THE DYNAMIC RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PERCEIVED PARENTAL SUPPORT AND ONLINE BULLYING

Abstract

Bullying is defined as a hostile / exclusionary and deceptive behavior of humiliation. A child is labeled, teased, mocked in his circle of knowledge or by colleagues calling him in a certain way (referring to physical appearance or medical / family issues). The phenomenon of "bullying" is much more common than we would like to believe. It happens on school corridors, in the yard, on the streets and, unfortunately, sometimes in classrooms. Undetected on time, bullying may leave traumas and irreversible repercussions on the child's adaptability to society. Our research team has developed the project Keeping youth safe from Cyberbullying, ID 2016-3-TR01-KA205-036619 under Erasmus+, that aims to deeper understand the dynamics of cyberbullying in online environments among youth, to develop educational resources for professionals involved in youth activities in order to prevent these type behaviors, to develop youth skills to protect themselves from cyberbullying and to disseminate findings among educational professionals. One of our first interests was in analyzing the relationship between online bullying incidents and perceived parental support, due to the fact that psychological protection from any kind of harassment starts from home. Our conclusion is that there is a dynamic relationship between online bullying incidents and perceived parental support. Qualitative results and bulling prevention strategies are discussed.