The social-ecological model of cyberbullying: Digital media as a predominant ecology in the everyday lives of youth

Abstract

While cyberbullying has been recognized as a critically important social problem, a void remains regarding the role of digital media. To address this gap, we propose the social-ecological model of cyberbullying, an expanded model that builds on Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory (EST) and expands Swearer and Espelage’s social-ecological model of bullying. A strength of the proposed model is the addition of the digital context as a new ecology in the everyday lives of youth, which is closely interconnected with all the other systems. Furthermore, the model incorporates digital-specific factors within each ecological system of the original EST model. This provides scholars with a holistic model that they can test, finetune, and expand. A practical implication of the model is that it can guide the creation and implementation of effective and age-appropriate cyberbullying prevention and intervention approaches because it considers in the chronosystem life phases, life transitions, historical events, and crises.