Bystander Behavior and Impact during Online and in-Person Peer Harassment and Bullying Incidents: A National Survey of Youth

Introduction:  Bullying prevention increasingly relies on mobilizing bystanders to improve the youth peer social environment and norms in favor of rejecting harassment and supporting victims.  There is promising evidence that an increased focus on bystander education represents an effective direction for prevention.  However, conceptualizations about how bystanders react to peer victimization are often based on narrow and stereotypical bullying scenarios.  This presentation seeks to expand an understanding of bystander behavior across a range of harassment incident types by analyzing victim-report data from a nationally representative, longitudinal study of youth.  

Methods: The Technology Harassment Victimization (THV) Study collected data by telephone (2013-2014) from a national sample of youth who had completed previously participated in the Second National Survey of Children’s Exposure to Violence (NatSCEV II) (2011-2012). Incident-level data were collected from youth respondents on up to 2 past-year peer harassment incidents. Data were also collected on perpetration behavior, bystander behavior, psycho-social characteristics, and youth victimization history. A total of 791 THV study interviews were completed with youth ages 10-20. Of the 791 youth, 230, or 34% (weighted) had experienced a least one harassment incident in the past year.  The current paper analyzes incident-level detail from the 311 unique incidents experienced by these 230 youth.  Statistical adjustments were made for non-independence of incidents experienced by the same child.

Results: Across the 311 peer harassment incidents, 80% involved the presence of at least one bystander.   Contrary to findings from several previous bystander studies, our data found that supportive bystander behaviors occurred at relatively high rates. For example, in 55% of incidents, bystanders told the victim they were sorry it happened, and in 53% of incidents they told the harasser to stop. However, antagonistic bystander behaviors, although less common, were predictive of high negative impact for the victim. Negative bystander behavior were more likely to occur in combination with other distressing factors including multiple perpetrators, exclusion behaviors, rumors, when there was a social power differential between the perpetrator and victim, and when the harassment occurred over a longer period of time.   In the majority of cases (60%), youth told at least one adult about the harassment and in 53% of the cases, telling the adult “made things better.”

Conclusions:  Results support previous research that bystanders are an active and common part of peer harassment.  Findings suggest a prevention focus on bystander education has potential for significantly improving norms and reducing victimizations, but program impact could be improved by expanding the definition of bystanders to include behavior across a broader range of victimization incident contexts.  Findings highlight the need for prevention programs to find ways to reduce negative bystander behavior and to focus on increasing the potential help provided by secondary bystanders or victim confidants.