Cyber-Bullying And Children’s Unmonitored Media Violence Exposure

With technological evolution, interpersonal communication is constantly advancing; as a result comes the more frequent unregulated access of children to cyber-space and media violence exposure (DePaolis, & Williford, 2015), whilst risking involvement to cyber-bullying (CB). CB is commonly defined as purposefully causing repetitively harm to others through electronic devices created for interpersonal communication (Rigby, 2002). Its main differentiation from traditional bullying is the perpetrator’s ability to anonymously and effortless harass multiple victims at any time and geographic location (Hemphill, Tollit, Kotevski & Heerde, 2015). Research (for example see Mishna, Cook, Gadalla, Daciuk & Solomon, 2010) has indicated CB rates of up to 49.5% for cyber-victimisation and 33.7% for cyber-perpetration. Students consider some of the most common CB ways as posting victims’ embarrassing/humiliating videos on video-hosting sites; creating profiles on social media to humiliate victims and posting/forwarding victims’ private information/images without permission (NHS, 2015).