Cyberbullying on the rise?

That was the headline on an Associated Press report <
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/related-top-news/?i=50868;_hbguid=81326910-9480-4f4e-a1e1-f0ff24952386>on a US Centers for Disease Control focus on cyberbullying <http://www.cdc.gov/Features/ElectronicAggression/>. "Electronic aggression," as the CDC prefers to call it, is "an emerging public health problem." While acknowledging the Internet's "many potential benefits," the CDC says the fact that 80% of US adolescents own at least one Net-connected device means that "increasing numbers of adolescents are becoming victims of aggression perpetrated by peers with this technology" (cellphones, PDAs, or Net-connected computers).A qualifier is needed here: Teens are not just becoming victims, they are victimizing. "Obviously," some readers might say. But it's not so obvious in the way our society has handled this issue to date. We keep thinking of our online children as potential victims when we need to think of them as (and aim our parenting and online-safety messages at) participants. They are participants on the participatory Web - in fact they're the drivers of it (see "Users' Web" <http://www.netfamilynews.org/2006/05/users-web.html>).It's not logical to aim education about problems in this highly interactive space at passive victims. They are only part of the equation - not even half, in fact - because in many bullying situations, particularly online, there are observers as well as a bully and a victim. And there is a fine line and often a very short amount of time between being victimized by a bully and becoming one (retaliating), as well as between being an observer and a participant. Take mere gossip as an example. When adolescents engage in mean gossip about one another in instant messaging or on a social-networking site, in a matter of seconds a person being "dissed" by someone can turn the tables on him or her - and entire peer groups can "pile on," augmenting the victimization.
Research now shows a correlation between behaving aggressively online and being victimized. “Youth who engage in online aggressive behavior by making rude or nasty comments or frequently embarrassing others are more than twice as likely to report online interpersonal victimization,” wrote University of New Hampshire researchers in Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine <http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/161/2/138> a year ago, suggesting that online-safety messaging needs to "target the right online behaviors."Another emerging understanding is highlighted in an important article in the Journal of Adolescent Health's just-released special issue on cyberbullying <http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/dvp/electronic_aggression.htm> - that both aggression and victimization are associated with "psychosocial problems." Authors Michele Ybarra, Dorothy Espelage, and Kimberly Mitchell write that "the majority of youth are not frequently involved in Internet harassment or unwanted sexual solicitation either as victims or as perpetrators. Among those who are, however, psychosocial problems are apparent…. This is especially true for youth who are involved as perpetrators as well as victims of both Internet harassment and sexual solicitation. This small group of youth has emerged as an especially important group for adolescent health professionals to be aware of." What are psychosocial problems? The authors refer to "elevated rates of substance abuse; involvement in online victimization; perpetration of relational, physical, and sexual aggression; delinquent peers; propensity to respond to certain stimuli with anger; poor emotional bonds with caregivers; and poor caregiver monitoring." The long title of their study is "The Co-occurrence of Internet Harassment and Unwanted Sexual Solicitation Victimization and Perpetration: Associations with Psychosocial Behaviors" (it can be downloaded in pdf format here <
http://www.jahonline.org/content/suppl07>).