In-Person Harassment Is More Emotionally Scarring Than Cyberbullying

No one likes to be bullied, but could emotional violence be just as scarring as in-person harassment?

New findings published in the journal of Psychology Violence reveal that cyberbullying, while dangerous, does not take on the same impact of an in-person encounter. 

However, researchers at the University of New Hampshire found that cyberbullying is only less emotionally harmful than harassment that occurs in person.

For the study, they analyzed data from Technology Harassment Victimization, focusing specifically on telephone interviews conducted in 2013-2014, involving over 791 American youth between the ages of 10 and 20.

Thirty-four percent reported 311 harassment's incidents in the prior year, from one group; nearly half of the harassment incidents were in-person only, at 54 percent. On the other hand, 15 percent involved technology only, while another 31 percent involved a combination of two.

While many researchers have been concerned that cyberbullying could actually be worse than facing a victim offline and in person, the study actually provided opposite results.

"Technology-only incidents were less likely than in-person only incidents to result in injury, involve a social power differential and to have happened a series of times," Kimberly J. Mitchell, lead author of the study, said in a news release. "Mixed episodes, those that involved both in-person and technology elements, were more likely than technology-only episodes to involve perpetrators who knew embarrassing things about the victim, happen a series of times, last for one month or longer, involve physical injury and start out as joking before becoming more serious. It is these mixed episodes that appear to be the most distressing to youth."

Though technology allows targets to be reached any time day or night, and from relatively anywhere as well, the findings show that cyberbullying is not on the same level when associated with in-peron peer harassment. 

"Instead, data from this study indicated that factors such as duration, power imbalance, injury, sexual content, involvement of multiple perpetrators, and hate/bias comments are some of the key factors that increase youth distress," concluded Heather Turner, co-author of the study.

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