Face-to-face bullying much more common than cyberbullying

Conclusion Being bullied is a relatively common and distressing experience for many children and adolescents. Research in recent years has linked the experience of being bullied as a child to the development of mental health problems like anxiety and depression. It's perhaps not a surprise that cyberbullying in this study almost always occurred when teenagers were also being bullied offline. The internet is a tool, not a separate entity from the human world, and people who bully in one part of life may also use internet tools to bully in cyberspace. If anything, it's surprising how few teenagers reported having experienced regular cyberbullying, given how common smartphone use is among this age group. But this study has a few limitations: Only 40% of the children contacted completed the questionnaire, and more than 9,000 didn't complete the bullying section. Though this is typical of survey response rates, we don't know whether adolescents are more or less likely to participate in such a survey if they're being bullied. As a cross-sectional study, it can only look at what happened at one point in time, so those who experienced bullying more than two months before they filled in the questionnaire wouldn't have been picked up by this report. Cross-sectional studies can't tell us which came first: bullying or low mental wellbeing. This means the study can't tell us whether bullying causes low mental wellbeing. The researchers couldn't include possible relevant fac...
Source: NHS News Feed - Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Pregnancy/child Mental health Source Type: news