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Citation
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Arabshahi F, Fakhri A, Serami M, Ketabi M, Golestaneh Z, Akbari H, Asadollahezare M. Int. J. School Health 2018; 5(1): e59607. |
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Abstract
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Over the past few years, bullying in schools is turned into a matter of considerable importance and in many countries it is investigated extensively as an international issue. Researches conducted to date indicate that bullying may occur in any school environment at different degrees and intensities, which shows that bullying is a common problem among nations and countries (20). Many researches were conducted on the prevalence of bullying among middle school students. Although some of their findings were in agreement with those of the current study, there were some differences, which were dealt with below in some details.
Based on the findings of the current research, the prevalence of general bullying among junior high school students (grades 7 to 9) was 24.4%. The prevalence of cybernetic bullying was calculated at 4.6%, the majority of which was practiced by means of social networks (72%). The cybernetic victimization also occurred more through social networks (69%). The higher prevalence of victimization relative to bullying can be attributed to the lower tendency toward reporting bullying than victimization.
Moreover, the obtained results showed that bullying was observed more among males than females. This finding was in concordance with the research that pointed to an alarming rate of increase in traditional bullying among males, the reason of which may lie in the fact that people mostly consider bullying (aggressiveness) as an innate and natural trait for males and that these types of behavior by the males is deemed to be a sign of power and audacity (17). Generally speaking, males practice bullying more than females, just as males are more violent than females, a fact related to such numerous biological factors as testosterone and serotonin levels in the body (21).
The higher extent of bullying among males is also observed in analyzing gender difference in cybernetic bullying, but in bullying in social networks, the difference is not distinct, a fact that is accounted for by comparing the frequency of bullying females through cybernetic means and through social networks; the information provided in tables 4 and 5 bears out this fact. This finding is harmonious with the results obtained by Smith et al. They found that females practiced considerably more web bullying than males (22).
This finding sounds a danger alarm for the cultural authorities of the society, that is, social networks are successful in removing some traditional barriers in the way of developing social abnormal types of behavior on the part of females.
The findings of the current study considered that the highest frequency of cyber-bullying and cyber-victims occurred among males. These findings were in agreement with the study conducted by Li, which mentioned that in Canada cybernetic vexation occurs twice as much among males than females (23). Though researches by Slonje et al. and Patchin et al. pointed to the fact that females more than males were the object of cyber bullying especially through e-mailing (12, 24).
The present study manifested that cybernetic bullying was observed among the students whose parents had lower levels of education. It is claimed that cyber-bullying and cyber- victimization usually occur when the supervision of the adults is quite enough and the parents are capable of supervising their children mobile usage (25). Therefore, it is expected that the parents with higher levels of education communicate more effectively with their children and on the account of having more information can exert better and more conscious supervision.
In this study, the grouping of parents' occupation into employed and unemployed was done considering the amount of time they spent at home with their children and the income aspect was not in view. Therefore, not being convinced of a significant relationship between parents' occupation on one hand and bullying and victim types on the other, one can endorse the supreme role of a conscious supervision on the part of parents in exerting strict personal controls and checks; therefore, an effective way to reduce bullying is setting up talks with the students' parents (25).
The linear correlation coefficient between traditional and cybernetic bullying on one hand and traditional bullying and bullying through social networks can point to the fact that having a familial upbringing background of traditional coerciveness can pave the way for cyber- bullying and bullying through social networks. This latter point was borne out by Kwan et al. that came to the conclusion that students' offline bullying experiences are the strong predictors of their involvement in bullying in such social networks as Facebook and that parents can, by enhancing their knowledge and exerting proper supervision, take measure towards reducing the possibility of their off-line bullies turning into social network ones (20).
While the current study elucidated the fact that, compared with other researches in this field, there was less prevalence of bullying behavior among junior high school students in Kashan rather than other setting, this phenomenon still needs proper attention.
Although the study implied that some social harm were emerged from social networking, but it could be supposed that the social behaviors hidden by traditional barriers are found out through social networks; hence, there is an ambiguity about the causal direction of the association between bullying and social networking (15).
Among the limitations of the current study, it can be referred to the design of the research in a cross sectional manner in a small setting, which fact delimits the possibility of establishing a causal relationship and generalizing the results to other groups. Finally, underestimating bullying behavior due to the nature of self-report characteristics of the study is still regarded as one weakness of the present research program.
Language: en |