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The current study examined the effects of adult and peer support on social and psychological harm among adolescent victims of cyberbullying aged 12 to 18 using the NCVS-School Crime Supplement data in 2011 and 2013. As found, almost all victims reported that they experienced certain degrees of social and psychological distress from their cyberbullying victimization. The results supported the four research hypotheses that assumed the negative relationship between two types of harms (social and psychological harm) and two emotional support groups (peer and adult). First we found that peer support lowered not only the levels of social harm but also psychological harm among adolescent victims of cyberbullying. It is not surprising that most students have at least one close friend at school. Although we would like to capture a more versatile measure of peer support, we were unable to provide a more sophisticated measure of peer support due to the distribution of the measure and lack of peer support variables in the dataset. Several existing studies found that peer support has a positive impact on students experience at school by creating a socio-emotional climate and providing social and emotional support and functions as school bullying intervention and prevention (Cowie, 2011; Naylor & Cowie, 1999; Cowie & Olafsson, 2000; Tzani-Pelpelasi et al., 2019; Yin et al., 2017). Although these studies did not test peer support directly on cyberbullying victimization, it is clear that peers and fellow students play critical roles to the bullied to overcome their social and psychological damage and distress from the peer bullies. There is a common phrase used in South Korea: Wounds from people are eventually healed by people. In other words, social and psychological harms from peers at school are healed by peers. The current study clearly demonstrated such proverb.

Second, we found a positive effect of adult support on both social and psychological harms among adolescent victims of cyberbullying. That is, adult support alleviates the levels of social and psychological distress suffering among peer victims. Yeung and Leadbeater (2010) found that adult emotional support moderates the association between peer victimization and emotional and behavioral problems among adolescents. In particular, the higher father and teachers emotional support, the lower the adolescent victims emotional and behavioral problems caused by both physical and relational victimization concurrently and across time (Yeung & Leadbeater, 2010). Although Yeung and Leadbeater (2010) did not separately measure cybervictimization from physical and relational victimization, it was obvious that adult support moderates emotional and behavioral maladaptive outcomes among adolescent victims of peer aggression and harassment.

According to Mitchell and her colleagues (2016), adolescent victims had the most emotional harm by mixed harassment incidents (in-person and technology-involved) because of being victimized in multiple places such as school, home, and cyberspace. To our knowledge, the current study is the first study that empirically examined the effects of adult and peer support on social and psychological harm among adolescent victims of cyberbullying, as well as the first study finding the positive impacts of adult and peer support on cyber victimization. The result of the current study also supports the finding of Yeung and Leadbeater’s study (2010) that adult support makes a difference for peer-victimized adolescents.

Third, it was not our main focus but worth to mention the important finding of the relationships between both hate words and hate symbols in school and the levels of social harm. It was not a surprising finding that adolescent victims were not only physically but also verbally abused by their peers, using hate words related to various personal factors. However, it is necessary to pay good attention to the positive relationship between hate symbols in school and social harm. Neutrality in the school environment has been highly emphasized by many scholars and teachers, especially in public schools, in order to provide a safer and better learning environment by eliminating any confusion or animosity for students on polarized opinions on any controversial topics in social justice (see Hart, 1964; Kelly, 2001; and Kyritsis & Tsakyrakis, 2013). The finding of the current study lets us rethink about the carelessness, negligence, or insensitivity on hate symbols among teachers and/or school administrators as well as the pain of the adolescent victims caused by inattentive and/or unintentional hazardous school climates. Besides, it implies the importance of school justice systems and disciplines against any violations of human rights. As described earlier, however, both variables, hate words and the presence of hate symbols in school, were measured with one dichotomized item, so it is recommended for future studies to measure them with more sophisticated items to investigate the impacts of hate on perpetrators and victims.

There are several limitations to the current study concerning the data. Similar to many other self-reported survey data, the NCVS-SCS contains issues regarding sampling error. Even though the NCVS-SCS collects data from the nationally representative samples, any given NCVS-SCS student sample may differ from estimates that would have been produced from other student samples. In addition, the NCVS-SCS asks on an entire year of school victimization in every two years. Thus, at the response process stage, students may forget an event or telescope forward or backward. Since 2011, there were a total of four NCVSSCS datasets that include cyberbullying related items. Starting in 2015, NCVS-SCS substituted the eight cyberbullying-related questions to one question that asks the place of bullying with an option to choose online or by text. For this reason, we used the 2011 and 2013 datasets only in the current study. It is recommended for future studies to examine the 2015 and 2017 datasets for the comparison purpose. The current study combined two NCVS-SCS data to demonstrate the relationship between peer and adult support on bullying victims. Due to the data limitation, we cannot control or examine the temporal ordering between bullying and support from adults and peer groups. Instead, this study assumed the more significant impact of adult and peer support on bullying victims. Therefore, future studies should address the issue of the temporal ordering between bullying and supports.

Another concern in this study is that there is no way to identify whether the findings of this study are the result of the adult and/or peer support programs already being effective. There is no such question indicating whether or not individual participants’ school has such programs in the NCVS-SCS questionnaire. As stated, we measured peer and adult support regardless of the existence of such support programs. Hence, the findings of this study should be cautiously interpreted, and it is also recommended for future studies to address and/or resolve the issue of a black-box approach, caused by the limitation of using secondary data. Furthermore, the current study only includes both adult and peer support at school. Since it is plausible to obtain both supports from outside school boundaries, expanding the scope to include support from other adults and peers is also encouraged for further assessment.

According to Yeung and Leadbeater (2010), teachers emotional support could reduce emotional and behavioral problems among adolescents. Unfortunately, the NCVS-SCS data did not allow us to differentiate the emotional support from teachers only. There were three items asking students experiences with teachers, but those items asked overall perceptions of teachers rather than personal experience with teachers. Therefore, the current study was unable to demonstrate the impact of teacher support separately from adult support. Lastly, due to the data restriction, we were unable to construct a robust measure that represents peer support. Unlike the adult support measure that draws from six items, the peer support measure came from one item. Aforementioned, there is no other nationally representative dataset containing cyberbullying victimization and various adult and peer support items to the authors knowledge, so we recommend adding more cyber victimization and peer support items on the NCVS-SCS or constructing another nationally representative platform data that specify cyber victimization of students.

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