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Cyberbullying (CB) is a rising public concern in modern times (Straus, 2016; Zhang & Leidner, 2018). The CB Research Centre (Patchin, 2016) carried out a countrywide survey of over five thousand adolescents in the United States and reported that approximately 34 percent of the participants were cyberbullied and approximately 12 percent cyberbullied others. CB is the intentional, repetitive, and aggressive employment of computers, cell phones, and other electronic gadgets to harm people (Smith et al., 2008). With the increased availability of low-cost internet connectivity and social media, CB has increased dramatically in India. According to a study conducted by Norton Cyber Security Insight report (Gaur, 2021), almost 8 out of 10 people in India are victims of various forms of CB. Around 63 percent of them were subjected to online abuse and insults, and 59 percent were the target of false rumours and gossip that degraded their image. According to the same survey, India has more CB victims than Australia and Japan in the Asia Pacific region. Today, social media platforms are widely used as one of the most popular venues for social behaviours, particularly among youth (Shukla & Bhasin, 2022). The prominent platform for CB is social media, and thus the current study concentrates on CB through social networking sites. Instagram is the most popular social media platform, with 76.50% people in India having an Instagram account (Reportal, 2022). Research reported that 42 percent of adolescents have experienced CB on Instagram in the UK. In comparison, 37% of Facebook users and 31% of Snapchat users said they liked the app. Surprisingly only 9% of respondents said they have encountered CB on Twitter (Cook, 2022). However, the majority of CB research has been undertaken on the samples of middle school kids, with fewer studies concentrating on CB among university students (Kowalski et al., 2019).
Prior studies have recognized several kinds of CB, including trolling (e.g., insulting comments on the web; Slonje et al., 2013), griefing (e.g., bullying through online gaming communities), sexting (Willard, 2007), online harassment, impersonation (e.g., posing as the target), exclusion (e.g., blocking from the network), outing (e.g., sharing individual's information), online intimidation (e.g., aggressive messaging), and flaming (an adversarial style of online communication). The current study focused on written forms of CB, such as flaming and online intimidation, which are more significantly linked to the global CB frequency (Nocentini et al., 2010).
Generally, CB is interrelated with school bullying (Beran & Li, 2007; Juvonen & Gross, 2008). CB has been considered a serious concern for parents, teachers, and health practitioners. Activity such as posting publicly available material on the Internet, receiving threats or harassing communications over the Internet, and others are examples of CB (Patchin & Hinduja, 2006). Unlike traditional bullying, CB can happen at any time and from anyone, and the perpetrator's name may not be revealed (Patchin & Hinduja, 2006). As a result, CB may become more common, with more dire repercussions for the victim. CB has been shown to have a significant impact on adolescents, including a higher risk of depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts (Yuchang et al., 2019), as well as physical and psychogenic problems such as sleep problems, headaches, and lack of appetite (Kowalski & Limber, 2013). The initiation of substance use, traditional and CB perpetration, and delinquency are all linked to CB (Estévez et al., 2020).