INSTITUTE OF LAW, NIRMA UNIVERSITY

RESEARCH PROPOSAL

CYBERBULLYING & ITS IMPACT ON YOUTH

SUBMITTED TO: SUBMITTED BY:

Prof. MADHURI PAREKH UNNATI JAIN
(18BBL055)
Introduction

Bullying amongst school children is more than one might think. It is causing unimaginable and
serious problems to children. It has been a problem prevailing in the society since a long period.
Later in the twentieth century, a phenomenon named Cyberbullying evolved. Cyberbullying is
a repeated harassment, embarrassment, threatening etc. over social media. With the increase of
use of internet in the modern world, cyberbullying has acquired a prominent place in the cyber
space. Youth, in particular, has become the target of Cyberbullying. Research suggests that
there is a potential harm to all while communicating over internet. They lack the cognitive
skills, maturity to understand the effects of bullying and become bullied easily. The victims
undergo emotional stress and hence are unable to progress academically (Juliana, 2010). Many
cyberbullied victims often tolerate this silently; they are reluctant to complain to the authorities
or their parents owing to the social stigma attached to victims of bullies (Susan, 2011). This
research explores an important issue facing the school children and its adverse effects on them.,
focusing on gender.

Statement of Problem

How does cyberbullying have a negative impact on the school children? Anybody can become
a victim of cyber bullying during their lifetime, which would hence lead to various ill actions
such as suicide, dropping school, getting into serious fights, destroying and vandalizing
property, substance abuse, effects on mental health & decreased academic involvement and
progress.
Basically, the research aims to answer the following questions:

1. What is the demographic background of the student?

2. Have you ever experienced cyber bullying at school?
3. If you have encountered cyber bullying, how did you cope up with its negative effects
such as loneliness, depression, embarrassment etc.?
4. Did it ever cause an adverse effect on your academic performance?
Scope of the study

Online bullying or cyber bullying is a vicious circle, some of these victims or cyber-bullies,
because of their abnormal or revengeful mindset and they might find relief in upsetting others.
Hinduja and Patchin (2009) mention that some of them are more easily subject to bullying,
associated with lack of cognitive and intellectual ability or with high frequency using of the
Internet or mobile phones.

Owing to the characteristics of the Internet, the unwanted consequences of cyber-bullying are
beyond control.The perpetrators do escape easily and hide themselves without any punishment.
Cellan (2012) reported that Facebook has got more than 83 million illegitimate accounts in
2012. Whereas, Hinduja and Patchin (2009) noticed that it is easy to set up a fictitious account
on a social networking site and it requires fewer skills. Furthermore, cyber-bullying is difficult
to prevent. Most of children cover the truth and remain silent of being bullied, because they are
more concerned with the access to the Internet rather being bullied again. For eg. chatting,
playing games, and posting their life online would be limited by their parents once this problem
is known (Hinduja and Patchin, 2009).

Aims and Objectives

The focus of the study is the young school children facing serious consequences of
cyberbullying and its ill- effects on them. The objectives of the study are to understand the
behavior of teens in terms of being bullied.

1. Provide an insight into the concept of Cyber bullying prevailing amongst the school
children.
2. Explore emotional and behavioral impact and adverse effects of cyberbullying on the
academic performance of teens.
3. Ascertain whether there are any gender differences that affects cyberbullying, or
everyone is a victim equally.
Significance of the study

Technology is very fast in terms of development and discovering new items, such as
digital tools, social media cites and a lot more. Many a people around us do not have a proper
direction on what is the proper usage of the social media. Instead of using it in a good way,
there are some who use it to hurt someone’s feelings and emotions. Indeed, bullies have been
described as having ‘social blindness’ which leads in them being unable to understand the
feelings of others and being unaware of what other people may think of them (Randall, 1997).
This study is significant because it aims to investigate the prevalence and negative effects of
cyberbullying. The School authorities are struggling on how to properly intervene instances of
cyberbullying occur, and a great deal of that struggle centres around their hesitance to take
action on behaviours that do not occur on the school campus (Ybarra et al., 2007; Feinberg &
Robey, 2009). Even though most of these cyberbullying instances occur off campus, the
disruption that many of them bring to the school campus is cause for school personnel to act
(Agatson et al., 2007).

Literature Review

Social networking site is defined as a web- based service that enables a person to develop a
profile within the framework that consist content by many users and they have control over
with whom they can make connections with and share data with.

The act of bullying on cyberspace in the way of sending threat messages, posting illegal
pictures, spreading rumors etc. has become prevalent in today’s times. Cyberbullying is not
just a public phenomenon but also a private one. The victims are often harassed on personal
platform by sending cruel messages and nasty pictures.

With the increase in use of Internet by all the sections and age groups of the society,
cyberbullying has been increasing persistently. The study shows that more people are harassed
on social media than in person. A study of the schools found that amongst 20,000 students,
15.8% were victims of cyberbullying. The frequency of cyberbullying cases suggests that it is
becoming a bigger issue and hence.

Studies show that cyberbullying is a prevalent problem in the adolescent population and with
the increase in access to smartphones and technologies, it might continue to increase.
Cyberbullying is a new phenomenon which results from the advancement of new
communication technology which includes Internet, cell phones and Personal Digital
Assistants. Cyberbullying can be defined as ‘sending/posting harmful, derogatory or cruel text
messages or images using the Internet or other digital communication devices’ (Willard, 2004;
p. 1). According to Willard (2004), it can occur in various formats including flaming,
harassment, embarrassing, cyberstalking, put-downs, masquerade & exclusion. Cyberbullying
can involve stalking and death threats and can be very serious in nature. Unlike face-to-face
bullying, people often feel that cyberspace is impersonal and they can therefore say whatever
they want to. Further, it has been reported that females prefer this type of bullying more often.
(Nelson, 2003).

The literature looks into the reasons why the cyberbullies (people who bully) feel the need to
bully others- revenge to victim, they feel the victim deserved it and for fun purpose. Also,
the cyberbullies mainly consist of males. In a study it was found that the cyberbullies are the
people who are need of social interactions, are unhappy and are involved in use of illegal
substances. Th cyberbullies are found to have lower empathy score than the victims of
cyberbullying.

Literature tells how cyberbullying negatively and emotionally affects the life of the victim.
But the literature lacks in looking at how the life of victim of cyberbullying affects the life of
others. The literature is also inconsistent in to find out the gender difference and how its effects
cyberbullying. It does not tell us what factors lead to bullying of genders differently.

Effects of Cyberbullying

Although a detailed research has yet to be conducted to help understand the effects of
cyberbullying, scholars have concluded that, children who are intended by cyberbullying show
negative reactions are similar between children who are victims of traditional. In fact, it could
be argued that the effects of cyberbullying are even more dangerous than of traditional bullying
since victims cannot as easily escape the rage of their persecutors (Brown, Jackson and
Cassidy, 2006). Since these cyber-attacks become permanent once they have been introduced
to the online world, students may in fact experience a elongated sense of victimization because
of continually remembering the incident & thus leads to depression and other mental disorders
(Brown et al., 2006). Research suggests that the students who struggle with more severe cases
of cyber victimization are those who also have problems with social adjustment.

bullying.

How Cyberbullying Occurs

Cyberbullying can take place in many shapes and at any time and location. Willard (2004)
identified seven distinct categories of common cyberbullying: flaming, sending angry or rude
or arrogant messages about a person to an online group; online harassment, includes repeatedly
sending private messages to some other person; cyberstalking, which includes online threats
such threats of harm or excessive terrorization; denigration includes sending shameful, untrue,
malicious or cruel statements about a person to some other person; outing, which is sending
sensitive material about someone else which may be embarrassing and derogatory; and
exclusion, which is cruelly and intentionally excluding someone from an online group. These
types of behaviours can occur at many places and at any point in time. Cyberbullies can commit
their acts through e-mail, text messages, picture messages, posts on online bulletin boards or
social networking web sites such as Facebook or MySpace (Juvonen & Gross, 2008; Hinduja
& Patchin, 2009). Furthermore, students create virtual worlds, or they hack into other student’s
computers and spread private information that is not meant to be seen by others (Hinduja &
Patchin, 2009; Vandebosch & Van Cleemput, 2009).

Research Questions

1. What is the nature and prevalence of cyberbullying amongst school children?

2. To what extent does cyberbullying affect an individual’s mental and emotional
health and how this has an adverse effect on his academic performance?
3. Does gender have a significant role to play in ascertaining the effects of cyber
bullying on young minds?
Hypothesis

Cyber-bullying is a globally significant problem amongst children, with dire consequences.

Cyberspace allows bullying regardless of time and place. It has an adverse effect on the
behaviour and performance of young children.

Research Methodology

The study involves an empirical investigation into the phenomenon of Cyberbullying. The
participants of the research would be school children from the age of 12-18. Schools will be
selected for convenience with proximity to the researcher as being an important aspect for ease
of dispersal of questionnaires and thus collection of data. The method of collecting data is
through the means of an open-ended questionnaire. This questionnaire is required to be filled
by every participant based on his/her experiences and their perspectives of the research topic.
The questions in the questionnaire are related to the research questions and would help gain an
intensive understanding in order to answer the questions.

Chapterisation

CHAPTER 1: Introduction of Cyberbullying

CHAPTER 2: Evolution of Cyberbullying

CAHPTER 3: Cyberbullying and its types

CHAPTER 4: Analysing the Impact of Cyberbullying on Children

CHAPTER 5: Negative Impact on Academic Performance

CHAPTER 6: Negative Impact on Behaviour and Mental health

CHAPTER 7: Conclusion
Budget

Sr no. Items Per month cost Total cost

(6 months)
1. Salary (research fellow) Rs. 25,000 Rs. 1,50,000
2. Travelling expenses Rs. 8,000 Rs. 48,000
3. Supplies-
Stationery Rs. 1,000 Rs. 6,000
Electronic supplies
4. Accommodation Rs. 20,000 Rs. 1,20,000
5. Other recurring expenses Rs. 30,000 Rs. 1,80,000
6. Misc. expenses Rs. 20,000 Rs. 1,20,000

Outcome of the study

This study contributes to the extant literature on bullying in several conceptual areas. First,
cyberbullying is a bullying problem occurring in a new territory. Few research studies have
examined bullying issues in this new context. Surprisingly, high percent of adolescents who
had experienced cyberbully tactics observed in this study suggests that cyberbullying is
becoming an increasingly critical problem for schools and the whole society. Second, in this
article, bullying and cyberbullying are examined at ‘a point where it had seldom been studied.
The early adolescent period attracts attention because it is a period, labelled a ‘brutalizing
period’, where disruptions in social networks afford opportunities for peer victimization and
aggression to establish peer status’ (Pellegrini and Bartini, 2000; p. 700). The education dealing
with cyberbullying related issues should be a joint endeavour of schools, families, communities
and the whole society. It supports the idea that our concern of the bully and cyberbully issue
‘must be at many levels, not only for the individuals themselves, and their families, but also
society at large’ (Morrison, 2002). Like any research study, this study has limitations. For
example, the data were collected from an urban city; we need to be cautious when generalizing
the findings to other regions. In addition, although junior high is the time when bullying peaks,
it is also important to examine cyberbullying in other age levels including elementary and
senior high schools. The information obtained can be used to provide a fuller picture of the
cyberbullying issue.