“The thing is, it follows you everywhere”: Child and adolescent conceptions of cyberbullying

The purpose of this study was to qualitatively explore child and adolescent conceptions of cyberbullying and quantitatively examine predictors of their levels of understanding. One hundred and forty-three children and adolescents (8–16 years old) were interviewed about their definitions of cyberbullying and completed a measure of their exposure to cyberbullying as perpetrators, targets and bystanders. Interviews were coded with content analysis for the mention of medium, forms and attributes of cyberbullying. Overall, adolescents' conceptions of cyberbullying were more complex than children's. Children mainly used examples to illustrate their understanding of cyberbullying. With regards to attributes, repetition and publicity were considered distinct characteristics, while anonymity was generally viewed as an extension of intent and power imbalance. Finally, age and cyber-victimization were significant predictors of conceptual understanding of cyberbullying. Findings suggest that in both research and practice, developmental and environmental factors should be considered when measuring cyberbullying and designing interventions.