Cyberbullying and Cyberbullicide Ideation
This article examines the social effects of cyber bullying and aims to quantify the
likelihood of suicide attempts in victims. This is important to the social sciences of cybersecurity
because it goes into fine detail of the negative social impacts of cyber bullying, using relativity to
explain that there is a strong correlation between mental health and abuse through digital means.
Also examined is societies response to these incidents through implementation of new policies.
The independent variable was a sample size of students who experienced cyberbullying during their time at college, with the dependent variable being a simple yes or no response towards the question of whether they experienced suicidal ideation or not. They then compared the data with the number of observed individuals versus their expected outcome of suicidal idealizing using their algorithmic model. The data ended up showing that the model had a 70% accuracy rating in predicting whether cyberbullied victims intended on suicide.
The algorithmic model was created from their survey of multiple college students, using their answers to form an equation that consisted of several different variables that might raise the likelihood that an individual might experience cyberbullying. The model aimed to quantify several risk factors that might suggest a higher likelihood of suicidal ideation occurring. These factors ranged from variables such as their life satisfaction, gender, childhood violence and other factors that might contribute to the subject’s cognitive perception. Identifying these risks is a key focus on human behavior and helps create indicators for points of intervention in those who might be experiencing cyberbullying.
This is helpful towards marginalized groups as cyber bullying is often invisible to those around the victims in real life, causing little explanation to the reasons why they may self-isolate. On top of this, in tandem with typical cyber-offender behavior it is often belittled as many offenders neutralize their bullying with reasoning such as lack of physical abuse or simply bullying for entertainments sake without knowing the full scope of the damage done.
This research is also beneficial to the greater good of society as it calls to action policymakers to fix some of these issues within the community. Unfortunately, as the time of this article writing it states that there is no specific crime termed as “cyber bullying” in Jordan legislation. However, the Jordan government has begun to slowly recognize cyberbullying as a social, legal and health problem, as the percentage rates of cyberbullying suicides as skyrocketed to a 64% (Al-Badayneh, 2024). While disheartening, this change in focus on the mental impact suffered from cyber-offenders helps politicians make decisions as new technologies are understood through social sciences like those mentioned in this article. In conclusion, this research paper effectively uses objectiveness and relativity to finely define and explain the effects of cyber abuse. Many of the concepts discussed in this paper are parallel to already existing theories about criminology outside of the cyber domain and calling attention to the fact that cyberbullying is a crime with repercussions as in-person bullying. Many
peers of victims note that often they know the cyber-offender despite not intervening. Hopefully cyberbullying can come to be understood that is something not only the perpetrator neutralizes, but also those in the victim’s own community.
Sources
Al-Badayneh, D. (2024). Cyberbullying and cyberbullicide ideation among Jordanian college students. Cybercrime Journal. https://cybercrimejournal.com/menuscript/index.php/cybercrimejournal/article/view/329/98