Social Media Use as a Tool to Facilitate or Reduce Cyberbullying Perpetration: A Review Focusing on Anonymous and Nonanonymous Social Media Platforms

Abstract

In today's technologically savvy culture, social media has emerged as a primary method of communicating with others all over the world. Although social media use has many positive benefits, some individuals may use social media to harm others, termed cyberbullying. In this review, we discuss how social media can aid in the facilitation of anonymity perceptions to increase the likelihood of cyberbullying perpetration. We note the theoretical underpinnings relating anonymity perceptions to cyberbullying perpetration and delve into how certain social media platforms that are more or less anonymous (from the user's perspective) can influence cyberbullying. We conclude with discussing how social media can be a tool to help reduce cyberbullying perpetration through decreasing anonymity perceptions of users. Our overall objective is to highlight the aspects of social media use that apply to theoretical postulates to predict cyberbullying to better understand the situations under which individuals use social media to harm others.