Criminological Theory To Explain The Crime Of Cyberbullying

Cyberbullying is the use of communication technology to repeatedly harass, threaten, or intimidate others, usually anonymously (Winterdyk, (2016) pg.354). With many young people now using social networking sites and cellphones it has made it easier for children and teenagers to threaten or harass others (Winterdyk, (2016) pg.354). The most common ways that adolescents have used to cyberbully someone are sending around embarrassing pictures of the victim or spreading rumors about them online (Festl, R. & Quandt, T. (2016)). Each gender has different ways in which they use the internet, Males are more likely to use gaming consoles and devices while females are more likely to use social media websites such as Instagram, Facebook, snapchat, and

Cyberbullying has been increasing rapidly over the last couple years becoming a serious issue among adolescents and has affected the mental health (Festl, R. & Quandt, T. (2016) leading to devastating consequences including depression, social anxiety, grades dropping at school, acting out, and suicide (Winterdyk, (2016)

There are four conditions that must be met for effective modeling, attention (various factors increase or decrease the amount of attention paid), retention (remembering what you paid attention to), reproduction (reproducing the image), and motivation (having a good reason to imitate) (Davey, K. (2015). Any type of bullying including cyberbullying is a learned behavior by watching others do it and seeing little to no consequences for it allowing adolescents to believe it’s okay to do (Fox, B. (2016)). Adolescents are more prone to learn this behavior from fellow peers either at school or online observing the types of bullying happening on a public domain and are more likely to add on to the bullying that is already occurring (Fox, B. (2016)). Cyber bullying is also learned by observing caregivers or other adults, listening to the way they talk about each other than using that knowledge to bully peers thinking it’s a normal think to do and since most adolescents now are using social media to communicate rather than in person makes it easier to bully someone online (Fox, B.