Onset and Persistance of Cyberbullying: Risk Factors of Future Juvenile Antisocial Behavior

• In Event: Correlates and Consequences of Cyberbullying

Abstract

Even if several studies on risk factors for children and adolescents involvement in cyberbullying exist, to date, only one (Baldry, Sorrentino & Farrington, 2017) investigated risk factors prediction and cause of onset and persistency in cyberbullying with longitudinal studies. Persistency of cyberbullying is of essence for developmental criminology.
To this purpose 455 Italian adolescents aged between 10 -16 years (M=12.27, sd =1.42) participated in a short-term longitudinal study.
Results highlighted the existence of different patterns with regard to onset and persistency risk factors for cyberbullying.
Participants’ high levels of moral disengagement and low levels of awareness of online risky behaviours emerged to be significant risk factors for students’ involvement in cyberbullying after six months. While students who reported low levels of empathy and perceived peer support were respectively 2.89 and 4.87 times more likely continue to be involved in cyberbullying after 6 months. Our findings confirm that there is no one single risk factor able to predict onset or persistence of cyberbullying: an ecological, multilevel approach can better tailor intervention programs.

Authors

• Sorrentino Anna, Università degli Studi della Campania Luigi Vanvitelli

• Anna Costanza Baldry, Università degli Studi della Campania Luigi Vanvitelli

• David Farrington, Cambridge University