Boys worse than girls for online meanness

Threats. Cruelty. Harassment. Even mocking race, religion or ethnicity. When it comes to youths’ online behaviour, a new study finds everything about the “mean girl” stereotype holds true. Everything, that is, except gender.

Turns out, boys are significantly likelier than girls to engage in all the aforementioned activities — in some cases, more than three times likelier — but have generally got a free ride in terms of public perception. In other words, even though girls aren’t necessarily innocent of cyberbullying, it appears they’re undeserving of being singled out.

“A certain number of girls are engaging in online meanness. But based on our findings, they’re doing so less often than boys,” said Matthew Johnson, director of education at MediaSmarts, which commissioned the Canada-wide survey of 5,436 students in grades 4 through 11.

“They’re also not any more likely than boys to engage in some of the activities we associate with female bullying, such as rumour spreading.”

Twenty-six per cent of boys, versus 20 per cent of girls, reported being mean to others online. And boys were nearly twice as likely to use Internet anonymity to pursue malicious behaviour without consequence: 13 per cent versus seven per cent.

Boys were likelier to harass someone sexually online (six per cent versus two per cent, among grades 7 to 11); to mock someone’s race, religion or ethnicity (17 per cent versus five per cent); to make fun of someone’s sexual orientation (10 per cent versus three per cent); and to harass someone in an online game (41 per cent versus eight per cent).

Girls, meanwhile, reported being on the receiving end of malicious online behaviour at a rate 10 percentage points higher than boys.

“We were very careful in our questions never to use the word ‘bullying,’ ” Johnson said. “We instead talked about specific behaviours because we know that kids will define bullying in such a way that it excludes anything they actually do — or anything they’ve experienced as well, as it’s to no benefit to define yourself as a victim.”

Among the most commonly cited reasons for cruel online conduct were “just joking around” (55 per cent); reciprocation (48 per cent); and not liking the other person (32 per cent).

Only 17 per cent of youths said they’d turn to a teacher for help if online meanness became problematic, despite schools being one of the most important sources of education on cyberbullying.

Fully half would enlist the aid of a parent, 42 per cent would ignore the issue and hope it went away, while 38 per cent would seek friends’ help.

The report, published Tuesday, is based on teacher-administered surveys taken between February and June 2013 in 140 schools, across every province and territory. It can be viewed at mediasmarts.ca/ycww/