What the research says
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• Social networking has increased rate and quality of collaboration for students.
• Social networking teaches skills that will be useful in a post-school life.
• Young people develop familiarity and comfort around technology.
• Profile-building is a useful skill to have.
• It’s so easy and fast to upload and make available work for critical consideration and feedback.
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• Students usually type faster than they can write and take more lengthy notes (often verbatim)… but they remember less.
• We increasingly rely on online sources of information, in bite-sized chunks.
• Multi-tasking doesn’t work.
• Social networking involves different skills from socializing.
• All the convenience is creating a lax attitude to things like spelling and grammar.
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What proportion of young people have experienced ‘traditional’ bullying?
What about ‘cyberbullying’?
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1. Everyone knows what cyberbullying is
2. Cyberbullying is occurring at epidemic levels
3. Cyberbullying causes suicide
4. Cyberbullying occurs more often now than traditional bullying
5. Like traditional bullying, cyberbullying is a rite of passage for all teens
6. Cyberbullies are outcasts or just mean kids
7. To stop cyberbullying just turn off your computer or cellphone
From Sabella et al., 2013. Youth Wellbeing Study

“willful and repeated harm inflicted through the use of computers, cell phones, and other
electronic devices”
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What proportion of young people have experienced ‘cyberbullying’?
In the United States, the figure is… around 25%
(9% within the previous month)
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Youth 2000 – 20ish %
In 2007, 19.0% of students reported that in the last 12 months they had received nasty or threatening messages
(females 23.7%; males 14.9%)
In 2012, 12% reported receiving nasty or threatening messages on their mobile phone and/or on the internet (9%) and received unwanted sexual material on their mobile phone (8%) and/or on the internet (6%) over the past year.
Figure from Clark et al., (2009)
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40% of year 9’s reported being bullied in the past year, but low numbers reported cyberbullying. 22.3% reported having bullied others, and 20% via some form of technology.
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From the YWS, participants who are cyberbullied report...
... The highest rates of suicidal ideation, depression, anxiety, self-injury (for self-punishement), and poorer self-esteem and resilience.
... Poorer relationship attachment to parents but not to peers.
From international research, cyber victimisation is related to suicidal ideation, poor self-esteem, anger and frustration, and various other emotional and psychological problems.
(Brighi et al., 2012; Hinduja & Patchin, 2010; Kowalski & Limber, 2013; Patchin & Hinduja, 2010;
Wang, Nansel, & Iannotti, 2011)
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Some take-homes based on current research:
- Among adolescents, girls are at least as likely, if not more likely than boys to experience cyberbullying (as a victim and offender)
- Cyberbullying isn’t just associated with psychological outcomes
– it also co-occurs with school problems, anti-social behavior, substance use, and delinquency
- Traditional bullying is still more common than cyberbullying
-Traditional bullying and cyberbullying are closely related: those who are bullied at school are bullied online and those who bully at school bully online
- Cyberbullying has increased over the past decade by between
50% and 100% (highest estimates suggest it’s doubled)
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Light exposure plays a strong role in the circadian timing system.
 Light exposure has been shown to be a potent treatment for various circadian rhythm disorders (see section on treatment).
But… accumulating lines of evidence point to the negative effects of exposure to light during the nighttime hours (e.g.,  risk of breast/prostate cancer).
In young people late light exposure leads to ‘circadian desynchrony’ and melatonin suppression. Missing early morning light exposure prevents normal circadian entrainment to the environmental light/dark cycle.
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Electronic media exposure influences sleep patterns across all age groups.
In children, it’s most consistently associated with later bedtime and shorter sleep.
Presence of a media device in the bedroom goes with increased exposure, later bedtime and shorter sleep.
Why?
• Maybe because electronic media exposure is an unstructured and boundless leisure activity with no clear endpoints, unlike other hobbies or sports activities.
• A media device in the bedroom may indicate high availability of the device and low parental control, both leading to increased exposure.
• electronic media exposure may have ‘alerting effects’ – either through melatonin suppression, or through arousing content.
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• Research shows that interactive technologies such as video games, cellphones and the
Internet might affect the brain differently than those which are “passively received,” such as
TV and music.
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The Cyberbullying Research Centre http://cyberbullying.us/
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