There Is a Lack of Research on the Longterm Effects of Cyberbullying

Just last month, Dick Costolo, Twitter's CEO, confessed that Twitter sucks at dealing with cyberbullying. It turns out, so does science.

Researchers admit that there have been no authoritative, long-term studies on how cyberbullying—the increasingly common phenomenon of deliberate and repeated online harassment—affects mental health.

"I'm not aware of a single study that's followed individuals over time with respect to cyberbullying," said Justin Patchin, co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center, the only institution primarily dedicated to internet harassment.

Hundreds of studies have proven that individuals bullied face-to-face are more likely to experience decreased work performance, violent impulses, depression and changes in sleep patterns.

It would seem intuitive that cyberbullying, formally defined as "willful and repeated harm inflicted through the use of computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices," would provoke the same results.

However, according to researchers and victims, cyberbullying is another monster entirely.

Victims of cyberbullying, some of whom famously committed suicide after the fact, attest that the constant barrage of abuse can bring about severe, debilitating mental health repercussions.

Social media allows bullies relative anonymity, disengagement from morals, less supervision, and greater facility for embarrassing information to go viral—all of which show that cyberbullying needs to be better researched on its own terms.

Anecdotal evidence from victims of cyberabuse, like feminist critic Lindy West and Feminist Frequency founder Anita Sarkeesian, also shows that social media allows a greater volume of abusers to target individuals than ever before.

On top of that, Reddit, Twitter and darknet forums, where trolling collectives coordinate to gang up on victims, permit trolls greater organizational abilities than your regular school bullies—for example, like-minded 4chan users allegedly manufactured the GamerGate controversy by creating fake Twitter accounts to make their numbers appear larger.

The web's anonymity can also mean a lack of accountability. And even if someone were to be held accountable, social media sites have a poor track record of policing cyberbullying.

Finally, thanks to an upsurge in information brokers, an unprecedented amount of private information is in the public sphere and fair game as ammunition against victims. That means a larger audience than ever can sit front-row to Roman circuses of public shame as this data is made public, provoking serious consequences for victims' "real-life" endeavors.

Cyberbullying reportedly affects 40 percent of adults and 21 percent of teens. Researchers, however, are struggling to match its exposure and prevalence with facts about its effects.

Some reports have confirmed a correlation between cyberbullying and increased stress, anxiety, self-esteem problems, and suicidal thoughts, but no study has confidently proven any causation.

Patchin and his colleague Sameer Hinduja found that teenaged victims of cyberbullying are 1.9 times more likely to attempt suicide than their untargeted peers. Likewise, 35 percent of teenaged victims reported diminished school performance.

(There are almost no statistics on adult victims of cyberbullying, despite highly-publicized suicides linked to revenge porn and extreme trolling.)

But these statistics only suggest the vaguest relationships. No longitudinal study has followed the same, significant sample of cyberbullying victims over time to measure changes in mental health—the only reliable way to determine the impact of online harassment.

"Do I cyberbully you and, as a result of that cyberbullying, do you develop low self-esteem?" Patchin asked. "Or, do you have low self-esteem that makes you an attractive target for cyberbulling? The cause or effect, we frankly don't know. We know they're related."

Katherine Cross, a sociologist and Ph.D student at CUNY, studies online harassment and herself experienced harassment both online and offline. Her research defends the idea that dehumanization runs rampant on the internet because its users don't perceive it as "real." She believes that, culturally, we devalue online interaction, despite the fact that it's increasingly how we communicate.

Cross was abused for being the "nerdy teacher's pet" throughout her childhood and vividly remembers how in 7th grade gym class, she was body-slammed onto a hardwood floor after declining to participate. But she says that the abuse she received in person doesn't hold a candle to the cruelty she endured online after becoming involved in GamerGate.

"I could go home to get away from the bullies in middle school," she said. "Home could be a safe place. Here [online], there's no escaping it. They come in through every crevice. It's like blood in a horror movie. They're in your home. They're in your workplace. They're in your phone."

Cross had never experienced the physical effects of anxiety before being targeted by GamerGate trolls on Twitter. "I had to get medication for it," she said. "I stopped eating. I could barely get up in the mornings. I started missing deadlines, missing class." She said that the scale of the harassment, personal nature of the attacks, her sense of being mobbed, and the risk of having her online reputation sullied crippled her mental health.

A longitudinal study that could measure its psychological impact, however, requires a large amount of money and a stable, traceable sample size—both of which are difficult without the help of federal agencies.

Patchin noted that the Cyberbullying Research Center has submitted numerous proposals to federal agencies, but well-moneyed organizations seem to have little interest in internet harassment research. Some of his peers have received federal funding, but, he said, are not pursuing longitudinal studies.

Sangeen added, "Maybe in five or so years, we'll start to have quality projects." By that point, perhaps trolling will be illegal.