Summary of the article

            The article I chose to review, “Cyberbullying During COVID-19 Pandemic: Relation to Perceived Social Isolation Among College and University Students”, looks into cyberbullying and cyber victimization during the peak of the COVID-19 Pandemic. The article relates to the Objectivity and Ethical Neutrality principles of the social sciences. The hypothesis of the article is that the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns of 2020 increased the feeling of social isolation and depression, leading to a rise in cyberbullying (Neuhaeusler). The study was done by interviewing at-the-time currently enrolled university students located in Midwestern states. The study compared cyberbullying experiences that took place before the lockdowns to ones during the lockdowns (Neuhaeusler). The data that was taken for the study consisted of: the age, the gender, the race, and the school year they were in, their experience with cyberbullying before COVID and their experience with cyberbullying during COVID. The analysis of the data showed that there did not appear to be a connection between the rise of social isolation and a rise in victimization during the pandemic, but did show that there was a general overall rise in victimization overall as social media usage amongst young adults increased.

Conclusion

            The article and study itself probably won’t have much of an effect on society. As the conclusion in the article notes: the incredibly limited sampling of students prevents the study from having a truly large effect on anything really. I feel that if the study had cast a wider net, involving more university students over a much wider range of locations, the results might have been different. The limited area could have simply been an exception to a rise in cyberbullying rather than the average. One conclusion they did make that I felt was important was the fact that this study can serve as a guide for a future study that does increase the locations interviewed. (Neuhaeusler)

References

Neuhaeusler, N. S. (2024). Cyberbullying during COVID-19 pandemic: Relation to perceived social isolation among college and university students . International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence & Cybercrime, 7(1), – .DOI: https://doi.org/10.52306/2578-3289.1140 Available at: https://vc.bridgew.edu/ijcic/vol7/iss1/3