Who Cyberbullies and Why

There is evidence that certain affordances and defaults of digital media – in particular, the “empathy traps” that keep us from feeling empathy in situations where we normally would – can make people more likely to engage in cyberbullying, and for online conflicts to escalate.[3] Making a conscious effort to feel empathy, however, may take an effort that people are unwilling to make.[4]

Targets and perpetrators

There is a close relationship between targets and perpetrators in cyberspace. MediaSmarts’ research found that half of youth who had cyberbullied someone said it was because the person had said something mean or cruel about them or a friend first.[5] It’s not at all unusual for both parties in a cyberbullying scenario to see themselves as victims, and there is evidence that the algorithms used by social networks and video sites to curate and recommend content favour “amplifies emotional content, and especially [posts] that express anger and out-group animosity.”[6]

One of the challenges to dealing with cyberbullying is that the term “cyberbullying” often has little meaning to youth. As danah boyd of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society has noted, what adults may consider cyberbullying, youth will describe as getting into fights, “starting something” or simply “drama.” [7] This includes many of the activities considered forms of cyberbullying, such as spreading rumours or excluding peers from their social circles. Boys similarly refer to what they do – most often online impersonation or posting embarrassing videos – as “punking” or “pranking” rather than bullying. MediaSmarts’ research has found that girls are significantly more likely to engage in meanness and cruelty online in response to someone hurting them first (42 percent, compared to 26 percent of boys), while boys are more likely to report “joking around” as the reason for engaging in this behaviour (60 percent, compared to 44 percent of girls).[8]

In both cases, there are a number of reasons why youth prefer not to frame what they are doing (or what is being done to them) in terms of bullying. One is that they consider bullying to be a juvenile behaviour, associated with elementary or middle school, while “drama” and “punking” are more adult. More importantly, avoiding the term “bullying” is helpful for both perpetrator and target because it obscures the power imbalance between them – the perpetrator does not have to see themself as a bully and the target does not think of themself as a victim. [9]

Both of these attitudes are examples of moral disengagement, the psychological mechanism by which we convince ourselves that it’s acceptable to do something we know is wrong, or to not do something we know is right. The forms of moral disengagement most strongly associated with cyberbullying are advantageous comparison, or comparing an action to something worse (e.g., telling oneself that cyberbullying is not as bad as offline bullying) and dehumanization – another link between cyberbullying and online hate.[10]

Finally, a small number of youth (five percent, according to one recent study)[11] may be both targets and perpetrators because they cyberbully themselves – creating anonymous or pseudonymous accounts to post negative comments about themselves “as a way to manage feelings of sadness and self-hatred and to gain attention from their friends.”[12]

Witnesses

Cyberbullying often occurs away from adults. Thus, witnesses or bystanders to cyberbullying have a very important role to play when it comes to putting an end to it. The response of witnesses – whether it’s to intervene, join in or simply do nothing – can make a tremendous difference in the impact of a bullying incident. This is one reason why bullying incidents and relationships may be made more severe when there is an online component: when bullying takes place in an online environment, it may be witnessed by the target’s entire social circle. MediaSmarts’ research found that half (49 percent) of youth in Grades 4 to 11 had witnessed mean or cruel behaviour online. Boys and girls were equally likely to have witnessed it, as were White and racialized youth, while youth with one or more disabilities were significantly more likely to have done so (67 percent, compared to 43 percent of youth without a disability).[13]

Types of bullies

Research into offline bullying has shown that there are two types of youth who bully: ‘pure’ bullies and bully-victims.

‘Pure’ bullies are those who engage in bullying despite having a relatively high social status. They aren’t outsiders, they don’t suffer from low self-esteem and aren’t likely to be targets of bullying themselves.[14] They have lots of cognitive empathy – the ability to identify how someone else is feeling – but are low in affective empathy, which means they aren’t likely to share someone else’s feelings emotionally.[15] They have a large ego with a defensive reaction to criticism[16] and are most likely to be perpetrators of bullying in order to improve their social status[17] and use bullying tactics to get something that they want.[18] Bully-victims, on the other hand, have been victims of bullying themselves[19] and often come from homes of domestic violence or ones where they’re bullied by members of their family.[20]

Recent research specifically on cyberbullying has found that many perpetrators who seem to fit the “pure bully” model, who “engage in online anti-social behaviour for fun and social approval,” are also low in cognitive empathy, “which indicates that perpetrators may be engaging in online anti-social behaviour because they do not understand how their targets feel.”[21] Similarly, MediaSmarts’ research has found that the bully-victim dynamic does often come into play online: 35 percent of students who had been mean or cruel online said they had done it because “the person said something that hurt me first,” 22 percent said “the person said something that hurt a friend first” and 20 percent said it was because “I wanted to get even with the person for another reason.”[22]

Looking back at our patterns of online bullying, griefers are almost always ‘pure’ bullies. A conflict between a ‘pure’ bully and a bully-victim – or two bully-victims – can easily turn drama into harassment. Finally, research into offline relationship violence has found that it, too, falls into two similar patterns: one in which one partner (nearly always male) tries to dominate the other and one in which both partners are involved in mutual abuse.[23]

[1] Sabella, R. A., Patchin, J. W., & Hinduja, S. (2013). Cyberbullying myths and realities. Computers in Human behavior, 29(6), 2703-2711.

[2] Pfattheicher, S., Lazarević, L. B., Westgate, E. C., & Schindler, S. (2021). On the relation of boredom and sadistic aggression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 121(3), 573.

[3] Lapidot-Lefler, N., & Barak, A. (2012). Effects of anonymity, invisibility, and lack of eye-contact on toxic online disinhibition. Computers in human behavior, 28(2), 434-443.

[4] Cameron, C. D., Hutcherson, C. A., Ferguson, A. M., Scheffer, J. A., Hadjiandreou, E., & Inzlicht, M. (2019). Empathy is hard work: People choose to avoid empathy because of its cognitive costs. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 148(6), 962.

[5] MediaSmarts. (2023). “Young Canadians in a Wireless World, Phase IV: Relationships and Technology - Online Meanness and Cruelty.” MediaSmarts. Ottawa.

[6] Milli, S., Carroll, M., Pandey, S., Wang, Y., & Dragan, A. D. (2023). Twitter's Algorithm: Amplifying Anger, Animosity, and Affective Polarization. arXiv preprint arXiv:2305.16941.

[7] Marwick, Dr. Alice, and Dr. danah boyd. The Drama! Teen Conflict, Gossip, and Bullying in Networked Publics

[8] MediaSmarts. (2023). “Young Canadians in a Wireless World, Phase IV: Relationships and Technology - Online Meanness and Cruelty.” MediaSmarts. Ottawa.

[9] Marwick, Dr. Alice, and Dr. danah boyd. The Drama! Teen Conflict, Gossip, and Bullying in Networked Publics

[10] Meter, D. J., Beckert, T. E., Budziszewski, R., & Phillips, A. (2021). Social cognitive factors associated with sharing overt and relational cyberaggression digitally. International journal of bullying prevention, 3, 147-158.; Nocera, T. R., Dahlen, E. R., Poor, A., Strowd, J., Dortch, A., & Van Overloop, E. C. (2022). Moral disengagement mechanisms predict cyber aggression among emerging adults. Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, 16(1), Article 6. https://doi.org/10.5817/CP2022-1-6

[11] Patchin, J. W., Hinduja, S., & Meldrum, R. C. (2023). Digital self‐harm and suicidality among adolescents. Child and adolescent mental health, 28(1), 52-59.

[12] Fraga, J. (2018) When teens cyberbully themselves. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/04/21/604073315/when-teens-cyberbully-themselves

[13] MediaSmarts. (2023). “Young Canadians in a Wireless World, Phase IV: Relationships and Technology - Online Meanness and Cruelty.” MediaSmarts. Ottawa.

[14] Bihm, E et al. (2019) Bullies – Offenders or defenders? Society for personality and social psychology. Retrieved from https://www.spsp.org/news-center/blog/nail-simon-bihm-bullies

[15] Lereya, S et al (2015). Long-term effects of bullying. U.S. National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health. 100(9), 879-885.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Faris, R., Felmlee, D., & McMillan, C. (2020). With Friends Like These: Aggression from Amity and Equivalence. American Journal of Sociology, 126(3), 673-713.

[18] Lereya, S et al (2015). Long-term effects of bullying. U.S. National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health. 100(9), 879-885.

[19] Gordon, S (2020). Understanding the challenges bully-victims face. Very Well Family. Retrieved from https://www.verywellfamily.com/consequences-bully-victims-experience-460511

[20] Ibid.

[21] Soares, F. B., Gruzd, A., Jacobson, J., & Hodson, J. (2023). To troll or not to troll: Young adults’ anti-social behaviour on social media. PLoS one, 18(5), e0284374.

[22] MediaSmarts. (2023). “Young Canadians in a Wireless World, Phase IV: Relationships and Technology - Online Meanness and Cruelty.” MediaSmarts. Ottawa.

[23] Johnson, M. (1995).  Patriarchal terrorism and common couple violence: two forms of violence against women. Journal of Marriage and the Family; 57:283–294. Retrieved from http://www.popline.org/node/309622