25 Myths about Bullying and Cyberbullying. Elizabeth K. Englander

Ronca, D. (2008). Which animals kill the most people in the wild? HowStuffWorks.com. http://adventure.howstuffworks.com/dangerous‐animals1.htm (accessed 11 July 2014).

      2 2 World Health Organization. (2014). Atlas of African Health Statistics. https://www.humanitarianresponse.info/sites/www.humanitarianresponse.info/files/documents/files/AFRO‐Statistical_Factsheet.pdf .

      3 3 National Education Association. Parents' role in bullying and intervention. http://www.nea.org/home/56805.htm (accessed 11 July 2014).

      4 4 Kowalski, R.M., Giumetti, G.W., Schroeder, A.N. et al. (2014). Bullying in the digital age: a critical review and meta‐analysis of cyberbullying research among youth. Psychological Bulletin 140 (4): 1073–1137. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035618 .

      5 5 Finkelhor, D., Turner, H., Ormrod, R. et al. (2010). Trends in childhood violence and abuse exposure: evidence from 2 national surveys. Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine 164 (3): 238–242. https://doi.org/10.1001/archpediatrics.2009.283 .

      6 6 Englander, E. (2013). Bullying and Cyberbullying: What Every Educator Needs to Know. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Education Press.

      7 7 Coulter, R., Kessel, S., Schneider, S. et al. (2012). Cyberbullying, school bullying, and psychological distress: a regional census of high school students. American Journal of Public Health 102 (1): 171–177, http://ajph.aphapublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/AJPH.2011.300308v1 .

      8 8 Ando, M. (2005). Psychosocial influences on physical, verbal, and indirect bullying among Japanese early adolescents. The Journal of Early Adolescence 25 (3): 268–297. https://doi.org/10.1177/0272431605276933 .

      9 9 Coyne, S.M., Linder, J., Nelson, D. et al. (2012). “Frenemies, Fraitors, and Mean‐Em‐Aitors”: priming effects of viewing physical and relational aggression in the media on women. Aggressive Behavior 38 (2): 141–149. https://doi.org/10.1002/ab.21410 .

      10 10 Raine, A., Reynolds, C., Venables, P. et al. (1998). Fearlessness, stimulation‐seeking, and large body size at age 3 years as early predispositions to childhood aggression at age 11 years. Archives of General Psychiatry 55 (8): 745. https://doi.org/10.1001/archpsyc.55.8.745 .

      11 11 Perhaps this is a good time to insert a caveat, namely, that I am not against digital technology or its use; that I believe that the Internet has greatly enhanced modern life in many ways, although it has cost us too; and that our children, who will always be heavy technology users, need to learn and practice how to use digital technology, which includes when and how not to use it.

      12 12 Wang, J., Iannotti, R., and Nansel, T. (2009). School bullying among adolescents in the United States: physical, verbal, relational, and cyber. Journal of Adolescent Health 45 (4): 368–375. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2009.03.021 .

      13 13 Englander, E. and Muldowney, A. (2007). Just turn the darn thing off: understanding cyberbullying. In: Proceedings of Persistently Safe Schools: The 2007 National Conference on Safe Schools (ed. D.L. White, B.C. Glenn, and A. Wimes), 83–92. Washington, DC: Hamilton Fish Institute, The George Washington University.

      14 14 Schneider, S.K., O'Donnell, L., Stueve, A., and Coulter, R.W.S. (2012). Cyberbullying, school bullying, and psychological distress: a regional census of high school students. Am J Public Health 102 (1): 171–177.

Chapter 3 Myth #2: Bullying causes suicide and homicide.

       ** WARNING **

      Many parents are understandably worried about the idea that bullying could lead to violence or suicide. And because this is a complicated issue, I'm going to take the time and the space to explain it in detail.

      Let's start with what we know and how we know it.

      Obviously, some diseases have a clear and simple cause. In those cases, we know that A causes B. The rubeola virus is present in every person who has the measles, so we know that the rubeola virus causes measles. But when it comes to human behavior, that type of clear, simple relationship is unusual. In psychology, most of the time we speak of factors that contribute to behavior or make it more likely, instead of outright causing it.

The mass media, though, prefers simple relationships. A headline reading “BULLYING CONTRIBUTES TO SUICIDE … MAYBE” just doesn't pack the punch of “BULLYING VICTIM DRIVEN TO SUICIDE!” In a nutshell, there is scientific evidence regarding how bullying and cyberbullying are related to homicide or suicide; but the mass media's reporting often seems to inflate our perception of the simplicity, strength, and consistency of that relationship. Dr. Jorge Srabstein conducted a very interesting study of how bullying, injury, and death are handled in modern media.¹ He combed through news reports published throughout North and South America and found that the news media's portrayal of bullying skewed markedly toward the most severe cases. The truth is that only a very tiny fraction of real bullying cases are related to a fatality, but fully 43% of the cases that appeared in the news involved a fatality. Of these, about half involved suicides and half involved homicides. The media's relentless focus on more serious aggression and outcomes is unlikely to be a deliberate attempt to mislead people, but it still has the effect of leaving the public with a lopsided impression of the risks associated with bullying and cyberbullying.

One of the first blockbuster media stories that linked being a victim of bullying to homicide was the school shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado in 1999. In the wake of that shooting, the United States Secret Service conducted a study of school shootings that happened in the 1990s. That study concluded that bullying was a common, although not universal, factor in the background of school shooters: 71% of these homicidal kids felt that they had been victims of bullying or harassment.² These statistics stoke the fear that bullying could turn normal children into cold‐blooded killers. The Secret Service study did look to see if the school shooters appeared to be relatively normal; however, the study didn't probe for psychopathology, instead only checking for the most general indicators of functioning, like the shooters' grades. The study didn't detect any rampant signs of mental illness or significantly compromised functioning in these violent students. Most kids who became shooters were passing their classes, and some were even excelling academically.