There have always been aggressive people who have turned the ritual of flirting and flirting into a violent relationship that makes the victim suffer. But the Internet , with its tendency to anonymity and its emotional distance – the bully does not have to see the person he attacks while inflicting the damage – has intensified the phenomenon of bullying.
And not only that: the profile of the victims has also changed. This seems to show the results of an investigation by the Portuguese professors Francesca Savoldi, from the University of Lisbon, and Pedro Ferraz de Abreu, from the University of Aveiro.
His study was carried out in the Northern Irish city of Belfast, which has suffered for decades clashes between the Protestant and Catholic communities, and sought to find patterns in the relationship between intimidation of people, cyberbullying and the intensity of Internet use.
The researchers found two striking differences with respect to the type of bullying that occurs in social life outside the Internet. On the one hand, there was the paradox that spending a lot of time interacting online – contrary to what happens in the real world. it does not increase the probability of being subjected to cyberbullying : on the contrary, it is the novices who suffer the most.
The other difference from face-to-face relationships is the usual gender of the victim. The authors of the research remind us that it is men who experience the most pressure in the face to face. However, the most common victims of cyberbullying are women . They are the ones who suffer the greatest amount of aggressive messages with hints of violence.
