Cyberbullying can cause PTSD symptoms in kids: Study

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Cyberbullying in any form can cause symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and should be considered an “adverse childhood experience” (ACE), a recent analysis finds.

Writing in BMC Public Health, researchers drew from a nationally representative sample of 13-to-17-year-olds in the United States, homing in on the 53.9 percent of the group that reported having been cyberbullied in the past.

More than half of that group said someone had posted mean or hurtful comments online, spread rumours online, or intentionally excluded them from a group text or chat within the previous 30 days.

Boys who experienced these forms of cyberbullying “scored significantly lower than girls on the trauma scale,” and younger students reported more trauma than their older counterparts.

The more often a student was bullied online, the more trauma they reported, but the type of cyberbullying was not linked to trauma severity.

“As our research clearly shows, cyberbullying in any form – whether it’s exclusion from a group chat or direct threats – can lead to significant trauma in youth,” Sameer Hinduja, a professor in Florida Atlantic University’s School of Criminology and Criminal Justice and the paper’s lead author, said in a news release. “We were surprised to find that no single type of cyberbullying caused more harm than others; all carried a similar risk of traumatic outcomes. This means we can’t afford to dismiss or trivialize certain behaviors as ‘less serious’ – being left out or targeted by rumors can be just as detrimental as more overt attacks.”

Because of the link between cyberbullying and symptoms of PTSD, the researchers write, schools must provide trauma-sensitive care and skill-building to help students develop good coping mechanisms. Schools should help students, including by developing crisis intervention plans, to help kids deal with cyberbullying.

“It seems vital to avoid prioritizing or trivializing any particular type [of cyberbullying] over another,” they conclude.

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