Examining middle school students’ views on text bullying

This study aimed to examine middle school students’ views on text bullying in regard to gender, grade level, reactions to bullying and frequency of internet use. The participating 872 students were selected through simple random sampling method among 525 schools located in central Ankara. The data were collected via a questionnaire and a survey ‘Middle School Students’ Views on Safe Internet Use Survey’. The current study utilized the data drawn from the use of mobile phone dimension of the survey. Frequency, percentage and chi-square analyses were employed. The research findings illustrated that male students are significantly more likely to become victims of text bullying compared with female students. Yet, surprisingly female students displayed bullying behaviours more often than male students. Regarding the reactions of students to bullying, there was no significant relation by gender. The findings revealed that the victims informed their parents about the case of text bullying they experienced. Compared with the 6th and the 7th grades, the 8th grades were less likely to be bullied; in contrast, they were more likely to bully the other grades. The results also illustrated that the frequency of internet use is negatively associated with the frequency of text bullying. Another salient finding of the study indicated the majority of victims eventually became bullies by responding the text messages they had received. © 2015, Springer Science+Business Media New York.