Brazil study finds cyberbullying follows violence into the digital world

Research involving more than 4,000 Brazilian students suggests cyberbullying is part of a wider pattern of aggression, psychological distress and substance use rather than a problem caused by screen time alone.

A Brazilian study has found that cyberbullying is usually not an isolated online problem, but part of a wider pattern of aggression that starts in school and spills into digital spaces. Researchers writing in Psychiatry Research said the behaviour most often sits alongside physical and verbal violence rather than replacing it, a finding that adds weight to calls for schools to treat bullying, mental health and substance misuse as connected issues rather than separate ones.

The team, based on a census-style survey of 4,280 students from 13 schools in Brazil, identified three broad groups. Just under half of the teenagers reported no clear involvement in violence. A second, nearly as large group was mainly exposed to bullying at school, with only limited cyberbullying. The smallest group, at 6%, was made up of adolescents who were both victims and perpetrators across different settings. These so-called victim-perpetrators appeared to move between classroom conflict, schoolyard aggression and online harassment.

That last group also showed the sharpest signs of harm. More than half had psychological symptoms at a clinically significant level, compared with a much smaller share of students who were not involved in bullying. They were also more likely to report alcohol and tobacco use, with many having tried alcohol at least once and cigarette use markedly higher than among their peers. Earlier Brazilian research points in the same direction. A study indexed by PubMed found that cyberbullying victimisation often overlapped with other forms of violence, while nationwide survey data showed associations between cyberbullying, sadness, suicidal thoughts, family conflict, truancy and substance use.

Professor Zila Sanchez, who coordinated the study, said the results suggest that schools and families should stop treating these problems as if they were separate. Speaking about the findings, Sanchez argued that violence, mental distress and drug use frequently appear together in the same young person’s life, and that prevention efforts should reflect that reality. The study’s authors also noted that girls were more likely to report being bullied, while boys were more often found in the most complex high-risk category. Younger adolescents, and Black and Brown students, were also over-represented in that group, pointing to the importance of social and racial inequality in prevention work.

One of the more striking findings was that screen time itself did not explain the differences between groups, even though most students spent four hours or more online each day. The researchers said what mattered more was who teenagers were interacting with, not simply how long they were online. That fits with the wider evidence base, including a later article drawing on Brazil’s national school health survey, which also linked cyberbullying with a cluster of emotional and behavioural risks rather than with device use alone. The study’s broader message is that effective prevention may need to combine anti-bullying work, mental healthcare and drug education, with parents, schools and health services working from the same playbook.