*Corresponding Author P-ISSN: 1412-1212 E-ISSN: 2541-2388 15 The Winners, 21(1), March 2020, 15-20 DOI: 10.21512/tw.v21i1.5878 Cyberbullying Phenomenon of High School Students: An Exploratory Study in West Kalimantan, Indonesia William Vincent Setiawan1*; Vernawati Eva Fitrisna2; Fairuz Michellianouva3; Celly Septine Mayliza4 1,2,3,4 Accounting Department, BINUS Graduate Program - Master of Accounting, Bina Nusantara University Jl. Kebon Jeruk Raya No. 27, Kebon Jeruk, Jakarta 11530, Indonesia 1william.setiawan@binus.edu; 2vernaismyname@gmail.com; 3fmichellianouva@gmail.com; 4csmcelly@gmail.com Received: 13th August 2019/ Revised: 21st August 2019/ Accepted: 26th August 2019 How to Cite: Setiawan, W. V., Fitrisna, V. E., Michellianouva, F., & Mayliza, C. S. (2020). Cyberbullying phenomenon of high school students: An exploratory study in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. The Winners, 21(1), 15-20. https://doi.org/10.21512/tw.v21i1.5878 Abstract - Cyberbullying became a common occurrence among teenagers in the world today. The aim of research was to explore the cyberbullying experience of high school students in West Kalimantan. The research was conducted to identify internet usage and online activities that led to cyberbullying victimization. The methods used a questionnaire collected during June 2019 from 50 students (25 males and 25 females) graded 10 to 12, and used a one-way ANOVA analysis. Significant gender differences were found which indicated that boys were more often involved in cyberbullying both as the perpetrator and the victim. Students with lower academic achievement tend to be online perpetrators than students with better academic performance. The research investigated how cyber oppression impacts both as a perspective of victimization and persecution, discussing the practice of reporting students to parents, school officials and other adults. Parental and teacher supervision as a strategy reduces student involvement in cyberbullying and generates awareness among students. The result implies that schools have an important role in teaching cybersecurity, adding cyberbullying subject in the curriculum, and sharing experiences with students. Keywords: cyber bullying, High School Students, online activity, cyber victimization I. INTRODUCTION With the popularity of the internet and the development of communication and information technology, online communication has become one of the most widely used communications among the public. With this change, the social phenomena that have taken place offline have started to change to become online. The trend of cyberbullying has received increasing attention because it leads to serious consequences and increased prevalence. With the prevalence of smartphones and sophisticated internet connectivity, internet usage among middle students is increasing in West Kalimantan. In 2017, 18% of the total population of West Kalimantan internet access at home and in 2018 accounted for 2,1% dominating 80% for penetration (Nabila, 2019). The level of internet use is relatively high among young people. However, relatively few high school students know about cyberbullying (O’Keeffe, & Clarke-Pearson, 2011). When young people have expressed themselves more in social media than in the real world, their security using social media is a serious concern that needs attention now. Examples of cases of extortion of a 14-year-old girl on social media by her uncle and because she was socially embarrassed when she refused an application for an illicit relationship (https://www.unicef.org). Many high school students face harassment through the internet that is accessible to them. Therefore, parents must pay special attention to their children towards cyberbullying when using the internet. The need to educate young people about the potential risks and threats related to cyberspace and how to keep themselves safe, along with the importance of educating teachers, parents and guardians in dealing with and helping to overcome this problem (Kritzinger, 2014). The internet has become an integral part of the lives of young people of this millennium. The internet gives us a simpler and easier life. Moreover, the internet can be used all over the world gradually and the number of users reaches 4 billion in January 2018 (Simon, 2018). Social media has also become an influential trend that can create large virtual spaces where people from anywhere are able to connect and 16 The Winners, Vol. 21 No. 1 March 2020, 15-20 interact with each other without being limited by space and time. The research found that although cybercrime has not received enough attention in the field of research in Indonesia, many people have become victims through the internet. Victims of cybercrime need to be aware and must be better educated on how to protect and prevent themselves from the evil acts of cyberbullying (Kamal et al., 2017). Young people must be given training or social study classes related to the mandated law, to understand the adverse effects of piracy and other internet crimes. Learning institutions such as universities, schools must involve system administrators and IT personnel in annual training in order to understand the technologies have been emerging in this millennial market. Cyberbullying has become a common phenomenon that is often discussed about online violence on social media. A research conducted in 2012 has shown that at least 800,000 young people had become victims of online violence on Facebook. The number of middle school children experiencing cyberbullying has almost doubled. 49,5% of students report being victims of online bullying. Bullied young people can cause mental damage in adulthood and even the worst conditions can cause students to commit suicide because of this. The research focuses on West Kalimantan because researchers see areas that are rarely reached or visited by the government because of cost factors. Hence many students do not know the adverse effects of cyberbullying. The research can be useful for government and non-government organizations in helping schools and their parents develop a policy framework and find solutions to overcome cyberbullying as a social problem that is developing in Indonesia, especially in the West Kalimantan Region. Researchers see that many high school students in West Kalimantan who are being bullied cannot do much and only receive inner pressure causing them to detach themselves from fellow friends, so they do not spend time with them. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to discuss cyberbullying that occurs in the area of West Kalimantan. In addition, Li (2007) has found that students with lower academic status tend to become cyberbullies, while Ma (2016) have pointed out an argument that these students tend to be victims. The importance of having a thorough understanding of risk factors in informing cyberbullying prevention and intervention strategies. Global research gave rise to the paradigm that cyberbullying has been proven to be a universal invasion that harbored high school students and above. i-Safe (http://isafe.org/) has reported a survey of 1400 students ranging in age from 10 to 18 years, 48% of whom have been intimidated online. More research works on cyberbullying of school children have also been conducted in the United States. The Southeast and Northwestern United States have been surveyed using questionnaires and some standard questions. Previous research on cyberbullying found a relationship that influenced the likelihood of one being perceived social support. Support from the surrounding environment is a personal need that is important and felt useful to describe one’s perception of social availability and provision. It is known that social support from families has a large impact in preventing involvement in cyberbullying (Fanti, Demetriou & Hawa, 2012). Quoted from Leandha (2016), in April 2016 a number of high school students in Medan with the initials SD claimed to be Arman Depari’s children dismissed on Jalan Sudirman by the police. The field crew media recorded elementary school actions during the incident. Furthermore, the incident was widely discussed online and elementary on the bullied on his social media accounts. The case is rife in the middle of 2016 by Indonesians. According to Hinduja (2015) the term cyberbullying refers to several requirements. First, technology is the main environment in which actions occur, technology here refers to tools to help communicate with one another and share information such as computers, cellphones, tablets or other electronic devices. Second, the frequency of high action or can be said to be repeated and finally is the involvement that can harm fellow human beings. Cyberbullying involves two groups, the perpetrators and the victims. There are many ways to express these two groups, but researchers choose to use cyberbullies to represent perpetrators and cyber victims to represent victims. Cyberbully is someone who intentionally and repeatedly harms others with technology such as negative comments on social media, spreading hoaxes through computers or mobile phones, while cyber victims are individuals who receive repeated dangerous behaviors while using social media technology. Indonesian parents realize that cyberbullying is an ongoing phenomenon (91%), they feel that special attention is needed from each parent or guardian and school (89%), and they know children in their communities who have experienced cyberbullying (53%). However research does not connect much in Indonesia (Safaria, 2016). Today many consumers are smart yet greedy with electronic media, it is not surprising that some people who want to tempt, harass or bully other people using electronic media they know. Cyberbullying consideration as one of the main focus of this research is important as it affects the psychological well-being of secondary school students for the next level, namely at the university. In connection with the perpetrators of cyberbullying, Safaria (2016)s found that the perpetrators of cyber bullying come from harmonious families. There is little research on cyberbullying in Indonesia published in several journals, and to our knowledge no research has been conducted on online bullying of high school students in West Kalimantan. This study explores the causes of cyberbullying and the psychological effects on students in West Kalimantan. II. METHODS Data for the research are collected through a survey among high school students from the West 17Cyberbullying Phenomenon of High ..... (William Vincent Setiawan, et al.) Kalimantan area. The structure of the questionnaire and questions have been adjusted for middle school students. Participants are not identified to ensure that the response was anonymous. The structure of the questionnaire includes four domains: 1) participant demographic information, 2) witnesses to cyberbullying incidents, 3) cyberbullying experiences and cyber victims from perpetrators and victims, 4) opinions and suggestions regarding cyberbullying. Data on cyberbullying had been being collected during June 2019 from 50 students (25 male and 25 female) in grade 10, 11 and 12. Respondents’ age is between 15 years to 18 years. The relationship between differences in academic achievement and the experience of cyberbullying participants is examined using a one-way ANOVA analysis. The instrument consists of cyberbully and cyber victim. Respondents ought to choose never, once, twice, a lot, every day on each question. The summary scale is used to decide whether the respondent is cyberbully or cyber victim. III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS The results of the questionnaire from secondary school students in West Kalimantan are shown in Table 1 which illustrates the age range and frequency of respondents of middle school students spending time using mobile phones and the internet. 44 out of 50 respondents (85%) indicates that students use the internet more at home, while 6 out of 50 respondents (14%) indicates that they do not use the internet. Students in grade 11 and 12 tend to spend more time browsing the internet than grade 10 students. Their most favorite activities when they have cellphones and internet are to communicate with friends, surf to find new things, play online games, and open social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest. Table 1 Age of Respondent Grades Age Frequency Percentage 10 15-16 6 14,65% 11 16-17 15 27,87% 12 17-18 29 57,48% TOTAL 50 100% The most widely used electronic devices by high school students are cellphones with camera features (59%) and cellphones with internet capabilities (21%). Only a few students use computers with email and browse related school lessons (10,54%), tablet devices with internet capabilities (7%), and digital cameras (3%). Figure 1 illustrates the device mostly used by middle school students. Cyberbullying is invoked by the perpetrators through social media such as news, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. There are photos, images, personal information, and victims’ videos that can be explored by cellphone, and then, posted on the internet. This trend has resulted in a growing number of children who have just turned 16 already owning digital devices. Table 2 Cyberbullying from Three Groups of Academic Achievement Cyberbullying Experience Above Average N = 20 Average N = 20 Below Average N = 10 F Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD Cyberbullies 1,02 0,10 1,08 0,19 1,06 0,15 3,50* Cyber victims 1,10 0,20 1,14 0,32 1,12 0,23 2,78 Note: *p<0,05 Figure 1 Most Used Devices by High School Students in West Kalimantan 18 The Winners, Vol. 21 No. 1 March 2020, 15-20 The relationship between academic achievement and the experience of cyberbullying respondents is examined using a one-way ANOVA analysis. To see the academic records of each respondent, researchers asked respondents to fill in academic achievement data only through the reports provided. Students report their academic achievement on three points scale (1 = “above average”, 2 = “average”, 3 = “below average”). As seen in Table 2, no significant difference is found between the three groups of academic achievement (F = 3,50; p <0,05). The results show that students with lower academic achievement tend to be online perpetrators. Therefore, low academic performance allows potential risk factors to be involved in cyberbullying as a perpetrator. This research investigates the reaction of high school students in dealing with the phenomenon of cyberbullying and found half of school students (58%) feels disappointed and (32%) other respondents consider that either the government or the institution is unable to solve this cyberbullying problem. When asked about this, respondents report that cyberbullying is a serious problem in this millennium era and needs to be stopped. Cyberbullying is considered terrible and ruthless as it makes young people intimidated and unable to do anything. Figure 2 The phenomenon of Cyberbullying Victims inside and outside schools in West Kalimantan Figure 2 shows victims of cyberbullying in school and outside of school respondents grade 10 to 12,66% of respondents report that they have been cyberbullied outside or inside school, another 40% of victims report that they often got cyberbullied, 32% of victims reported that they had been cyberbullied twice outside or inside the school, 35% of respondents claim that they have never been cyberbullied or only once inside or outside school. Respondents are asked about what they did when they got cyberbullied. Most victims said that they tell their friends, their parents, and sign out from all social media to stay away from cyberbullying. Only a small proportion of respondents will notify the teacher or guardian of the school. This proves that school students do not want to share incidents of this kind with any school member, they tend to share cyberbullying incidents with their family and close relatives. 24% of victims has a view that telling a friend of the cyberbully incident may improve the situation, 13% of the victims never tells anyone and there is 8% of victims who make things worse and regret it after telling a friend about the cyberbullying they experience. Figure 3 The Phenomenon of Cyber Perpetration inside and outside schools in West Kalimantan Figure 3 expresses cyberbullying perpetrators that occur inside and outside the school. 66% of respondents state that they have done cyberbullying, 36% of respondents report that they often do cyberbullying to peers in school. When they are asked about the frequency of doing cyberbully, 26% of respondents claim to have done it at least twice a day. The higher the level of cyberbullying can be analyzed that men often become perpetrators in terms of cyberbully with fellow friends at school than female students. School students do it as a pleasure or defense mechanism. Some of them do it as a result of having such hard problems in the family. When doing cyberbullying, these students do not know the consequences. It is possible that their victims will be traumatized. Most cyberbullying perpetrators are only for momentary pleasure. They have no idea that it causes a mental impact on a student, causing them to be apathetic going to school, as well as afraid to use the internet. The physical condition of students can also be disrupted, making them reluctant to make friends with others. School students in grade 10, 11 and 12 are not aware of the danger and the presence of cybersecurity. It is seen from a survey that most students are bullied by either classmates or negative comments on the internet. This raises enormous urgency so that every student is aware of cyber safety among online users. There are some students who learn about cybersecurity from their friends, siblings, teachers or guardians at school. Surveys prove that the school curriculum allows students learn about cyberbullying. Schools and parents have important roles in educating their children to cybersecurity by developing their own internal control technology policies. For instance, 19Cyberbullying Phenomenon of High ..... (William Vincent Setiawan, et al.) schools may add topics regarding cyberbullying to the curriculum, have regular discussions on certain days and share experiences with each student. Posters, pamphlets can be distributed or posted around the school or home. These programs must all be assisted by parents to gain children’s awareness about responding to cyber harassment. National cybersecurity awareness initiatives can be taken to increase and monitor the awareness of every secondary school student. Some other researchers point out that the difference in the definition of cyberbullying is used due to several instruments such as assessment, age range of participants and the response time of participants (Kowalski, Limber & Agatston, 2012). von Marees and Petermann (2012) argues that involvement in cyberbullying itself are the perpetrators or victims with the age range from 10 to 16 years. More than half (54%) of students report that the perpetrators of cyberbullying are their classmates. These findings provide support for existing studies related to cyberbullying in the current millennium era. The proportion of classmates who act as actors becomes interesting and gets special attention from each institution and parents in the prevention and intervention of their children. The frequency of students accessing the internet can be considered the main factor in cyberbullying. Students who access the internet more often will see positive and negative comments generated. The perpetrators of cyberbullying are those who give quite a lot of negative comments in their friends’ posts causing the victims intimidated and stressed. Middle school students may be adults, but their nature is not necessarily mature and wise in making decisions. Hence they still requires supervision from parents in using the internet. Results from previous studies say that teenagers who spend more time in a day with cellphones and access the internet may be involved in cyberbullying as perpetrators or victims (Mishna et al., 2012; Navarro et al., 2013; Wolak, Mitchell & Finkelhor, 2007). Researcher analyze that internet access via cellphone or a computer is considered to increase the risk of middle school students being involved in cyberbullying. Young people are more likely to be involved in cyberbullying in a space that is not supervised by teachers and parents. In addition, when students often involve themselves in messaging such as Whatsapp, LINE, Instagram, it is more likely that they are involved in cyberbullying. In the United States, social networking sites and chat rooms have functioned as fertile ground for cyber oppression (Mesch, 2009). This number will continue to increase since new technologies keep emerging every year. IV. CONCLUSIONS Teenagers are participants who are directly involved in cyberbullying. For instance, a 15-year- old student can be bullied by his friend. Prevention and intervention efforts must be in place to help them understand cyberbullying. The main motive of cyberbullying is to have fun as perpetrators may get bored with the current situation. Researchers view that high school students have little awareness about the prevalence of their crime. Otherwise they will surely know the negative effect of their behavior. Some of middle school students in West Kalimantan are unaware of cyberbullying, due to lack of resources, publications or the government’s influence about overcoming cyberbullying in the perspective of West Kalimantan. Parents ought to start figuring out the way to educate their children about the negative consequences of their online activities. Parental support is essential in terms of cyber victimization. They must be able to recognize the signs of cyberbullying and what must be done, suspected and monitored when they start to indicate the signs of cyberbullying. The research has several limitations as well. First, sample selection may be too narrow for only 12th grade students, and data collection areas are also limited. Second, the research only focuses on the perpetrators and victims of cyberbullying. In the future, the findings of this study can hopefully help the West Kalimantan government or organization be able to construct policies in overcoming cyberbullying. The research investigates the relationship between the behavior of perpetrators and victims of cyberbullying that occurs in middle high school students in West Kalimantan. The results show that cyberbullying behavior has a psychologically significant effects to the victims’ behavior. Social support from family friends and the use of the internet are decisive in cyberbullying behavior. The influence of school friends is the strongest determinant associated with cyberbullying. Teenagers having such minimum social support from school friends are more vulnerable to be easily affected by cyberbullying than those who have abundant social support. In terms of culture, there are no significant differences discussed in this research. Most of the cyberbullying occurs among classmates, where the victims explain how to find out the perpetrators who tortured them. Bullying is closely related to school students, so prevention programs must cover both offline and online dimensions. Parents, teachers and community protection agencies should be encouraged to discuss both advantage and disadvantage of the internet in order to build trust in risky online behavior and the consequences of cyberbullying. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The researcher would like to thank 50 high school students in Santu Petrus Pontianak and the West Kalimantan education center for providing a good opportunity to be surveyed, as well as the time provided to researchers. 20 The Winners, Vol. 21 No. 1 March 2020, 15-20 REFERENCES Fanti, K. A., Demetriou, A. G. and Hawa, V. V (2012) A longitudinal study of cyberbullying: Examining riskand protective factors. 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