Preventing Cyberbullying: What Is the Parental Role in this Issue?

With the rise of social networks, bullying has also developed in this space, where we talk about cyberbullying. This makes students much more exposed to bullying, as cyberbullying encroaches on their personal space through the online world. The current study explores how the role of parents can help mitigate the effects of cyberbullying on secondary school students. Primary data was collected through an online survey in the chosen secondary schools. In total, responses were obtained from 267 students who completed surveys measuring their participation in cyberbullying, including parents’ roles when using the Internet. The results show that parental control and behaviour have a significant effect on mitigating cyberbullying perpetration. Additionally, a link was found between parental control, behaviour, and social media use behaviour. An interesting finding is that when there is parental control, children are much more often inclined to use social networks than when they are not so monitored. The results show that parental control for monitoring Internet content or apps has a negative effect on the social media use of the children monitored. They are much more likely to use social media to forget personal problems or use it so much that it has a negative impact on their studies. It has been found that when parents explain how to use the internet safely, children are very rarely able to limit the use of social networks. The research suggests that parental behaviour appears to be much more crucial in the parenting role than parental control.