Bullying ‘always lingering in back of your mind’
New research has highlighted the impact of cyberbullying on young people, including how some people begin to feel it is impossible to escape once it starts.
Led by Rebecca Dennehy of the School of Public Health at University College Cork, the research, ‘The Psychosocial Impacts of Cybervictimisation and Barriers to Seeking Social Support: Young People’s Perspectives’, is based on the views of 64 young people aged 14 to 17, all from four different schools in one Irish town:
“Like, if someone hits you, you’re obviously going to get better from that, but like, if someone like, scarred you mentally like, you’ll always be thinking about it. It’s always lingering in the back of your mind like” — School B, male, 17.
“I think with the old types of bullying like if you were being bullied in school you would go home and know you were safe whereas with cyber bullying you have your phone on you all the time, like you take it to bed” — School A, female, 17.
“…whenever people say things to me online like I tend to kind of like relive, I don’t know like, I read the message and I kind of relive the pain I went through like, if I read the message it just hurts…” — School A, female, 14.
“Like, you’re constantly thinking, like, who’s here trying to hurt me, you know? What did I do to get this person to try and, like, ruin me?” — School D, male, 14.
“I will just keep thinking about it and I won’t sleep or anything,” — School A, female, 16.
“And like it’s so common with suicides like and young people…if you hear that someone has died from suicide you just automatically think that it was [cyber] bullying” — School A, female, 16.
“Yeah, some people don’t even mean half the stuff online…they’ll just go at you and like basically try to say stuff to get you rattled up, but online they keep on doing it, bit by bit, until you just burst practically” — School C, male, 16.
