The National Institute of Justice has released an evaluation of cyberbullying prevention and intervention programs. Cyberbullying is defined as aggressive, intentional act carried out by an individual or group over digital media, repeatedly over time against a vulnerable target. Examples may include hateful posts on social media, spamming harassment, and so on.
The programs evaluated aimed to prevent cyberbullying from happening, and/or intervene if someone is being cyberbullied. Programs were categorized based on who they targeted: individuals, universal/whole-schools, or multi-level systemic approaches. Individual-level strategies focused on teaching students a variety of strategies to respond to cyberbullying. Universal/whole-school strategies used schoolwide strategies and addressed how school related to cyberbullying. Finally, multi-level systemic approaches addressed different groups: classrooms, teachers/staff, families, and/or students. These programs may teach students how to respond to online bullying, and then also help staff build students’ social relationships at school, for example.
The NIJ found that these programs were effective in both addressing bullying and victimization. Using randomized controlled trials, the findings indicate that participating in cyberbullying invtervention or prevention programs can reduce online bullying behaviors and victimization from online bullying among school-aged youth.
To read more about the NIJ’s findings, you can visit the site after this link.