Journal article
Cyberbullying and adolescent well-being in England: a population-based cross sectional study
- Abstract:
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BACKGROUND: Bullying is a major public health problem. We aimed to estimate the prevalence of cyberbullying and traditional bullying among adolescents in England, and evaluate its relative impacts on mental well-being. METHODS: We analysed data from a nationally representative cross sectional study of 120,115 English adolescents aged 15, who completed surveys between September 2014 and January 2015. Mental well-being was assessed using the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale. OUTCOMES: Of the 110,788 adolescents who completed measures of bullying, 33,363 (adjusted: 30.3% total, 36.4% females, 24.4% males) reported any form of significant bullying in the past couple of months. A total of 29,302 (26.6% total, 31.1% females, 24.2% males) reported physical, verbal and relational (i.e. traditional) bullying only, whilst 406 (0.4% total, 0.5% females, 0.2% males) reported only cyber-victimization, and 3,655 (3.4% total, 4.8% females, 2.0% males) reported both traditional and cyberbullying. Both kinds of victimization were related to poorer mental well-being (adjusted analyses, traditional: b= - 1.99, SE = 0.01; cyber: b= -0.86, SE = 0.06). Cyber-victimization accounted for less than 0.1% of observed variability in mental well-being compared to 5.0% of variability accounted for by traditional victimization. INTERPRETATION: Traditional bullying is eight times more common among English adolescents than cyberbullying. Whilst both forms of bullying were associated with poorer mental well-being, cyberbullying accounted for a very small share of variance after adjustment for offline bullying and other covariates.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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- Files:
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(Preview, Accepted manuscript, pdf, 293.1KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1016/S2352-4642(17)30011-1
Authors
- Publisher:
- Elsevier
- Journal:
- Lancet Child & Adolescent Health More from this journal
- Volume:
- 1
- Issue:
- 1
- Pages:
- 19-26
- Publication date:
- 2017-07-12
- Acceptance date:
- 2017-06-05
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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2352-4642
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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pubs:702844
- UUID:
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uuid:80c6878c-1b8d-42f9-b10c-7f1e94465880
- Local pid:
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pubs:702844
- Source identifiers:
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702844
- Deposit date:
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2017-07-03
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Elsevier
- Copyright date:
- 2017
- Notes:
- This is the author accepted manuscript following peer review version of the article. The final version is available online from Elsevier at: https://doi.org/10.1016/S2352-4642(17)30011-1
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