Cyber Playgrounds: College Students' Behaviors, Attitudes, and Perceptions of Cyberharassment

Introduction: Researchers report that 54% of undergraduates knew someone who had been cyberharassed. Victims report anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts; health issues that impact the welfare of students and the overall educational environment. The U.S. Department of Education's Higher Education Center for Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Violence Prevention recently released a report strongly encouraging college- and university-level policies to be put in effect that address the specific issue of cyberharassment or cyber bullying. Purpose: Assess the behaviors, attitudes, and perceptions of college students regarding cyberharassment practices. Methods: Faculty who taught face-to-face social science general university requirement courses were solicited for permission to survey their students. Courses were numbered from Freshman- to Junior-level and student participants completed a 53-item questionnaire. Results: Eighty-four percent of faculty (n=28) responded, resulting in a total of 914 completed surveys. Average participant age was 19.7 years. More than 85% of participants reported they did not engage in behaviors qualifying as cyberharassment within the last 30 days. However, those who did participate in such behaviors were more likely to ‘monitor another person's social networking (SN) page that they did not know' and ‘post a comment on someone's SN page that they did not know'. While most participants did not engage in cyberharassment behaviors in the last 30 days, attitudes toward the acceptability of such behaviors were greater. ‘Forwarding offensive text messages', ‘checking the call history of another person', and ‘monitoring another person's SN page that they did not know' were the most acceptable behaviors among this group. The mean peer perception score was significantly greater (p=0.02) than personal behavior scores. Behaviors perceived to be occurring most frequently were ‘posting personal information about someone online without their permission', ‘posting potentially embarrassing photos of someone online without their permission', ‘reading someone's text messages without their permission', and ‘monitoring another person's SN page that they did not know'. Conclusions: While students may not regularly practice cyberharassment behaviors, there is a growing acceptance of these behaviors among young adults. Further, students perceive these behaviors to occur frequently which can lead to a negative social norming effect. With an increase in legal attention on cyberharassment, health educators have the opportunity to collaborate with community leaders to address this growing concern. Learner Objectives: At the conclusion of this session, participants will be able to: 1) accurately define cyberharassment; 2) identify common cyberharassment behaviors; and 3) describe the need for future cyberharassment research.