Sticks and Stones: Cyberbullying Victimization, Instigation and Associated Health among Online College Students

Cyberbullying has become a prevalent and detrimental factor for the health and wellness of those in education from grade school to college, spanning emotional, social, and even physical indices. However, much less is known about cyberbullying’s impact throughout the life course into adulthood. The current study examines an online nontraditional (e.g., older age) college student sample to address this gap in the literature. Participants (n = 447) were an average age of 30.31 years (SD = 12.72), majority women (71%), average credit load was 9.50 (SD = 4.13), and 57% were employed. Participants completed an online questionnaire about cyberbullying victimization (CV) and instigation (CI) over the past 30 days and lifetime along with technology use behaviors, health behaviors, and other health and wellness variables. Results highlighted CV as more prevalent than CI, both CV and CI were positively related, men were more likely to instigate than women and technology use variables (e.g., social media) were differentially related to CV and CI. Moreover, poor health behavior was associated with increased CI and not CV whereas poor wellness indicators were exclusively associated with increased CV and not CI. Although CV and CI are interconnected, the unique associations of these cyberbullying variables with demographics, technology use behavior, health behavior, and wellness indicators highlight distinctive patterns in how they may differ practically for online college students. These findings have implications for practical application in the prevention and mitigation of the deleterious impacts of cyberbullying in online behavior among adults.