CYBERBULLYING IN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS BEFORE AND AFTER COVID-19 LOCKDOWN

Abstract

Cyberbullying in the university context is a little-studied reality. The aim of this study is to analyse cyberbullying in university students before and after the lockdown due to Covid-19, establishing the roles of cyberbullying, the affects experienced, peer relations and social use of the internet. We have used a non-experimental, ambispective, descriptive and inferential cross-sectional design, employing three standardized and validated questionnaires, and one ad-hoc, in order to assess the influence of the lockdown. 586 students (MAge = 22.67; SD = 5.75; 81.1% female) of Degrees and Masters at the University of Granada (Spain) participated, mainly from Social and Legal Sciences (44.20%) and Health Sciences (28.31%). Before the lockdown, 16.2% of the participants were cyber-victimized, 6.7% had bullied, 8.4% were victims/aggressors and 68.8% had no role. During the lockdown, the percentages of victims and victims/ aggressors decreased, while the percentage of aggressors rose. We found there to be an influence of sex, age and positive affects in the roles before lockdown (p