International Neuropsychiatric Disease Journal

Introduction: Traditional or offline bullying is a wide spread phenonium recognized over the years as a serious public health issue. While we are still trying to curb the traditional bullying in schools, adolescents are now experiencing cyberbullying as the use of internet among this age group is on the rise. There is paucity of study on cyberbullying among adolescents in our setting. This study is aimed to determine the burden of the different forms of bullying among adolescents in Obio/Akpor Rivers State.

Methodology: A school-based cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted among adolescents attending a secondary school in a sub-urban community in Rivers State. Systematic sampling method was used to recruit participants; the study tool was a self-completed questionnaire filled by the students in school.  SPSS version 26 was used for analysis. Independent t-test was used to compare mean while chi-square test was used to determine the relationship between two categorical variables, a p-value of ≤ 0.05 was considered significant.

Results: Three hundred adolescents aged 13-19 years participated in the study, mean age was 15.65 ± 0.87 years. Two hundred and seventy-two (90.7%) of them defined bullying as Physical/verbal insult that can occur offline or online, 273 (91.0%) of the participant had witnessed bullying, while 74 (24.7%) had bullied someone in the past. The prevalence of traditional bullying (physical, 52.0 %; verbal, 67.3%) was higher than cyberbully (17.3%). Social and moral effects were more common among those who experienced cyberbullying (34.6% and 23.1% respectively) compared to the 22.2% and 7.3% of those who reported in-person or traditional bullying. However, this relationship was observed to be significant for moral effect only (χ²= 11.95, p = 0.004).

Conclusion: Traditional bullying remains prevalent in schools, with students as bystanders while others are being bullied. Cyberbullying is not rare among adolescents, and tend to have a significant negative effect on their moral wellbeing compared to the traditional bullying. Awareness needs to be drawn to the growing burden and impact of in-person and cyberbullying among adolescents while measures to reduce the incidence of both offline and online bullying need to be strengthened.