Cross-national aspects of cyberbullying victimization among 14–17-year-old adolescents across seven European countries

"Background: The increasing use of the Internet and social network sites (SNS) has created a new domain of socioemotional development for adolescents. The aim of this cross-sectional study was to explore cybervictimization across seven European countries, in relation to socio-demographic, Internet use and psychosocial variables. Methods: A cross-sectional school-based study was conducted in the participating countries: Germany, Greece, Iceland the Netherlands, Poland, Romania and Spain. Anonymous self-completed questionnaires included sociodemographic data, internet usage characteristics, school achievement, parental control, the Internet Addiction Test and Achenbach’s Youth Self-Report. Results: The highest rate of cyber victimization was found in Romania (37.3%) and the lowest in Spain (13.3%). Multiple logistic regression analyses gave differing results between countries. In Romania, Poland and Germany cyberbullying victimization was associated with SNS use, whereas Internet use was associated with increased odds of cybervictimization only in Romania. Cybervictimization was associated with greater internalizing behavior problems in all countries analysed, and with externalizing problems in all except Romania. Conclusions: Cyberbullying victimization is an on-going problem, which is subject to country-specific socio-demographic factors and diverse patterns of current Internet use and its development. Preventive measures should emphasize the integration of Internet communication technology education in educational contexts, and focus on the consistent association between cybervictimization and internalizing and externalizing difficulties.

"The highest rates of CB occurred in Romania (37.3%), Greece (26.8%) and Germany (24.3%), following by Poland (21.5%). The lowest rates were found in the Netherlands, Iceland and Spain (see Fig. 1). Table 2 shows the rate of cyberbullying within each category of the sociodemographic and Internet-related variables studied, separately in each country. The crude odds ratios computed from these data are shown in Tables 3 and 4, which also present the adjusted odds ratios from the multiple logistic regression analyses with cyberbullying victimization as the dependent variable. Among the socio-demographic and Internet-related variables studied, parental education level and age at first Internet use were not independently associated (at p = 0.05) with cyberbullying victimization in any of the countries. Increased Internalizing and Externalizing Problems were associated with greater odds of cybervictimization everywhere (Table 3), except for Externalizing problems in Romania. Additionally in Romania, adolescents over 16 years old had 48% lower odds of being a victim of cyberbullying compared to younger adolescents, and daily use of SNS and the Internet for more than two hours was associated in Romania with 83 and 57% greater probability for victimization, respectively. In Poland, daily use of SNS for more than two hours was associated with 53% greater odds of cyberbullying victimization in the past twelve months, and the odds of being bullied online also increased when parents aimed at controlling the time of Internet use sometimes (49% greater odds) or very frequently (63%) (Table 3)."