Cyberbullying in Portugal: A scoping study

Abstract

Cyberbullying is a term defined in 2005 by Bill Belsey that makes the combination of the traditional bullying allied to the term cyber by implying the use of technologies to intentionally carry out repeated and hostile behaviors against an individual or group of individuals, with the cause of harm (Kowalski et al., 2014; Belsey, 2006). Hinduja and Patchin (2008) report that cyberbullying causes physical, psychological, cognitive, social and emotional sequelae. These damages can cause introversion, low self-esteem, insecurity, feelings of panic, depression, anguish, school failure or, in more severe cases, suicide. In 2017, a Unicef study revealed that 1 in 3 children claimed to have been victims of cyberbullying. In the study by Ponte and Batista (2019), 24% of Portuguese children and young people reported being victims of offline and online bullying in 2018. In Portugal, Amado et al. (2012), report, in a questionnaire to 339 students from the 6th, 8th and 11th years of schooling, that 15.6% of the respondents had already been the target of cyberbullying. In the analysis by EU Kids Online Portugal (2019), these values more than doubled in relation to 2010 and 2014. Still in Portugal, according to António et al. (2020), in a study in which 485 students participate, 61.4% have been victims of cyberbullying, at least some, in the last 3 months (during the quarantine/distance learning period); 40.8% said they had been an aggressor and 86.8% an observer.