Others provided ongoing support to students experiencing bullying. One noted that LGBTQ students “are in counseling with me weekly so I am always checking in on how they are doing” (social worker).

The current study provides insights into the experiences of LGBTQ bullying and SHPs’ responses to LGBTQ bullying from the perspectives of LGBTQ students and SHPs. Results reveal a possible disconnect in perceptions of LGBTQ bullying among LGBTQ students versus SHPs. LGBTQ students reported a range of often significant bullying experiences that were associated with their sexual orientation and gender identity as well as their race/ethnicity. In contrast, over half of SHPs reported not being aware of LGBTQ bullying at their school. Verbal bullying, including name calling and verbal harassment, was the most commonly reported form of bullying reported by LGBTQ students. Some SHPs also observed name calling and negative comments directed toward LGBTQ students. Transgender students reported a unique form of verbal bullying, deadnaming and misgendering, from both other students and adults at school. This form of harassment is also reported by transgender adults ( Nadal et al., 2016 ), and serves to invalidate individuals’ gender identity ( McLemore, 2015 ). LGBTQ students of color reported verbal bullying based on their race/ethnicity, including racial slurs, in addition to bullying related to their sexual orientation and gender identity. SHPs did not report observing intentional deadnaming and misgendering of transgender students, or race-based bullying of LGBTQ students of color. Transgender students reported the most pronounced physical bullying, which sometimes occurred in bathrooms and/or took the form of sexual assault (e.g., groping). SHPs were aware that transgender students were at risk of bullying in bathrooms, but did not report that transgender students were sexually harassed. LGBTQ students of color reported social bullying, including social ostracism and isolation. SHPs did not comment on social isolation of LGBTQ students of color.

The perspectives of LGBTQ students and SHPs on LGBTQ bullying may differ for several reasons. First, both students and SHPs reported that SHPs are often not physically present when the bullying takes place. Bullying typically occurs in classrooms, hallways, and bathrooms whereas SHPs may spend much of their time in offices. Second, many LGBTQ students often do not report bullying to adults, including SHPs. They may fear reporting because they have not yet disclosed their sexual orientation and/or gender identity to their parents, and therefore do not want the school to call home about LGBTQ bullying. They may also not report because they lack confidence that SHPs will helpfully resolve the issue. Third, LGBTQ bullying, similar to LGBTQ discrimination, may be changing over time from overt treatment, such as physical harassment, to more subtle treatment, such as deadnaming and misgendering ( Nadal et al., 2016 ). SHPs may be less likely to label this more subtle treatment as bullying. And finally, the students and SHPs interviewed in this study may not be aware of the extent to which SHPs are responding to LGBTQ bullying incidents. For example, students may be unaware when SHPs address bullying among students who perpetrate bullying due to privacy regulations.

Students reported having mixed experiences with reporting LGBTQ bullying to SHPs. Some students observed that SHPs ignored or refused to address LGBTQ bullying (e.g., due to no evidence of bullying). Other students felt that SHPs lacked knowledge and skills to support LGBTQ students experiencing bullying. SHPs characterized their responses to LGBTQ bullying more positively, reporting that they had responded to LGBTQ bullying in a variety of ways. They cited examples of addressing perpetrators of LGBTQ bullying and supporting LGBTQ students who had been bullied.

Strengths, limitations, and future directions

The perspectives of SHPs on LGBTQ bullying have been under-studied in the literature to date. The current study addresses this gap to inform future bullying interventions involving SHPs. Methodology and analysis strategies were guided by Rapid Qualitative Inquiry ( Beebe, 2014 ), which is recommended when seeking to develop a preliminary understanding of an understudied phenomenon to inform intervention development. Analyses were conducted by a team of experts with diverse backgrounds and were informed by a youth and community advisory board that included LGBTQ youth and SHPs. The use of online focus groups enabled the inclusion of a geographically diverse sample comprised of participants from urban, suburban, and rural communities throughout Massachusetts, as well as historically marginalized populations ( Reisner et al., 2018 ). Given that participants can respond anonymously, online focus groups may yield more honest answers regarding sensitive topics such as bullying than in-person focus groups.

Several limitations of the current study may be addressed with future work. Results of this Rapid Qualitative Inquiry study yielded preliminary insight into a disconnect in perceptions of LGBTQ bullying among LGBTQ students and SHPs. More in-depth research methodologies, including individual interviews, can continue to clarify this disconnect and why it exists. Asynchronous online focus groups lack nonverbal information, such as facial expressions and vocal cues, which may limit interpretability or even lead to misunderstandings. In-person qualitative interviews and focus groups may therefore yield additional insight. Additionally, quantitative research methodologies comparing the perceptions of LGBTQ students and SHPs can establish the magnitude of this disconnect. LGBTQ students and SHPs in the current study were from different schools. Future research should include LGBTQ students and SHPs from the same school to better compare the perspectives of students and SHPs in the same context.

Future work may also address issues of generalizability to the diverse populations of LGBTQ students and SHPs, as well as diverse geographic regions where LGBTQ bullying persists. Participants were recruited from LGBTQ and SHP organizations and networks as well as from the personal and professional networks of individuals on the youth and community advisory board. It is therefore possible that participants may have had a greater interest in this topic, or greater willingness to talk about their experiences of bullying, than others. Future work in this area should employ recruitment methods that may yield more representative samples. Some LGBTQ identities and experiences were underrepresented in the student sample, and therefore results may not generalize to all LGBTQ students. For example, our sample included only one young transgender woman. Transgender women may be particularly at risk of some forms of more extreme bullying, such as sexual harassment due to intersecting transphobia and misogyny, and therefore more research is needed to better capture their experiences of LGBTQ bullying. Moreover, LGBTQ students may experience bullying based on other characteristics, including disability, weight, and religion. More research is needed with diverse samples of LGBTQ students to further understand intersectional experiences of bullying. Similarly, the SHPs included in the current sample were homogeneous in regard to race/ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation. Although this may reflect the population of SHPs, which predominately identify as White and women ( Willgerodt, Brock, & Maughan, 2018 ), it is possible that SHPs from more diverse backgrounds, including LGBTQ SHPs and SHPs of color, have different perspectives on LGBTQ bullying. Future research with diverse samples of SHPs is needed to continue to understand SHP perspectives on LGBTQ bullying. Also needed are studies in other geographic regions. According to GLSEN’s 2017 National School Climate Survey ( Kosciw et al., 2018 ), LGBTQ students in the Northeast and West report lower rates of LGBTQ bullying than LGBTQ students in the South and Midwest regions of the United States. These students also report greater access to LGBTQ-related resources at school, and are more likely to live in states with enumerated anti-bullying laws and policies protecting students from LGBTQ bullying. It is critical to examine the perspectives of LGBTQ students and SHPs living in other states, especially in places where LGBTQ bullying may be more pronounced.

Conclusions and implications

Recent researchers and practitioners have called for greater involvement of SHPs in LGBTQ bullying interventions ( Earnshaw et al., 2017 ; Espelage, 2016 ; Graybill & Proctor, 2016 ). In particular, SHPs have potential to play a powerful role in indicated preventive bullying interventions by identifying and supporting LGBTQ students experiencing bullying. The current study identifies two potential barriers to SHPs’ involvement in such LGBTQ bullying interventions, including: (1) lack of awareness of LGBTQ bullying among SHPs, and (2) lack of knowledge and skills to guide SHPs in their response to LGBTQ bullying. Interventions that enhance communication between LGBTQ students and SHPs may help to improve awareness of LGBTQ bullying among SHPs. Given LGBTQ students’ concerns regarding confidentiality surrounding their sexual orientations and gender identities, it is critical that such communication be confidential, safe, and supportive. Additionally, interventions that enhance knowledge of LGBTQ students’ experiences and needs as well as skills to interact with LGBTQ students may strengthen SHPs’ abilities to serve this vulnerable population. Clear policies that delineate how SHPs should respond to LGBTQ bullying may reduce ambiguity and variability in SHP responses.

There are existing resources that may inform these intervention efforts and aid SHPs in their current efforts to support LGBTQ youth. StopBullying.gov (2019) contains resources to help adults identify bullying and initiate conversations surrounding bullying. SHPs may consider using a combination of direct (e.g., Have you been bullied by other student?) and indirect (e.g., Have you had any problems accessing restrooms?) questions to assess whether youth have experienced bullying ( Earnshaw, Bogart, Poteat, Reisner, & Schuster, 2016 ). Additionally, the American Medical Association offers educational resources for healthcare professionals about the health needs of LGBTQ individuals ( Understanding LGBTQ health issues, 2019 ), and GLSEN offers professional development resources for educators about the unique needs of LGBTQ students (Read, watch, collaborate: GLSEN PD for educators, n.d.). With greater support, guidance, and training, SHPs are poised to become an effective resource for LGBTQ students experiencing bullying.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge and thank the youth and community advisory board for their contributions and collaboration on this study (alphabetical): Landon Callahan, Sonya Epstein, Opal Hines-Fisher, Lee Hoegler, Kira Houston, Karen Jarvis-Vance, Ken Rufo, and Rothsaida Sylviance.

This work was conducted with support from Harvard Catalyst & The Harvard Clinical and Translational Science Center (National Center for Research Resources and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, National Institutes of Health Award UL1 TR001102) and financial contributions from Harvard University and its affiliated academic healthcare centers. VAE’s contributions were further supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (K01 DA042881). Funders were not involved in the study design; collection, analysis, or interpretation of the data; write up of the report; or decision to submit the article for publication. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of Harvard Catalyst, Harvard University and its affiliated academic healthcare centers, or the National Institutes of Health.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interests. They alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/19361653.2019.1653808 .

• Beebe J (2001). Rapid assessment practice: An introduction . New York, NY: AltaMira Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Beebe J (2014). Rapid qualitative inquiry: A field guide to team-based assessment (2nd ed.). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. [ Google Scholar ]
• Cole ER (2009). Intersectionality and research in psychology . The American Psychologist , 64 ( 3 ), 170–180. doi: 10.1037/a0014564 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Crenshaw K, Creer J, Cheung E, Rimonte N, Smith F, Banks T, … Monaghan H (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color . Stanford Law Review , 43 ( 6 ), 1241–1299. doi: 10.2307/1229039 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Daley A, Solomon S, Newman PA, & Mishna F (2007). Traversing the margins: Intersectionalities in the bullying of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth . Journal of Gay & Lesbian Social Services , 19 ( 3–4 ), 9–29. doi: 10.1080/10538720802161474 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Dominski EH (2016). Intersectional bullying, LGBT youth and the construction of power . International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences , 20 ( 9 ), 3265–3269. [ Google Scholar ]
• Earnshaw VA, Bogart LM, Poteat VP, Reisner SL, & Schuster MA (2016). Bullying among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth . Pediatric Clinics of North America , 63 ( 6 ), 999–1010. doi: 10.1016/j.pcl.2016.07.004 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Earnshaw VA, Reisner SL, Juvonen J, Hatzenbuehler ML, Perrotti J, & Schuster MA (2017). LGBTQ bullying: Translating research to action in pediatrics . Pediatrics , 140 ( 4 ), e20170432. doi: 10.1542/peds.2017-0432 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Earnshaw VA, Reisner SL, Menino DD, Poteat VP, Bogart LM, Barnes TN, & Schuster MA (2018). Stigma-based bullying interventions: A systematic review . Developmental Review , 48 , 178. doi: 10.1016/j.dr.2018.02.001 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Earnshaw VA, Rosenthal L, Carroll-Scott A, Peters SM, McCaslin C, & Ickovics JR (2014). Teacher involvement as a protective factor from the association between race-based bullying and smoking initiation . Social Psychology of Education , 17 ( 2 ), 197. doi: 10.1007/s11218-014-9250-1 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Espelage DL (2016). Sexual orientation and gender identity in schools: A call for more research in school psychology-no more excuses . Journal of School Psychology , 54 , 5–8. doi: 10.1016/j.jsp.2015.11.002 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Fekkes M (2006). Do bullied children get ill, or do ill children get bullied? A prospective cohort study on the relationship between bullying and health-related symptoms . Pediatrics , 117 ( 5 ), 1568–1574. doi: 10.1542/peds.2005-0187 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Friedman MS, Koeske GF, Silvestre AJ, Korr WS, & Sites EW (2006). The impact of gender-role nonconforming behavior, bullying, and social support on suicidality among gay male youth . Journal of Adolescent Health , 38 ( 5 ), 621–623. doi: 10.1016/j.jadohealth.2005.04.014 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Gini G, & Pozzoli T (2013). Bullied children and psychosomatic problems: A meta-analysis . Pediatrics , 132 ( 4 ), 720–729. doi: 10.1542/peds.2013-0614 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Gladden RM, Vivolo-Kantor AM, Hamburger ME, & Lumpkin CD (2014). Bullying surveillance among youths: Uniform definitions for public health and recommended data elements, version 1.0 . Atlanta, GA: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/bullying-definitions-final-a.pdf [ Google Scholar ]
• Graybill EC, & Proctor SL (2016). Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth: Limited representation in school support personnel journals . Journal of School Psychology , 54 , 9–16. doi: 10.1016/j.jsp.2015.11.001 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Juvonen J, & Graham S (2014). Bullying in schools: The power of bullies and the plight of victims . Annual Review of Psychology , 65 , 159–185. doi: 10.1146/annurev-psych-010213-115030 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kosciw JG, Greytak EA, Zongrone AD, Clark CM, & Truong NL (2018). The 2017 National School Climate Survey: The experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer youth in our nation’s schools . New York, NY: GLSEN. [ Google Scholar ]
• McLemore KA (2015). Experiences with misgendering: Identity misclassification of transgender spectrum individuals . Self and Identity , 14 ( 1 ), 51–74. doi: 10.1080/15298868.2014.950691 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• McMullen CK, Ash J, Sittig D, Bunce A, Guappone K, Dykstra R, … Wright A (2011). Rapid assessment of clinical information systems in the healthcare setting: An efficient method for time-pressed evaluation . Methods of Information in Medicine , 1 ( 3 ), 233–245. doi: 10.1016/j.dcn.2011.01.002 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Meezan W, & Martin JL (Eds.). (2009). Handbook of research with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender populations (1st ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. [ Google Scholar ]
• Mink MD, Lindley LL, & Weinstein AA (2014). Stress, stigma, and sexual minority status: The intersectional ecology model of LGBTQ health . Journal of Gay & Lesbian Social Services , 26 ( 4 ), 502–521. doi: 10.1080/10538720.2014.953660 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Nadal KL, Whitman CN, Davis LS, Erazo T, & Davidoff KC (2016). Microaggressions toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and genderqueer people: A review of the literature . The Journal of Sex Research , 53 ( 4–5 ), 488–508. doi: 10.1080/00224499.2016.1142495 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM). (2016). Preventing bullying through science, policy, and practice . Washington, DC: National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23482 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Read, watch, collaborate: GLSEN PD for educators. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.glsen.org/educate/professional-development
• Reisner SL, Randazzo RK, White Hughto JM, Peitzmeier S, DuBois LZ, Pardee DJ, … Potter J (2018). Sensitive health topics with underserved patient populations: Methodological considerations for online focus group discussions . Qualitative Health Research , 28 ( 10 ), 1658–1673. doi: 10.1177/1049732317705355 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Rosenthal L (2016). Incorporating intersectionality into psychology: An opportunity to promote social justice and equity . American Psychologist , 71 ( 6 ), 474–485. doi: 10.1037/a0040323 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Rosenthal L, Earnshaw VA, Carroll-Scott A, Henderson KE, Peters SM, McCaslin C, & Ickovics JR (2015). Weight- and race-based bullying: Health associations among urban adolescents . Journal of Health Psychology , 20 ( 4 ), 401–412. doi: 10.1177/1359105313502567 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Russell ST, & Joyner K (2001). Adolescent sexual orientation and suicide risk: Evidence from a national study . American Journal of Public Health , 91 ( 8 ), 1276–1281. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.91.8.1276 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Russell ST, Ryan C, Toomey RB, Diaz RM, & Sanchez J (2011). Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender adolescent school victimization: Implications for young adult health and adjustment . Journal of School Health , 81 ( 5 ), 223–230. doi: 10.1111/j.1746-1561.2011.00583.x [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Russell ST, Sinclair KO, Poteat VP, & Koenig BW (2012). Adolescent health and harassment based on discriminatory bias . American Journal of Public Health , 102 ( 3 ), 493–495. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2011.300430 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Sabone M, Ntsayagae E, Brown MS, Seboni NM, Mogobe KD, & Sebego M (2007). Perceptions of undergraduate students not participating in HIV/AIDS prevention activities in Botswana . International Nursing Review , 54 ( 4 ), 332–338. doi: 10.1111/j.1466-7657.2007.00544.x [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• StopBullying.gov . (2019). Retrieved from https://www.stopbullying.gov
• Understanding LGBTQ health issues. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/population-care/understanding-lgbtq-health-issues
• Vaillancourt T, Hymel S, & McDougall P (2013). The biological underpinnings of peer victimization: Understanding why and how the effects of bullying can last a lifetime . Theory into Practice , 52 ( 4 ), 241–248. doi: 10.1080/00405841.2013.829726 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Vessey JA, & O’Neill KM (2011). Helping students with disabilities better address teasing and bullying situations: A MASNRN study . The Journal of School Nursing , 27 ( 2 ), 139–148. doi: 10.1177/1059840510386490 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Willgerodt MA, Brock DM, & Maughan ED (2018). Public school nursing practice in the United States . Journal of School Nursing , 34 ( 3 ), 232–244. doi: 10.1177/1059840517752456 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Playground bullies do prosper – and go on to earn more in middle age

Five-decade UK study finds that aggression at school leads to better-paying jobs, while those with emotional instability went on to earn less

Children who displayed aggressive behaviour at school, such as bullying or temper outbursts, are likely to earn more money in middle age, according to a five-decade study that upends the maxim that bullies do not prosper.

They are also more likely to have higher job satisfaction and be in more desirable jobs, say researchers from the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex.

The paper, published today, used data about almost 7,000 people born in 1970 whose lives have been tracked by the British Cohort Study . The research team examined data from primary school teachers who assessed the children’s social and emotional skills when they were 10 years old in 1980, and matched it to their lives at the age of 46 in 2016.

“We found that those children who teachers felt had problems with attention, peer relationships and emotional instability did end up earning less in the future, as we expected, but we were surprised to find a strong link between aggressive behaviour at school and higher earnings in later life,” said Prof Emilia Del Bono, one of the study’s authors.

“It’s possible that our classrooms are competitive places and that children adapt to win that competition with aggression, and then take that through to the workplace where they continue to compete aggressively for the best paid jobs. Perhaps we need to reconsider discipline in schools and help to channel this characteristic in children in a more positive way.”

Policymakers should recognise that socio-emotional skills are important, she said, and introduce policies to support these skills in school. “These findings make a strong case for more interventions supporting those struggling with their attention to lessons or with friendships and emotions, to prevent a lifelong negative impact on their earning potential.”

Del Bono, Ben Etheridge and Paul Garcia used primary school teachers’ answers to more than 60 questions about the children’s behaviour.

They found that an increase in teachers’ observations of conduct problems – such as temper outbursts or bullying or teasing other children – was associated with an increase in earnings in 2016 of nearly 4% for a given rise in conduct problems for boys and girls. That compared with a 6% rise for higher cognition skills.

Those considered to have attention problems, such as failing to finish tasks, and emotional problems – seen as worried, anxious or fussy – went on to earn less than their classmates.

Further analysis showed that, by age 16, those with conduct problems were more sociable as teenagers, and were more likely to smoke and be arrested at some point in their lives.

Del Bono said that expectations about children’s behaviour had changed since the 1980s and that many participants had dropped out of the study since it began, a factor that affects all longitudinal studies. “We do lose more of those with higher conduct problems,” she said.

The work tallies with previous research by economists including Nicholas Papageorge, who examined longitudinal studies in the UK and US in 2019 and found that “externalising” behaviour linked to aggression and hyperactivity was associated with lower educational attainment but higher earnings.

Many successful people have had problems of various kinds at school, from Winston Churchill, who was taken out of his primary school, to those who were expelled or suspended.

That does not mean parents should encourage children to misbehave, Del Bono said. “I suppose [it means] encouraging your child to stand their ground, rather than being aggressive.”

Other research has emphasised organisational skills and being goal-oriented – high conscientiousness and low neuroticism in the so-called “big five” personality traits – as keys to career success.

There is no evidence in the institute’s study about whether children who were aggressive continued to be so in adulthood, but if that was a factor in their later success then it may not work for younger generations.

Mary-Clare Race, chief executive of Talking Talent and an occupational psychologist , said 2016 had been a “real turning point” in workplace culture. “Before that time, we did reward typically masculine or aggressive behaviours – bosses slamming their fists on the table or shouting,” she said. But the rise of the #MeToo movement had turned around corporate culture. “At that time I was working in America and we were inundated with companies saying ‘there’s a Harvey Weinstein’ in our company’.”

She said research showed that overcoming an adverse event in childhood was a strong indicator of future success as a leader. “We’re also seeing a generational shift where younger generations expect to have a culture of belonging and being treated with fairness, respect and kindness.”

• The Observer
• Young people

More on this story

Pupils in Wales perform only as well as disadvantaged children in England – IFS

‘How difficult is it to bake a potato?’: fed-up head hits out at school’s caterers

Fines for unauthorised absence from school in England to rise by 33%

One in four school-starters in England and Wales not toilet-trained, say teachers

Labour to help schools develop male influencers to combat Tate misogyny

School summer holidays in England should be cut to four weeks, report says

Staff absences fell 50% after schools introduced longer half-term break

Most schools in England facing real-terms cuts since 2010 thanks to Tories, analysis shows

‘Daylight robbery’: two in five UK teachers work 26 hours for free each week

Teachers in England could face ban for failing to report evidence of sexual abuse of children

Most viewed.

WELCOME TO THE FAMILY! Please check your email for confirmation from us.

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry speak out in support of Kate Middleton

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex reportedly learned about Kate Middleton’s diagnosis along with the public.

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• Share via Email
• Copy Link Link Copied

They may be currently estranged from Prince William and his family, but Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are showing public support for Kate Middleton amid the reveal of her cancer diagnosis.

Despite reportedly learning of her diagnosis from the media, like the rest of the public, the couple has reached out and expressed their concern and support, both publicly and, according to People magazine , privately. 

In a statement to the publication, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex said, “We wish health and healing for Kate and the family.” 

They added that they “hope [Kate and the family] are able to do so privately and in peace.” 

After widespread speculation from the public and the media, in a video message released Friday, Middleton revealed she had stepped out of the public eye in recent months to grapple with a cancer diagnosis following abdominal surgery. 

The Princess of Wales explained that she is in the “early stages” of preventative chemotherapy and that, in addition to recovering from surgery, she and Prince William had taken the time to explain things to their children, Prince George, 10, Princess Charlotte, 8, and Prince Louis, 5, before making a public announcement. 

The fallout and ongoing estrangement between Prince Harry and his brother, which he revealed in his memoir “Spare,” has been widely documented since Harry and Meghan stepped down as working royals in January 2020. 

Accordingly, a source told People that the Sussexes were “left out of any details regarding Kate’s diagnosis.” The source added, “There is clearly no trust.” 

Royal historian Richard Fitzwilliams told Time magazine, “It speaks volumes that Harry and Meghan learnt of the diagnosis from the news. The brothers reportedly haven’t been in contact for months, and trust has completely broken down.” 

Recommended Stories

Meghan Markle lends support to groundbreaking study on moms in media

TheGrio Lifestyle

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry celebrated Black History Month by continuing to ‘learn’ and ‘uplift’

Meghan Markle, Prince Harry drop ‘royal’ from their relaunched website, adopt new surname for their children

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry ‘applaud’ families for speaking up during Senate hearing on online bullying 

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry talk parenting and protecting children’s mental health in the digital age

Maiysha Kai

Meghan Markle’s trademark application hints at what she might start selling

Meghan and Harry send supplies to schoolgirls in Nigeria 

Meghan Markle gives a nod to her Nigerian heritage at the Invictus Games

However, there is now speculation that Princess Kate’s diagnosis could be a situation that brings the family back together.

Royal commentator Sarah-Louise Robertson told GB News, “There has been some text messages, some exchanges, and the fact that has happened shows that there could now be maybe a thawing and a bit of an olive branch between the two families.”

A health emergency has brought the fractured family together already once this year. In February, Prince Harry flew to the U.K. upon learning of King Charles III’s cancer diagnosis . Even though he was in his father’s company for less than an hour before he flew back to Los Angeles, it was the first time he had seen him since his coronation in May 2023.

   Never miss a beat: Get our daily stories straight to your inbox with theGrio’s newsletter .

• Share on Facebook Facebook
• Share on Twitter Twitter
• Share via Email Email
• Copy Link Copy Link Link Copied

STREAM FREE MOVIES, LIFESTYLE AND NEWS CONTENT ON OUR NEW APP