https://doi.org/10.37955/cs.v7i3.321
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eISSN: 2600-5743
College youth and cyberbullying:
before and during the Covid 19
pandemic
Juventud universitaria y ciberacoso: antes y durante la
pandemia del Covid 19
Tania Morales Reynoso
Profesora investigadora de la Facultad de Ciencias de la Conducta de la Universidad
Autónoma del Estado de México. Toluca, México. Correo: tmoralesr@uaemex.mx
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8767-1098.
Brenda Mendoza González
Profesora investigadora de la Facultad de Ciencias de la Conducta de la Universidad
Autónoma del Estado de México. Toluca, México. Correo: bmendozag@uaemex.mx
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0312-5004.
Carolina Serrano Barquín
Profesora investigadora de la Facultad de Ciencias de la Conducta de la Universidad
Autónoma del Estado de México. Toluca, México. Correo: mcserranob@uaemex.mx
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4671-2436.
ABSTRACT
Cyberbullying or cyberbullying has increased considerably since the
massive use of social networks, among other reasons due to
confinement. The purpose of this research is to know if there are
significant differences or similarities in students involved in
cyberbullying episodes in roles of perpetuation and victimization
before and during the COVID19 pandemic during the years of 2019
and 2020 from gender. Two hundred students (57% female and 43%
male) participated. Within the methodology, a Cyberbullying
Questionnaire, (CBQ) was used, which measures participation in
cyberbullying, in two of the roles (bully and victimized). The statistical
procedure was to calculate the medians of each sample and compare
them using the Mann-Witney U test. The results showed that there is
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no significant increase since only in two items of the sexting factor
(bullying role) and another item of the incendiary provocation factor
(victimization role), there was a significant difference between the two
samples applied, concluding and providing information on the
increase of cyberbullying.
RESUMEN
El ciberacoso o ciberbullying se ha incrementado considerablemente a
partir del uso masificado de las redes sociales, entre otros motivos por
el confinamiento. El propósito de esta investigación es conocer si
existen diferencias o similitudes significativas en el alumnado
involucrado en episodios de ciberbullying en roles de perpetuación y
victimización antes y durante la pandemia del COVID19 durante los
años de 2019 y el 2020 desde el género. Participaron 200 estudiantes
(57% mujeres y 43% hombres). Dentro de la metodología se utilizó un
cuestionario de Cyberbullying, (CBQ) que mide la participación en
acoso cibernético, en dos de los roles (acosador y victimizados). El
procedimiento estadístico fue cálculo de medianas de cada muestra y
su comparación mediante la prueba de U de Mann-Witney. Los
resultados mostraron que no existe incremento significativo ya que
solamente en dos reactivos del factor sexting, (rol acosador) y otro
reactivo del factor provocación incendiaria (rol de victimización),
obtuvieron una diferencia importante entre las dos muestras
aplicadas, concluyendo y aportando información sobre el incremento
del ciberbullying.
Keywords / Palabras clave
Fundamental rights, Positivization, Freedom of expression, Social
networks
Derechos fundamentales, Positivización, Libertad de expresión, Redes
sociales
Introduction
During sanitary confinement, the presence of physical and virtual
violence is observed, identifying symbolic violence in which, according
to Bourdieu (2000), women are dominated, being a structural violence
of supreme form, for being the most subtle, the most invisible, with
lethal effects. Gender violence continues to be a serious public health
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problem; during confinement, intra-family violence increased by 60%
(Herrera et al., 2021). Gender violence is also a pandemic, intra-
gender and inter-gender (Alonso, 2015), since women and men
(regardless of their sexual orientation) are victims and it occurs within
and between genders, so it is another social pandemic.
A perversely indissoluble relationship is "power and violence", which
makes it a very complex social phenomenon, "it is not only subjugation
and control, nor love and disaffection, nor the dominator and the
dominated" (Morales, Serrano et al., (2016, p. 168), which combined
produce great devastation. School violence has multiple faces and one
of them is bullying, which occurs among peers when one or a group of
them daily subjugates another, whom they discover unprotected and
with less power than the rest (Mendoza, 2020). The beginning of
school bullying research was studied by Olweus, in 1978, and virtually
or cyberbullying, with Finkelhor, Mitchell and Wolak in 2000. In
cyberbullying, violence is not face-to-face, but through the Internet,
and reveals cases of victimization in adolescents. For violence to be
considered as bullying, it must meet some of these characteristics:
repetition, intentionality and power imbalance. These include moral
perversion, which implies that in every expression of harassment there
is an unjustified aggression.
The traditional harassment with the use of social networks has been
transformed into cyberbullying or cyberbullying, which can be
exponential since each individual can have several personalities,
names, avatars, or be anonymous, which can make it a dangerous
character, This anonymity is "the key piece of cyberlove and cybersex,
since most cybernauts keep their real intimacy with an inquisitorial
zeal, at least in their first contacts" (Búrdalo, 2000, p. 144). 144).
Within its complexity is the family formation and education that, in
many cases, manifests and encourages aggressive behaviors since
childhood, preserving gender stereotypes, generally naturalized from
intrafamily violence.
Unfortunately "Violence is inscribed and modeled in culture,
internalized in our minds and objectified in social practices, with such
a profound impact on individual interpersonal and collective life, that
it has been imposing itself as a dominant form of culture." (García and
Cabral, 1999, p. 163) and antisocial behaviors emerge (Garaigordobil,
2018) such as cyberbullying.
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In the opinion of Rincón and Ávila (2014, p. 152), cyberbullying or
cyberbullying is defined as: "a form of virtual attack that disturbs the
emotional integrity of people, primarily between 10 and 20 years old.
This virtual harassment could be part of a certain individualism that
leads society to selfishness", thus affecting minors and young people
to find an escape, or, forms of evasion that alters their self-esteem.
Thus, the cyberbully is ready to listen and mug, with the purpose of
filling the affective void and the lack of love, as well as to exercise or
exhibit power. The use of aggressive words, threats, the propagation of
denigrating photographs and videos, even sexual harassment, through
the Net, provoked "the presence of a phenomenon of which little is
known so far within the field of cyberbullying: the theft of passwords
to invade the privacy of personal accounts" (Prieto et al., 2015, p. 44).
The main problem of cyberbullying are cybercriminals such as
pedophiles, extortionists, kidnappers and rapists, among others, who
abuse the trust and naivety of minors and young people to commit
crimes. In addition, human trafficking of innocent children is also very
common.
On the other hand, Ortega and Gonzalez (2016), comment that in the
educational system there are great challenges to be challenged, among
them to develop a succession of digital competencies, such as the
management and search for reliable sources of information the
protection of data related to their privacy, health, and environment.
The purpose of this research was to compare the results of
participation in cyberbullying in two similar samples of students
before and during the COVID19 Pandemic in the roles of perpetuation
and victimization. This type of socialization is hypothesized to be a
factor that increases the frequency of the phenomenon without
dependence on the participation role, to answer significant statistical
differences.
Materials and Methods
A descriptive, quantitative, comparative study was carried out on two
samples of students belonging to an upper secondary school
(baccalaureate) of the Public University of the State of Mexico. The
characteristics of the population are similar (age, sex, educational level
and origin), thus making comparison possible.
Two hundred students from the third semester of high school
participated. One hundred students participated in the 2019 school
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year and one hundred in the 2020 school year. The student body was
selected through random sampling from a population in 2019 of 327
students and in 2020 of 324.
The first sample applied was during 2019 (pre-pandemic), with the sex
ratio being 58 females and 41 males (one student did not respond). The
age of the participants was mostly 16 years old (77%). Of the rest 17%
were 17 years old, 5% were 15 years old and 2% of the students were
older (18 years old).
In the second sample applied during the health contingency (2020)
the data obtained were very similar. Regarding sex, 56 were females
and 42 males (2 of them did not respond), with ages ranging from 17
(11%) to 15 years (3%) with the age of 16 years having the highest
incidence (86%). This group was of minors.
The Cyberbullying Questionnaire (CBQ) (Calvete, Orue, Estevez,
Villardón and Padilla, 2009), divided into two subscales
corresponding to the roles of student participation in perpetuation and
victimization, was used for data collection. Its structure is a Likert
scale with three response levels (Never, Sometimes and Often) that
correspond to the periodicity with which cyberbullying occurs, an
essential characteristic of the phenomenon (between 1 and 2 times and
between 3 to 4 times a week for the two levels). The first scale has 17
items while the second scale consists of 11 items, all of them related to
the main manifestations of cyberbullying. This instrument has been
validated through different studies, obtaining acceptable coefficients
(Cronbach's Alpha of 0.87 for the aggressor scale and 0.84 for victim:
Resett and Gámez, (2017, p. 3) so it is considered reliable. Its
adaptation for the Mexican population was necessary, as it had not
been applied in the country, for which the review of three experts on
the subject of cyberbullying was requested, who provided suggestions
for adaptation, as well as substitution of terms that are different in
Spain and Mexico. For validity, a pilot test was carried out with 333
students of the same level and institution, obtaining a Cronbach's
Alpha of 9.3, making it a reliable instrument.
The following table describes the study variables according to Willard's
(2016) classification:
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Table 1. Manifestations of cyberbullying (Willard, 2016).
Incendiary
provocation
Fights and fiery arguments online via electronic
messages.
Harassment
Repeated sending of messages that the victim
does not wish to receive, as well as threatening or
intimidating messages at any time. The main
objective is to unbalance psychologically.
Denigration
Insulting someone, lying or spreading rumors
about the victim to damage his or her image or
social status.
Impersonation
The aggressor, using the victim's access
accounts or cell phone, impersonates the victim
to commit inappropriate acts, make him look
bad in front of others, damage his reputation or
generate conflicts with his acquaintances.
Violation of
privacy
Disseminate information or images of the
victim without their consent, sometimes the
aggressors trick the victims so that they
themselves are the ones who disseminate
private information.
Exclusion
Intentionally isolating someone from an online
group (chat rooms, friends lists, online groups,
etc.).
Happy beating
Record video while beating a classmate and
then share it with other students through any
virtual medium.
Sexting
Recording and disseminating images or videos
in sexual situations.
Source: Own elaboration
The data collection was carried out as follows:
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The research project was presented and permits were requested for the
application of the instruments (2019) with the corresponding
authorities, who provided the necessary facilities and physical spaces
to carry out the applications. Due to the methodological characteristics
of the study, only third semester (second year) students were
considered. Prior to the application, informed consent forms were
given to the participants. In the case of minors, the authorization of
parents or legal guardians was requested. The application of the
instrument was carried out in October, with the support of the
counselors; this was done online, using an instrument format
developed with the Google Forms tool. The selected students went to
the campus computer room at different times to answer the
instrument. The data obtained were processed in a database that was
then transferred to the SPSS statistical program.
The second application was made during the Coronavirus pandemic
(during the period in which only essential activities were allowed), the
project was presented to the school authorities of the same campus in
which the applications were carried out in the 2019 school year and
they granted the facilities to develop the project. The counselor was
responsible for managing the contact with the students (again third
semester) by email, as well as collecting the informed consent form,
additionally, for minors, parents or guardians were asked for
permission. The application was carried out virtually, through a link
generated in Google Forms that contained information from the
instrument. The data obtained from this second application were also
transferred to a database and then to the SPSS statistical program.
For data analysis, a database created in the SPSS version 20.0
statistical program was used, creating a variable for each of the
questions of the instrument.
To fulfill the general objective of the study, a comparison of the data
collected in 2019 and 2020 was made, making a contrast of medians,
through the Mann-Witney U statistical test. These calculations allowed
us to identify whether or not there are statistically significant
differences before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Results
In order to meet the general objective, a contrast of medians was made
through the Mann-Whitney U statistic. Means were calculated for each
item, according to the variables of the study with the intention of
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identifying the presence of cyberbullying and the comparison between
two samples applied through the Mann-Whitney U statistic. The only
behavior that has statistically significant differences is the one
referring to video recording or taking photographs of a sexual nature,
concluding that in 2020 they participated more than in 2019, however,
in all other reagents there is no difference in terms of participation
before or during the pandemic, so, in this sense, it is concluded that
students are involved in the same way regardless of the way in which
they socialize (coexistence or cyber coexistence).
The second role, is observed in Table 3, where the medians
corresponding to those who were victims in each of the virtual
aggressive behaviors contained in the instrument are presented, the
comparisons were made through the Mann-Whitney U statistic, and
the perceptions of the student body in 2019 and 2020 were contrasted.
Table 2. Medians in Victim role, 2019 and 2020 comparison.
Factor of the
Instrument
Reagent
𝒙"
2019
𝒙"
2020
Mann
Whitney
U
z
p
Incendiary
Provocation
I receive
threatening
messages by
e-mail
42,27
45,68
785000
-1,664
.09
I receive
threats by cell
phone
26,44
36,14
334,500
-2.282
.02
Denigration
They hang
humiliating
images of me
29,60
34,11
340000
-1,491
.13
They write
comments
that ridicule
me
43,45
41,10
802,500
-.652
.51
Others record
me while
humiliating
me
50,58
48,00
138000
-,401
.68
Harassment
Send
intimidating
and insistent
messages
35,88
36,17
604000
-,113
.91
Disseminate
images, my
secrets
35,77
35,04
560000
-.252
,80
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Source: Own elaboration.
It is identified that with the exception of reactant two of the incendiary
provocation factor, all other aggressive behaviors do not show
significant statistical differences when comparing 2019 and 2020.
With respect to the victim reagent "sending me threatening or
insulting messages by cell phone", it was identified that, in the year
2020, this type of behavior is much more common among students.
Regarding the participation in cyberbullying of those who were
confined and those who maintained a traditional cohabitation, there
are no significant statistical differences other than in factor two
(incendiary provocation). Therefore, in accordance with the
hypothesis posed, it is concluded that there are no significant
differences between the medians of the 2019 and 2020 populations
compared, except in two reagents (in each of the roles studied) that
presented an increase in behavior during the pandemic. Of the rest, no
different behavior of students is observed, both before and during the
contingency, students were involved in all cyberbullying behaviors, so
the repeated use of technology does not seem to be a factor affecting
their participation.
The research allowed to meet the research objective, which was to
know if there are significant statistical differences in students involved
in cyberbullying episodes in the roles of perpetuation and
victimization, before and during the pandemic.
Impersonation
Send
messages
using another
name creating
conflict
44.85
40,50
535,500
-1,352
.17
Happy Beating
They record
me when
someone else
hits me
48.01
47,00
46,000
-.147
.88
Sexting
Recording
video or
photos of a
sexual nature.
50,56
49,50
276000
-,359
.72
Exclusion
Intentionally
removing
myself from
an online
group
47.98
43,13
903,000
-1,028
,30
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The results allow us to conclude that it is evident that students are
involved in episodes of cyberbullying, regardless of the restrictions on
social interactions due to the health emergency experienced during the
year 2020, which is argued by identifying only significant statistics in
two of the study variables (sexting and incendiary provocation) that
showed an increase in student participation (as aggressor in the first
and as victim in the second). In other words, the students had been
participating since before the pandemic and continued to have the
same behavior, these results can be explained by the stability of
aggressive behavior, so that aggressive behavior is stable over time and
contexts, since a student with a bullying profile will be so regardless of
whether it is face-to-face or in virtual environments, in addition, such
behavior does not disappear over time, on the contrary, it becomes
stronger (Mendoza et al., 2021).
At the same time, they are involved as victims or perpetuators of all
types of virtual violence during the two years in which the study was
conducted. These results coincide with those found by Vega-Cauich
(2019), who states that one in five Mexican students receives or
performs bullying or cyberbyllying, as well as those carried out by
Martínez, et. al., (2018) where general rates of 9.1% are reported.
An interesting work that shows much higher rates than those found in
this study is the one conducted by Ortega and Gonzalez in 2016, in
which they found 40% participation of Mexican students in some of
the roles and manifestations. Similarly, other research in Latin
America agrees with these results , an example of this is a review work
of different countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (Borges et.
al, 2015) in which it is noted that there is prevalence of cyberbullying
from 10% to 20% in adolescents. Another study conducted in Ecuador
determined 43% mild and 2% moderate victimization (Moreta et al.,
2018).
In the case of the United States, Waasdorp and Bradshaw (2015)
identified percentages of 25.6% as victims of cyberbullying,
reaffirming that the presence of this phenomenon is widespread in the
Americas. In the case of Europe, the studies conducted stand out:
Spain pioneer nation in this field, where the results evidence a
presence of cyberbulluying among students aged between 12 and 18
years at the victim level, with no significant differences by sex
(Giménez, 2015; Zych et. al, 2017; Garaigordobil, 2018 and Monroy
and Hurtado, 2018), which is consistent with another study conducted
in Portugal by De Barros, et al., (2018) finding that the age of highest
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participation in cyberbullying is between 11 and 17 years old with a
percentage of 19.5%.
Studies in Asia also show the prevalence of cyberbullying, such as
those conducted by Chun et al. (2020) where it was reported that 60%
and 67% of Chinese and Japanese students, respectively, have been
victims of this phenomenon. For the case of South Korea, an overall
percentage of 14.6% was found for victimization of students with a
higher percentage in the male sex (Lee and Shin, 2017).
According to these investigations, it is clear that cyberbullying has
been and is present in our days, as a form of serious school bullying
where students are involved mainly in the role of victim, but also as
victimizers, although it seems to be to a lesser degree. And the problem
continues during the pandemic, with some behaviors that, according
to the results obtained, had a greater student participation. This could
be explained by the large number of hours they have to spend in
contact with the technologies that provide them with the means to
engage in this type of acts, especially the dissemination of messages in
chat rooms (incendiary provocation). Likewise, sexting is a problem
that, although in all studies shows low percentages, as in other cases,
had an increase during the pandemic, and this could have to do with
the possibilities of accessing different programs and technologies that
allow such recordings and share them automatically. In summary, it
cannot be said that this is the case in general, so it is concluded that
there are no significant differences in terms of student participation
before and during the pandemic.
Among the uses of WhatsApp, as a means to exercise virtual violence
in university students, the most relevant results found by Lucio, Prieto
and Carrillo (2018), was the discomfort and disgust for pornographic
photographs and videos that were reissued to them by their contacts
without their having asked for them and without being warned of the
sending of such images; as well as, memes supposedly harmless, but
make the people who appear ridiculed suffer. "One in five Mexican
students receives or performs bullying or cyberbyllying" (Vega-Cauich,
2019, p. 1). Violence is not justified despite having become naturalized,
but perhaps it can be prevented, reduced or channeled towards
dynamics of healthy coexistence.
For all of the above reasons, the promotion of coexistence without
violence cannot be postponed. Cybercoexistence is a current way of
coexistence among young people mediated by democratized
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technology. In the interaction process, different behaviors and
emotions may arise (Castro-Santander, 2012; Castro-Santander, 2013;
Ortega, Casas and Del rey, 2014; Ortega, 2015), however, Pozas,
Morales and Martínez (2018), explain the low effectiveness of cyber
coexistence programs, because they require direct evaluation.
The studies of Menay-López and De la Fuente-Mella (2014), identify
the most used communication platforms for cyberbullying, for the
high socioeconomic status, perpetrators and victims used the
communication platform Facebook; while, for the case of students of
the middle socioeconomic level, it was the cell phone. In the research
by Sabater and López-Hernáez (2015), the results showed the
probability of exercising or suffering cyberbullying with demographic
variables of age and sex, publication of personal data, level of
frequency of exposure to the Internet, social relationships on the
Internet and, above all, low risk perception.
The sex variable has placed men and women in different profiles in
traditional bullying depending on the preferred ways of mistreating or
bullying; thus, men bully more and do it more directly than women
(López-Hernáez et al., cited in Sabater and López-Hernáez, 2015).
These authors found that there are no differences between sexes.
However, some research shows that women are more involved than
men, both in the role of aggressors and victims. Cyberbullying affects
men and women differently: "there is a greater predisposition of
female students to be victims, both through cell phones and the
Internet; although, on some occasions, cyberbullying can be linked to
erotic-sexual networks, in which men can be more harmed" (Mora-
Merchán et al., 2011, p. 46). "Thus, it is observed that there are more
female victims of cyberbullying and that, according to this study, they
are also an active part of the harassment despite the fact that there is
a greater prevalence of men as major cyberbullies, results that coincide
with other studies." They conclude that cyberbullying is more likely to
occur among young people who share a techno-social subculture
characterized by open attitudes towards the intimate or private
information they share, the relationships they generate and maintain
on the network and an extensive exposure of their very personal and
even biographical data; that is, having specialized knowledge of the
Internet, access to their profile to strangers, as well as a more
emotional and intimate communication and non-normative forms of
communication. All this in sum makes them prone to active and
passive cyberbullying.
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Cyberbullying is potentially an act of delinquency, since these acts are
the opening of a spiral of destruction and death, aspects in which we
agree with Rincón and Ávila (2014), also, they mention some
psychological disorders from symptoms that are produced by the
excessive use of networks: hyperactivity, attention deficit, depression
or disorders such as narcissistic personality or obsessive-compulsive.
Hypochondriasis, body dysmorphia or voyeurism. These authors
conclude that the above may be due to the fact that cyberspace is
something imaginary, a fictitious place, a place different from reality
and that users of social networks who publish data related to their
personality, their intimacy, at every moment, confuse the virtual world
with the existing one.
In a research Martinez et al., (2018), whose objective was the
evaluation of the impact of a program of emotional competencies in
people involved in cyberbullying in a sample of Mexican high school
students. Where the Cyberbullying Questionnaire was used and for the
intervention a program of emotional competencies was designed. The
conclusion was that: the program had a positive, significant impact,
showing some effectiveness in prevention and intervention.
Research such as that of Morales and Serrano (2014), shows that the
Internet and its evolution have produced drastic changes in school
coexistence; it is a phenomenon that due to its characteristics of time
and space becomes more complex and its control is minimal, often
impossible to stop. It was found that "there is a large number of female
bullies which does not correspond to the studies of traditional bullying
where most of the perpetrators are male" (Morales and Serrano, 2014,
p. 256), so it seems that this phenomenon behaves differently from
traditional bullying, although it could not be determined whether
gender is a risk factor for becoming a victim or perpetrator.
Other research reveals that relational intensities can be kept secret or
made public. LGTB people show a greater vulnerability to suffer school
bullying according to Larrain and Garaigordobil (2020), so it is
necessary to develop and implement anti-discrimination programs in
the educational community, coupled with this, we must consider the
cyber-victimization (Garaigordobil, 2018) that the student body may
suffer. The proximity of the virus, of death, has made us cynical,
uninhibited and selfish. No life is more important than our own
(Cueva, 2020). We no longer care whether we are seen dressed or
undressed, dressed up or in our underwear.
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Likewise, internet addiction represents a challenge to be addressed
since there is a relationship between the "obsession dimension" for
social networks and the "aggressor dimension", as explained by Itme
and Vargas (2019). Technological advances have modified the way we
live together and relate to each other, becoming an essential part of the
communication process, this work compared the participation in
cyberbullying of two similar samples, alternating their lives between
the physical context and cyberspace.
The body and its exhibition in networks may be one of the reasons for
cyberbullying, since the pandemic has disrupted the proxemic
relationships between subjects, generating a new spatial language.
According to Finol (2020, p. 179): "the de-ritualization of activities
such as wakes, funerals and age celebrations, as well as the lack of
identification of many victims of the virus, have led to an erosion of
personal and family identity and social anomie". Identity must
therefore be reanalyzed.
Symbolic violence can also be revealed through the body images
uploaded by adolescents on social networks. The body carries the
social symbols where cultural notions are located and on which the
limits imposed by social institutions that have repeatedly interpreted
an anatomical disparity between men and women fall (Butler, 1990);
in this space of socialization, the notions of individual identity and
corporeality are implanted, but their evidence takes differentiated
routes, not only from the genders, but from situations that hide class,
age, race, power, religious repression and other aspects that prescribe
that a body can be conceived in certain ways. That is, bodily grammar.
Life today has become complex, which allows ethnography to rethink
its field of work and the type of contributions it offers to the field of
social sciences, according to Sorën (2017), education, health,
migrations, interpersonal relationships that recently, allow the
interaction of the individual with ICTs, have deeply transformed it. We
live in the empire of images, which reconfigure the perception of
reality, since more than 700 million photographs are uploaded daily to
Facebook and more to Instagram, according to Morales (2020), they
can exhibit a body that is a motive for mockery, discrimination,
exclusion and cyberbullying.
Violence has gone through different periods. The end of the 20th
century and the beginning of the 21st century have seen the landscape
of violence change more profoundly. "The frequent unemployment...
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the hatred towards the institutions of channeling that have
accompanied its failure, especially towards the school, the life of the
suburb lived as exile far from the paradises of consumption, as well as
ethnic and religious conflicts, transform the problem into a dangerous
abscess that has already settled in the social body and now explodes at
the slightest irritation. (Muchembled, 2010, p. 367).
A very deep problem is the lack of reporting of cybercrimes. If we take
into consideration the concepts "right not to know" and "cultivated
ignorance" to try to show the institutional devices that hinder the
reporting of this type of cases and especially the silence, Mingo and
Moreno (2015, p. 138) state: "these two phenomena, the hindrance of
reporting and silence, have been imposed as an unwritten rule to avoid
the recognition of gender violence as a systemic problem that
significantly affects the experience of university women". In such a way
that sexism can restrict women's capacity for action. Subjective and
emotional effects such as shame, indignation, fear of reprisals,
discredit, embarrassment, sadness - allow sexism to operate in
contexts of loneliness and powerlessness.
Finally, it should be noted that bullying, and especially cyberbullying,
is a recurrent behavior worldwide, which makes it necessary to pay
attention to it. Despite the efforts made with different prevention and
intervention programs, it is evident that they have not been enough,
taking into account that the rates are on the rise, especially in terms of
victimization. Involving not only the schools but also the students'
families is indispensable if we want to attack in the right way, since it
is a fact that this form of violence has no spatial and temporal limits,
which makes it a virulent problem with disastrous consequences that
can be repeated for a long time. Being at home is not a guarantee of its
reduction, it is rather a matter of educating and teaching the values of
cyber coexistence through different strategies that demonstrate the
benefits of the use of technology for the benefit of society and not its
destruction.
Conclusions
In the cyberculture that dominates us, violence has a leading role and
aggressive behavior patterns are also in constant transformation .
Likewise, it is related to the reproduction of gender violence that
affects society as a whole and that many times carries an implicit
complicity sometimes unwillingly, this, makes a big difference
compared to the intention that is definitely observed in traditional
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bullying, this gender violence can be so threatening for the victims that
can give results as fatal as human trafficking and even femicide.
There are many issues arising from cyberbullying that are still under
investigation, such is the case of the "phenomenon of duality in
cyberbullying, whereby an individual assumes two completely
opposite roles, i.e., being a cybervictim and a cyberbully at the same
time, has not been sufficiently examined in depth" (Lozano et al.,
2020, p. 1). Likewise, the frequency of risks that victims of
cyberbullying may have will need to be assessed (Orosco, and
Pomasunco (2020). There is much to inquire about the role of parents
and teachers explains Zysman (2017, p. 150): "Children need adults
who are reliable, available and able to review their own attitudes;
parents who are aware of the risks and at the same time confident of
their role, who value and recognize their children's teachers. Who can
approach and work together with them and not against them". In
short, there is much to be studied about cyberbullying.
The challenges faced during the pandemic also offer opportunities, we
are witnesses of an overflowing creativity that is socialized and shared
globally, and materializes in incalculable works and new social
practices, full of solidarity, hope, and even humor (Matamoros, 2020).
New pedagogical proposals can be reinvented to shorten the
educational gap that is built on the basis of social distances, the ways
of knowing and relating to the knowledge that digital culture poses can
be modified, in order to have access to that culture, but it is not yet
known how to explore it. Dropout, insufficient learning, low
motivation of students and teachers, lack of adequate economic and
human resources, among others, could be reinvented from the
pedagogical possibilities enabled by this new cultural configuration.
Violence is everyone's responsibility, "therefore, what we teachers can
explore is how a limitation can be a way to grow" (Francisco, 2020, p.
33). That is, how we can have an impact on the decrease of
cyberbullying.
Based on the research analyzed above, it can be considered that the
patterns of aggressive behaviors have become diverse and that,
contrary to what happens in traditional bullying, women are already
involved in cyberbullying events in any of their roles, emphasizing that
of victimizer as a risk factor particularly for this gender. It is important
that cyber residents know the results of ICT abuse, they must
understand what cyberbullying is, as well as their ability to recognize
it when they suffer or perform it, since it ranges from apparent and
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innocent forms of discrimination, exclusion and marginalization to
deep bullying that leads victims to depressive states and suicide.
According to the results obtained, it is important to consider an
educational strategy that allows young people to become aware of the
abuse and misuse of this type of technology, as well as the
consequences that could have in the future for those who exercise
violence through electronic media.
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