Experiences and coping strategies of cyberbullying victims

This paper studies the experiences of adolescents who were victims of bullying in the cyber setting and why it happens. A previous study by Barlett and Gentile (2012) showed that cyber bullying occurs because in the cyber setting, there is anonymity, which would lead the aggressors to be bolder in harassing other individuals. This paper also covers how the victims deal with such experience. Nine individuals who went through cyber bullying were included in this study. It was found that these victims experienced all contexts of cyber bullying, from receiving text messages, to getting phone calls, to being bombarded with hate comments online. The two forms of cyber bullying that was found in our study were insults and threats, most of the victims initially dealt with such forms passively, meaning not doing anything about his/her situation. Then eventually, managed to cope actively by talking to other people, like family and friends about it