Coping of Cybervictimization in Adolescence - Emotional and Behavioral Reactions to Cyberbullying

The experience of cybervictimization is related to health, psychological, and behavioral problems among children and adolescents. Up to today research is scarce, how the persons affected by cybervictimization react and which determinants influence the choice for social, problem-focused, technical, or helpless coping behavior. The current online study with 428 adolescents considers age, sex, mean internet use, frequency of victimization, roles in cyberbullying, and emotional reactions to cybervictimization as potential determinants of the mentioned coping strategies. Based on the participant role approach, roles of cyberbullies, cybervictims, defenders or outsiders are frequently changing. Logistic regression analyses point out the important relevance of emotional reactions like anger or helplessness and the roles as cyberbully-victim or outsider. Further, younger participants reported cybervictimization more often, while the frequency of cybervictimization and sex did not and internet use only partially predict coping strategies. These findings corroborate the relevance of emotional reactions and the roles in the process of cyberbullying. As a starting point for prevention and intervention of cybervictimization, we suggest emotion regulation, teaching of technical coping behaviors as well as reflexion of roles in the context of cyberbullying. If feasible, different stakeholders should be engaged in this process: adolescents, parents, educational staff inside and outside of schools, experts from counseling and therapy as well as internet and mobile phone service providers.