Cyberbullying in Greek Adolescents: The Role of Parents

The aim of the study was to examine whether and to what extent parenting practices create a suitable ground and/or enhance Greek adolescents’ involvement in cyberbullying either as cyber-bullies or cyber-victims and whether adolescents’ gender and parents’ educational level are differentiating factors of cyberbullying at puberty. The results with a sample of 396 secondary school students showed that: (a) parenting style was not a statistically significant predictor of adolescent cyber victimization; on the contrary, seemed to be a significant predictor of cyberbullying manifestation, since adolescents with authoritative parents exhibited the lowest levels of cyberbullying behaviors while adolescents with authoritarian parents the highest; (b) adolescents with authoritative parents tended to communicate more frequently to them the cyberbullying experiences they might have than adolescents with permissive, neglectful or authoritarian parents; (c) gender and parents’ educational level were not a significant differentiating factor of cyberbullying behavior.

Our research findings indicated that there are no significant gender differences, being, thus, in accordance with the results of prior research which suggest that cyberbullying is no gender-determined (Beran & Li, 2005; Dilmac, 2009; Hinduja & Patchin, 2008; Mishna, Cook, Gadalla, Dacink, & Solomon, 2010; Slonje & Smith, 2008; Ybarra, Diener-West, & Leaf, 2007; Ybarra & Mitchell, 2004; Williams & Guerra, 2007). (Makri-Botsari & Karagianni 2014: 3248) Our research findings indicated that the highest incidence of engagement in cyberbullying behavior was recorded by teenagers brought up by authoritarian and neglectful parents, while the lowest was documented by teenagers brought up by authentic parents (Makri-Botsari & Karagianni 2014: 3248) The survey results have further shown that the majority of participant teenagers connect to the Internet very often – every day (54.9%) or several times a week (28.1%) – and for a long time – one to one and half hours a day (51.3%), one to three hours a day (34.8%) and even more than 3 hours daily (12.9%). This finding suggests that a great number of teenagers have a daily and extensive access to the Internet, a fact that is in accordance with the findings of previous international studies which indicated the same or even higher rates of adolescents’ internet connectivity (Dilmac, 2009; Lenhart, 2005; Subrahmanyam, Kraut, Greenfield, & Gross, 2001; Ybarra et al, 2006). This finding could be attributed to the great potential offered by the Internet, in terms of both connectivity with friends all over the world as well as of entertainment (Dilmac, 2009. Taiariol, 2010). (Makri-Botsari & Karagianni 2014: 3249) The results of the present study have also shown that the largest proportion of teenagers engaged in cyberbullying are victims and not bullies (Makri-Botsari & Karagianni 2014: 3249) Regarding the willingness of our participating adolescents to report their cyberbullying experiences to their parents or to any other adult, the results of the present study indicated that teens prefer to talk to about their cyberbullying experiences firstly to their friends (72.4% ) and secondly to their parents (44.3%). The main tendency here is that the majority of teens do not feel comfortable to report their online problems to their parents, and that the latter do not seem to constitute their first or only choice (Makri-Botsari & Karagianni 2014: 3249) Finally, on the basis of our findings we can argue that the more democratic elements a parenting style includes, the easier it is for the child or adolescent to tell their parents about anything negative they confront on cyber space. On the contrary, the more authoritarian their upbringing is, the more difficult the reporting of cyberbullying to parents is. It seems that adolescents with authentic parents do not reveal their cyberbullying online experiences to their parents either, due to their belief that their parents do not have the ability to protect them against online risks. This belief may result from the fact that the vast majority of parents, regardless of their type, is not familiar enough with cyber space (Leung & Lee, 2012) (Makri-Botsari & Karagianni 2014: 3250)