REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

Related Literature

Cyber bullying affects many adolescents and teens on a daily basis; it is a

form of violence that can do lasting harm to people at different ages and social

status in a society. Cyber bullying is real experience that has been in existence

for a quite a long time; Bullying statistics show that cyber bullying is a serious

problem among teens and gaining roots among adults. By being more aware of

cyber bullying, teens and adults can help to fight it. Cyber bullying involves using

technology, like cell phones and the Internet, to bully or harass another person.

The introduction of social media and other communication systems has seen

several people being bullied online by those who are already proficient on the

platforms. The reasons behind cyber bullying might or might not be mala-fide but

its existence isn’t in the best interest. It has been looked at mainly from the teens’

effect both in physical and psychological perception not realizing that adults are

also equally affected. The impact on adults comes in different forms and has

serious impact on the families and work places. The impact at work places

affects productivity due to psychological trauma, legal involvement,

shame/embarrassment whenever it goes public. Some people have gone to point

of resigning from jobs, others have buried themselves into work for fear of

victimization, others have committed suicide - At whatever level of status in

society there is a great repercussion that is if situation is not put under control the
victim can easily go down to a total down trend. Cyber bullying has fatal

consequences and existing laws about it are woefully lacking despite some legal

measures having been put in place but it gets tricky especially if the cyber bully is

anonymous. (Makhulo, J. N., 2019)

The Internet can have an impact on users socially and psychologically.

More individuals are using the Internet for social communication with e-mail,

instant messaging, chat rooms, and gaming along with general information

retrieval, health resources, and entertainment. While the use of the Internet has

its benefits, there has been much speculation as to whether the Internet may also

be harmful to one's social and psychological well-being. The argument has been

presented the Internet could cause users to become socially inept and isolated,

whereas others believe the increased interaction could improve social

relationships. Unfortunately, the use of the Internet to perpetrate cyberbullying

may present a stronger argument for the detrimental effects of the technology.

(Watts, et al., 2017)

Bullying is a major problem in today's society and occurs at many different

ages and in many different forms. With the increase in the use of technology, a

disturbing trend worldwide is cyberbullying, where individuals can harass others

online through emails, text messaging, and social media websites 24 h a day,

seven days a week. The anonymity cyberbullying provides gives bullies a sense

of power and control that otherwise might not be present if they were face-to-face

with their victims. Also, the prevalence of this topic in current news and media
can be empowering to an individual because of gained publicity, even if he or she

is the only one aware he or she is the bully in question.(Elci, et al., 2019)

Technology has many positive effects on education, but negative effects

also exist. One of the negative effects is cyberbullying spreading out of school

boundaries to the social networks. The increasing popularity of social media

among youngsters engenders cyberbullies who exploit the virtual environment

besides the usual emails. This distresses the students and adversely affects their

families, teachers, and others around them. Although research studies mainly

concentrate on prior education, there seems to be a need to investigate the

situation in education. This study focuses on students studying technology and

related disciplines, who are hence likely to be well connected with cyberspace,

and explores their awareness about cyberbullying. The findings reveal that

female students have significantly less awareness than males. (Elci, et al., 2019)

The purpose of this literature review was to enhance awareness of the

prevalence of cyberbullying in higher education among higher education

students, administrators, and faculty. While several studies regarding

cyberbullying in higher education exist, further investigation is needed to examine

characteristics of cyberbullies, examine causes of cyberbullying, and present

recommendations for eliminating the problem, particularly in higher education.

(Elci, et al., 2019)

Legal Basis

Bullying is the user of violence, threats, or coercion to abuse or intimidates

others. Threats and insults at this time are carried out not only directly through

face to face between the perpetrator and the victim but can be done through

intermediary means, such as cell phones, short messages, or social media. Not

infrequently bullying on social media places children as victims. The approach

method used in this study is a normative juridical approach. Legal protection for

children has been regulated in Law Number 17 of 2016. In the second

amendment to the Child Protection Act, this action may be subject to Article 27

paragraph (3) of Law Number 11 Year concerning Information and Electronic

Transactions. There needs to be learning to children how to respect and respect,

law enforcement officials need to be improved for investigation and verification as

well as human resources of law enforcement personnel themselves, as well as

socialization for parents and students in schools about the impact and

consequences of bullying. (Laurensius, 2019)

Cyberbullying has the basic characteristics of traditional bullying, but it has

its own unique characteristics. This poses a challenge to the existing legal

regulation. When the Internet is still in the stage of rapid development and

expansion, and its impact on social rules has not yet been fully demonstrated, it

is not appropriate to typologize cyberbullying. Cyberbullying can be regulated by

expanding the interpretation of existing laws. When the conditions are ripe,
special regulations can be enacted, which adhere to the principle that a balance

should be struck between freedom of speech and regulation and between

regulation by public law and judicial relief, improve the existing legal provisions

on civil remedies and criminal regulation, and clarify the conditions for the

application of such legal provisions. (Junke, 2020)

Social and emotional competences are considered to have a crucial role in

cyberbullying as, e.g., difficulties concerning emotion regulation and empathy can

characterize both cyberbullies and cybervictims. Although, the dynamics of socio-

emotional processes underlying cyberbullying are still open for research, as e.g.,

there are contradicting results concerning the role of empathy in

cybervictimization. Thus, the aim of our study was to explore the specific

maladaptive emotion regulation strategies characterizing cybervictims and to

clarify the role of empathy in cybervictimization. Furthermore, another goal was

to explore whether moral disengagement characterizes cyberbullies in absence

of empathic and adaptive emotion regulation skills. 524 students (214 males,

aged 12–19 years) participated in our research. We used self-report

questionnaires to measure cyberbullying perpetration and cybervictimization,

adaptive and maladaptive emotion regulation strategies, moral disengagement,

affective, cognitive empathy, and intention to comfort. Our main findings show

that cyberbullying is associated with difficulties in socio-emotional competences.

Cyberbullies and bully-victims demonstrate less empathic responsiveness and

display higher moral disengagement than noncyberbullies. On the other hand

cybervictims tend to use both adaptive and maladaptive emotion regulation

strategies to cope with their negative emotions. In addition, cybervictims have

higher cognitive and affective empathy than cyberbullies and bully-victims. Our

findings confirm and extend the research on the relationship among socio-

emotional skills and cyberbullying as well as cybervictimization. Moreover, our

results have important implications for prevention programs targeting emotion

regulation and empathy. (Arató, 2020)

Foreign Studies

The Barlett Gentile cyberbullying model (BGCM) posits that correlated

anonymity perceptions and the belief in the irrelevance of muscularity for online

bullying (BIMOB) predict positive cyberbullying attitudes to predict subsequent

cyberbullying perpetration. Much research has shown the BGCM to be the only

published theory that differentiates traditional and cyberbullying while validly

predicting cyberbullying. So far, however, the cross-cultural ubiquity has gone

understudied. Thus, 1,592 adult participants across seven countries (USA,

Australia, Brazil, China, Germany, Japan, and Singapore) completed measures

germane to the BGCM. Supporting the BGCM, the variables were significantly

correlated for the entire sample, participants from independent cultures, and

participants from interdependent cultures. However, the relationship between

BIMOB and positive cyberbullying attitudes as well as the relationship between

positive cyberbullying attitudes and cyberbullying perpetration were stronger for

independent cultures. (Barlett, 2021)

 Cyberbullying can have a terrible impact on the physical and mental health

of those involved. In severe cases, some of those involved develop anxiety,

depression, and suicidal tendencies. However, few studies focus on

cyberbullying among Chinese college students. We aimed to understand the

incidence of cyberbullying in social media and online games and its associated

factors among college students in China. A cross-sectional STAR questionnaire

survey was conducted for college students from the end of June to the beginning

of July 2019. Selected via the method of cluster random sampling, students

graded 1–5 (college) from two colleges in Shantou were invited to participate in

the survey. Information was collected regarding respondents’ socio-demographic

information, cyberbullying in social media and online games, self-esteem, anxiety

symptoms, Internet addiction, etc. A binary logistic regression model was

employed to use all significant variables tested using χ² test or t-test for

estimating the effect of potential factors on cyberbullying among college

students. Participants were age range was 15 to 25 years old. 64.32% college

students reported that they had suffered from cyberbullying, and 25.98%

reported bullying others online during the semester. Gender, anxiety symptoms,

Internet addiction, game time, and violent elements in games were associated

with cyberbullying in social media and online games among college students in

China. In conclusion, cyberbullying in social media and online games is prevalent

among college students in China. The above data provided insights that targeted

and effective measures should be taken to prevent college students from

cyberbullying. (Huang, 2021)

 A study conducted in Thailand aims to examine behaviors and factors of

cyberbullying among undergraduate students in Thailand; and to find approaches

which high education institutes in Thailand could employ to prevent and tackle

the problem of cyberbullying. It adopted a mixed method approach. The

qualitative part of the study was done through 18 semi-structured interviews; and

the information deriving from this part was used to develop a questionnaire for

the quantitative part of the study. The quantitative data was collected through

questionnaire, of which the sample group was undergraduate students in

Thailand. There were 1,928 respondents, comprising of 598 male students and

1,312 female students. According to the findings, individuals who were victims of

cyberbullying have a high tendency to use cyberbullying as a method of

retaliation. Likewise, the individuals who have friends who often cyberbully others

are highly likely to be cyberbullies themselves. In addition, it was found that low

self-esteem and a low level of empathy play a crucial role in cyberbullying.

Additionally, online anonymity can be a crucial factor of cyberbullying. It is

recommended that high education institutes should adopt a policy to educate

students about cyberbullying and how to manage their anger. Furthermore, they

should have appropriate measures to receive complaints concerning

cyberbullying, and to soothe the feelings of the victims. There should be a

counceling service in place for the students. Additionally, there should be

mechanisms to encourage the improvement of self-esteem and increase

empathy among university students. ( Saengcharoensap, 2021)

Local Studies

Mobile gaming addiction is a growing concern that increases the user's

risk for physical and psychological health problems. Video game addiction is part

of the so-called Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) and is often associated with

Gambling Addiction. In general, IGD has been linked to a poorer academic

performance of students in educational institutions. However, a study conducted

by Samaha and Hawi (2016) revealed that there is no relationship between

smartphone addiction risk and academic performance. This denotes a disparity

on the result of academic performance between IGD and mobile phone addiction.

Cyber-bullying, on the other hand, is also an ethical concern that has affected

several young adolescents and adults. Previous studies on traditional bullying

and cyberbullying revealed that both can greatly impact school performance of

students among others. As far as the present study is concerned, no studies

have been conducted which determines whether mobile game addiction and

cyberbullying are causal factors for the academic performance of students. It is

now the objective of the present study to determine whether both can negatively

affect the academic performance of students. This study employed a quantitative

approach to determine a possible correlation between mobile game addiction

and cyberbullying with student academic performance. A total of eighty-five (85)

respondents from National University - Philippines answered two

questioPnnaires through Google Forms, namely, the Game Addiction

Questionnaire and Cyberbullying Questionnaire. Convenience Sampling was

used to gather the respondents of the two surveys. Both cyberbullying and
mobile game addiction (constructs) were neglected as causal factors for the

students' academic performance. However, it can be concluded that those who

have been a victim of cyberbullying are most likely to perpetrate or initiate

cyberbullying. (Fabito, 2018)

Cyberbullying has seen an exponential increase in the education sector in

recent years. With most of the literature originating from the developed and/or

western countries, there is a dearth of reported studies in different social-cultural

settings of the developing countries. In this context, the present study measures

cyberbullying victimization amongst university students in Pakistan. The targeted

population was six universities in the Sindh province. The data was collected

using Cyberbullying Scale, employing the multistage stratified sampling

technique. The study was carried out on a sample of 273 students in the age

bracket of 18–25 years to ascertain cyberbullying differences in terms of

demographics, digital divide, and socioeconomic variables. The results show that

cyberbullying is prevalent in the country. Substantial differences were found with

respect to languages, access to the Internet, and socioeconomic status with

small effect sizes. However, no significant difference was found with respect to

gender, age, and the area they belong to (urban or rural). The results of the study

imply that there is a need for support centers in academic settings to deal with

the cyberbullying situation. These centers should develop and implement anti-

bullying interventions. They should also increase student awarness of preventive

measures and coping strategies. (Saleem, 2021)

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