Cyberbullying Among Greek High School Adolescents

Objective To investigate the presence of cyberbullying among Greek students and the efficacy of proposed preventive interventions. Methods Three types of high schools (private, experimental and public) with different politics on on-line aggression were enrolled. All students of the aforementioned schools were asked to complete an anonymous questionnaire. Results Around 62 % of the high school students experienced cyberbullying by electronic means, especially by cell phone, mostly the public school students (p 0.008). The bully was a stranger in more than 40 % of the cases. Over 60 % of the victims had not seeked help but dealt with the attack on their own. Only 20 % of the victims manifested sleep or eating disorders, physical/ psychological symptoms or changes in their social life as a consequence of the cyber-attack. Conclusions Cyberbullying is a usual phenomenon among high school students. The bully is frequently unacquainted to the victim. Most of the victims are not physically or psychologically affected by the cyber-attack and do not share the event with anyone. There was a slight difference in the response of the students to cyberbullying among the different school politics of on-line aggression.

"Greek students of all school types started using the internet and cell phone at a young age, a finding that is similar with previously reported studies from Greece and other areas [8, 9]." (Gkiomisi et al. 2016: 367) "It was noted that the type of school affected the age of onset of these habits, as public school students began using the internet at an older age, and were spending less time on-line and on other internet related activities as compared with the other two types of schools." (Gkiomisi et al. 2016: 367) "The percentage of students who had experienced bullying through electronic means in this study (62.2%) was considerably higher than that reported earlier from this country [8, 10]." (Gkiomisi et al. 2016: 367) "In the present study, public school students were more frequently victims of bullying through electronic means and especially through a cell phone as compared with the other school types." (Gkiomisi et al. 2016: 367) "Noteworthy, the majority of the victims had not recognized the bully. It is also interesting that these findings were noted in spite of all these schools having internet educational programs in place, though their frequency varied." (Gkiomisi et al. 2016: 367) "Fortunately, the majority of the students in this study reported that they had experienced no physical or psychological trauma due to the cyber-attack. However, around 13 % has developed some kind of sleeping disorder, another 10 % an eating disorder, and 20–30 % psychosomatic symptoms. The latter was more common in the public and experimental school students. The social life was also affected in a small proportion of the victims." (Gkiomisi et al. 2016: 367) "There was a spectrum of cyberbulling long-term negative impact; a minority (around 25 %) decided to avoid the use of internet after the attack, another 10 % of the victims reacted by increasing the TV frequency watching, around 20 % lost their trust to their friends, 10 % wanted to hurt themselves and 20 % tended to become more violent. The above findings should be taken into serious consideration, as they suggest that some of the teenagers’ response to the insult altered their behavior and rendered them to turn from victims to victimizers." (Gkiomisi et al. 2016: 367)