Cyberbullying: The Role of Witnesses
In Canada, MediaSmarts’ 2023 Young Canadians in a Wireless World (YCWW) research on cyberbullying has revealed both good and bad news on this front. The good news is that many youth who witness bullying do something about it: 64 percent of the 1,058 Canadian youth in Grades 4 to 11 that were surveyed said that they had done something to help someone who was experiencing online meanness.[4]
There’s no question that it’s possible for witnesses to do a great deal of harm, whether by directly joining in the bullying, encouraging the perpetrator, or revictimizing the target by sharing a bullying post or video. It’s also well-established that when witnesses to bullying stand up and defend the target it can make a tremendous and positive difference.
Another MediaSmarts study of Canadian youth, conducted in collaboration with PREVNet, asked the reasons why they choose to intervene, the reasons why they sometimes choose not to intervene and which ways of intervening they think will be most and least helpful.[5] The young people we surveyed, however, weren’t very enthusiastic about interventions that happen in public: only half (51 percent) felt that it would be helpful to try to mediate between a bully and their target, while only a third (37 percent) felt that the frequent advice to "stand up" and confront the sender publicly would be helpful. It's not hard to understand why: there may be just as many cases where intervening does greater harm to the target, the witness, or both. Witnesses may have a number of valid reasons for not wanting to report bullying when they see it.[6]
These young people were more positively disposed to the idea of intervening by reporting cyberbullying: two-thirds thought that reporting it to the service provider (65 percent) or the police (67 percent) would be useful, and three-quarters (74 percent) thought it would be helpful to tell a trusted adult about it.[7] Unfortunately, our research shows that teachers don’t generally fall into the category of “trusted adult.” This isn’t because students don't have faith in their good intentions, but because teachers’ efforts to help are seen as being ineffective (for example, students whose schools have rules on cyberbullying are actually more likely to have either experienced or engaged in it[8] - though this may be a result of schools adopting rules and procedures in response to cyberbullying incidents). Studies of offline bullying have shown that private expressions of support can be as, or even more, effective than active interventions in mitigating negative effects of bullying.[9]
Instead of telling youth to report and intervene each time they witness bullying, we can teach them to think of themselves as active participants in the situation and to consider different approaches for different situations, such as:
- Documenting the bullying and, if it seems that it will do more good than harm, report it
- Comforting the target privately and asking them whether and how you can help
- Distracting the perpetrator
- Helping the target to escape the situation
- Mediating between the target and perpetrator
- Talking to the perpetrator (preferably in a private online space or face-to-face)
About a third of young Canadians said they don’t intervene because they feel “nothing can be done about it” (including 39 percent of those who’d been recently targeted). About half (53 percent) said they don't intervene simply because "it is not about me." Relationships with targets makes a clear difference: 90 percent said they would intervene if someone was cyberbullying a family member compared to 37 percent who said they would defend someone they didn't know personally. However, targets don’t have to be much closer than strangers to earn that kind of loyalty: almost twice as many youth (61 percent) said they would be "likely" or "very likely" to defend any of their schoolmates.[10]
Another factor that may make youth less likely to intervene is moral disengagement, where we convince ourselves not to intervene on the grounds that what’s happening is “just a joke” or “isn’t that serious” or that the target “deserved it”: just one in ten of the youth in our cyberbullying survey said they don't intervene because "I thought they deserved it."[11] This is supported in our findings, where the two most popular reasons for cyberbullying someone were "s/he did something mean to me" and "s/he did something mean to my friend.”[12]
A form of moral disengagement particular to teenagers is to minimize the bullying by calling it "drama."[13] About half of the young people in our survey said that they don't intervene because "I cannot tell if it is drama or bullying."[14] However, this may at times be a sensible view. In cases of reciprocal bullying, intervention by witnesses can prolong the conflict, make it more severe and even lead to other bullying relationships as the friends of those involved line up and intervene on their behalf. One of the young interviewees in Alice Marwick and danah boyd’s paper The Drama: Teen Conflict, Gossip and Bullying in Networked Publics gave this example:
There’s a girl from West Beverly that got in an argument with a girl from South Beverly and they were at a party. So then when I looked on Facebook the next day there were all of these comments on [there] like “I love you, I don’t think you’re a— whatever the girl called her.”
Marwick and boyd’s sources also say that the participation of witnesses feeds drama: “Other teens talked about the involvement of other people ‘with no lives’ who jumped into arguments ‘where they didn’t belong.’”[15]
There are a number of quite reasonable fears that might make someone reluctant to report or intervene in a bullying situation:
- Fear of being a target. Saying that anyone who witnesses bullying should confront the perpetrator isn’t unlike suggesting that everyone who sees a mugging should try to stop it. Standing up to defend a target – especially if you turn out to be the only person who stands up – can easily lead to becoming a target yourself, without necessarily having a positive effect on the situation: two-thirds (67 percent) said they do not intervene because it might make them a target (interestingly, this is no higher among youth who recently been targets of bullying).[16]
- Fear of loss of social status. Even if intervening or reporting doesn’t lead to the witness becoming a target, it can still have long-term effects on a young person’s social status, either by being associated with the target (youth who are marginalized for reasons such as poverty, disability, being a member of a visible minority group and lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender status are substantially more likely to be targets) or being labeled a “snitch” – both of which may easily be preludes to being a target of bullying. A quarter of the youth in our survey who hadn’t recently been targets (26 percent), and almost half of those who had (45 percent), said they don't intervene because "adult advice will just increase my isolation."[17]
- Fear of making things worse. Both targets of and witnesses to bullying often fear that either standing up to a bully or reporting bullying to a parent or teacher is more likely to make things worse. Imagine if a straight or closeted gay youth is being harassed with homophobic comments and a well-meaning witness tries to defend him by saying “There’s nothing wrong with being gay!” Despite their good intentions, the witness will have unwittingly contributed to the bullying. Just over half (53 percent) of the youth in our cyberbullying survey said they don't intervene because "it makes things worse for the target": a number that rises to 59 percent for those who’d recently been targets themselves.[18] Another study of offline bullying found that being defended by peers who were unable to successfully protect or comfort the target actually led to more negative effects and a greater future risk of victimization.[19]
It's important to know – and to make sure that youth know – that young people do intervene: almost two-thirds (64 percent) of young Canadians who witnessed cyberbullying said they did something about it.[20] Youth are more likely to intervene if “the harassment is obvious, severe, and [if] they knew the victim well.”[21]
Researchers have identified a five-step decision-making process that leads youth to take action when they witness cyberbullying:
- Noticing the behaviour;
- Interpreting it as bullying;
- Taking responsibility as a witness (this is where moral disengagement frequently occurs – for instance ignoring harassment of influencers or celebrities because it’s seen as an ‘occupational hazard,’ or assuming that other people or the platform will address it;
- Deciding how to respond; and
- Helping the target.[22]
All of these steps are moderated by the relationships between the witness, the target(s) and the perpetrator(s),[23] by the defaults and affordances of the platform, and by the perceived severity of the situation.[24] Generally, young people see a situation as being more severe when it’s happening in a public space, when the perpetrator’s identity is unknown and when the target is visibly upset.[25] While this last is typically the most important factor, it can lead youth to underestimate the severity of a situation because targets often downplay how much an incident has hurt them. In MediaSmarts’ research, the most popular initial response to being targeted by online meanness and cruelty was to “not do anything so the person would think it did not bother me.” While 24 percent of participants chose that as their first response, though, just five percent said they would continue doing that if the first attempt failed to resolve the situation.[26]
Sameer Hinduja of the Cyberbullying Research Center recommends a system that allows students to report bullying incidents anonymously, in order to minimize the risk of being made a target or labeled a “snitch.”[27] Our cyberbullying research supports this idea – four out of five youth (81 percent) said they would be more likely to intervene if they could do it anonymously – but it needs to be handled delicately.[28] To begin with, if it’s accompanied by a “zero tolerance” bullying policy that prevents teachers and administrators from using their best judgement in responding to complaints, students will be unlikely to report incidents. As well, it’s important to remember that it’s difficult to be genuinely anonymous in a small society such as a school.
One of the participants in MediaSmarts’ focus groups explained how even anonymous reports can have fallout for the target:
I remember back when I was in Grade 7, I was bullied a little and, like after gym class one day, and that same guy got called down to the office, I didn’t tell anything, but everybody thought that I snitched on him, so I actually got bullied more because they thought that I snitched.[29]
In our cyberbullying survey, the largest numbers of youth said that they would intervene if "I believed what was happening was unfair or morally wrong" (87 percent) or "it was extremely hurtful behaviour" (86 percent).[30] This highlights the importance of encouraging young people to develop empathy and ethical thinking. Neither of these can be taught directly. Instead, youth must be nudged towards them, through activities like role-playing moral dilemmas and practicing perspective-taking (for a more in-depth look at how to foster empathy and ethical thinking, see the Ethics and Empathy strand of our Digital Media Literacy Curriculum as well as our resource package Stay on the Path.) We need to learn to make a conscious habit of applying empathy because the affordances and defaults of online communication – in particular, the absence of “social indicators such as facial expression, body language, gestures, and … voice” can “create ambiguity during an online interaction, making it more difficult to evaluate and perceive an interaction that may, for instance, involve sarcasm, irony, banter, and satire.”[31]
Almost as many youth (85 percent) said that they would intervene if "I knew something would be done about it,"[32] which shows the importance for schools having clear and consistent procedures for reporting cyberbullying that let students know ahead of time that some action will be taken.
Finally, just under three-quarters of young people (73 percent) said they would intervene if "others respected me for doing it." (This is distinct from actually being "rewarded or praised", which only 32 percent of youth said would be a motivating factor.)[33] Other research has found that witnesses are strongly influenced by what they see as the social norms of an online space or community in deciding whether or not to intervene.[34]
What we can take away from this is the tremendous importance of culture – youth culture, school culture, online culture and popular media – in determining how youth respond to bullying. If we can build a culture where respect is the norm, we can empower witnesses to take action – and perhaps make the more direct forms of intervention safer (though there will always be situations where indirect interventions are a better idea.)
This is why anti-bullying interventions are most effective if they happen not just in a single classroom or even in a single school, but for the whole community.[35] If we’re going to tell witnesses to take an active role in bullying scenarios, we need to make sure that they’re getting the same message from school staff, parents and media. We can empower witnesses to act by only changing our culture – in each school and in society at large – so that all people are expected to take responsibility for what they do online.
[1] Macaulay, P. J., Steer, O. L., & Betts, L. R. (2024). Bystander intervention to cyberbullying on social media. In Handbook of Social Media Use Online Relationships, Security, Privacy, and Society Volume 2 (pp. 73-99). Academic Press.
[2] Doumas, D. M., & Midgett, A. (2020). Witnessing cyberbullying and internalizing symptoms among middle school students. European journal of investigation in health, psychology and education, 10(4), 957-966.
[3] Wright, M. F., & Wachs, S. (2021). Does empathy and toxic online disinhibition moderate the longitudinal association between witnessing and perpetrating homophobic cyberbullying?. International journal of bullying prevention, 3, 66-74.
[4] Steeves, Valerie. (2014) Young Canadians in a Wired World, Phase III: Cyberbullying: Dealing with Online Meanness, Cruelty and Threats. MediaSmarts: Ottawa.
[5] MediaSmarts. (2023). “Young Canadians in a Wireless World, Phase IV: Relationships and Technology - Online Meanness and Cruelty.” MediaSmarts. Ottawa.
[6] Craig et al. Young Canadians' Experiences With Online Bullying. November 16, 2015. <https://mediasmarts.ca/sites/mediasmarts/files/publication-report/full/young-canadians-electronic-bullying.pdf>
[7] Craig et al. Young Canadians' Experiences With Online Bullying. November 16, 2015. <https://mediasmarts.ca/sites/mediasmarts/files/publication-report/full/young-canadians-electronic-bullying.pdf>
[8] MediaSmarts. (2023). “Young Canadians in a Wireless World, Phase IV: Relationships and Technology - Online Meanness and Cruelty.” MediaSmarts. Ottawa.
[9] Davis, Stan and Dr. Charisse L. Nixon. Youth Voice Project: Student Insights into Bullying and Peer Mistreatment. Research Press, 2013.
[10] Craig et al. Young Canadians' Experiences With Online Bullying. November 16, 2015. <https://mediasmarts.ca/sites/mediasmarts/files/publication-report/full/young-canadians-electronic-bullying.pdf>
[11] Craig et al. Young Canadians' Experiences With Online Bullying. November 16, 2015. <https://mediasmarts.ca/sites/mediasmarts/files/publication-report/full/young-canadians-electronic-bullying.pdf>
[12] MediaSmarts. (2023). “Young Canadians in a Wireless World, Phase IV: Relationships and Technology - Online Meanness and Cruelty.” MediaSmarts. Ottawa.
[13] Marwick, Dr. Alice and Dr. danah boyd. “The Drama! Teen Conflict, Gossip, and Bullying in Networked Publics” A Decade in Internet Time: Symposium on the Dynamics of the Internet and Society, September 2011, September 12, 2011.
[14] Craig et al. Young Canadians' Experiences With Online Bullying. November 16, 2015. <https://mediasmarts.ca/sites/mediasmarts/files/publication-report/full/young-canadians-electronic-bullying.pdf>
[15] Marwick, Dr. Alice and Dr. danah boyd. “The Drama! Teen Conflict, Gossip, and Bullying in Networked Publics” A Decade in Internet Time: Symposium on the Dynamics of the Internet and Society, September 2011, September 12, 2011.
[16] Craig et al. Young Canadians' Experiences With Online Bullying. November 16, 2015. <https://mediasmarts.ca/sites/mediasmarts/files/publication-report/full/young-canadians-electronic-bullying.pdf>
[17] Craig et al. Young Canadians' Experiences With Online Bullying. November 16, 2015. <https://mediasmarts.ca/sites/mediasmarts/files/publication-report/full/young-canadians-electronic-bullying.pdf>
[18] Craig et al. Young Canadians' Experiences With Online Bullying. November 16, 2015. <https://mediasmarts.ca/sites/mediasmarts/files/publication-report/full/young-canadians-electronic-bullying.pdf>
[19] Hodges, E.V.E., Boivin, M,, Vitaro, F., and Bukowski, W.M. (1999). "The Power of Friendship: Protecting against and Escalating Cycle of Peer Victimization." Developmental Psychology, 35, 94 -101.
[20] MediaSmarts. (2023). “Young Canadians in a Wireless World, Phase IV: Relationships and Technology - Online Meanness and Cruelty.” MediaSmarts. Ottawa.
[21] Davidovic, A., Talbot, C., Hamilton-Giachritsis, C., & Joinson, A. (2023). To intervene or not to intervene: young adults’ views on when and how to intervene in online harassment. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 28(5), zmad027.
[22] Davidovic, A., Talbot, C., Hamilton-Giachritsis, C., & Joinson, A. (2023). To intervene or not to intervene: young adults’ views on when and how to intervene in online harassment. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 28(5), zmad027.
[23] Domínguez-Hernández, F., Bonell, L., & Martínez-González, A. (2018). A systematic literature review of factors that moderate bystanders’ actions in cyberbullying. Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, 12(4).
[24] Davidovic, A., Talbot, C., Hamilton-Giachritsis, C., & Joinson, A. (2023). To intervene or not to intervene: young adults’ views on when and how to intervene in online harassment. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 28(5), zmad027.
[25] Macaulay, P. J., Betts, L. R., Stiller, J., & Kellezi, B. (2022). Bystander responses to cyberbullying: The role of perceived severity, publicity, anonymity, type of cyberbullying, and victim response. Computers in Human Behavior, 131, 107238.
[26] MediaSmarts. (2023). “Young Canadians in a Wireless World, Phase IV: Relationships and Technology - Online Meanness and Cruelty.” MediaSmarts. Ottawa.
[27] Hinduja, Sameer. “Anonymous Reporting for Bullying and Cyberbullying Incidents.” Cyberbullying Research Center, November 29, 2012. <https://web.archive.org/web/20130508230412/http://cyberbullying.us/blog/anonymous-reporting-for-bullying-and-cyberbullying-incidents.html>
[28] Craig et al. Young Canadians' Experiences With Online Bullying. November 16, 2015. <https://mediasmarts.ca/sites/mediasmarts/files/publication-report/full/young-canadians-electronic-bullying.pdf>
[29] Steeves, Valerie. Young Canadians in a Wired World, Phase III: Talking to Youth and Parents. MediaSmarts, 2012.
[30] Craig et al. Young Canadians' Experiences With Online Bullying. November 16, 2015. <https://mediasmarts.ca/sites/mediasmarts/files/publication-report/full/young-canadians-electronic-bullying.pdf>
[31] Macaulay, P. J., Steer, O. L., & Betts, L. R. (2024). Bystander intervention to cyberbullying on social media. In Handbook of Social Media Use Online Relationships, Security, Privacy, and Society Volume 2 (pp. 73-99). Academic Press.
[32] Craig et al. Young Canadians' Experiences With Online Bullying. November 16, 2015. <https://mediasmarts.ca/sites/mediasmarts/files/publication-report/full/young-canadians-electronic-bullying.pdf>
[33] Craig et al. Young Canadians' Experiences With Online Bullying. November 16, 2015. <https://mediasmarts.ca/sites/mediasmarts/files/publication-report/full/young-canadians-electronic-bullying.pdf>
[34] Gagrčin, E., & Milzner, M. (2023). “Intervening Is a Good Thing but...”: The Role of Social Norms in Users’ Justifications of (Non-) Intervention Against Incivility. Social Media+ Society, 9(3), 20563051231186561.
[35] Craig, Wendy. Testimony before the Senate Committee on Human Rights, December 12, 2011.