Abstract:

Introduction:
The rise of digital devices and their use among adolescents has lead to an increase of cyberbullying episodes. After a crime, as cyberbullying is, justice immediately activates to identify the author of the episode and to give the corresponding sentence. However, much less attention is given to sufferings caused by the crime and the needs that have arisen. Restorative justice has the aim to bridge this gap, by focusing on person victim’ needs as well as on person author and community ones (see Balanced Restorative Justice Model: Chapman, 2012). Restorative justice represents a useful approach to intervene after a bullying or cyberbullying episode as well as to prevent these phenomena in scholastic contexts. Based on the importance to develop this approach among adolescents and schools, the present study aimed to involve adolescents in middle and high school and to investigate the presence of a restorative approach in their formulation of solutions to episodes of cyberbullying.

Method:
The research team presented three episodes of cyberbullying to a sample of 575 adolescents (F= 48.2%; Mage= 15.96, SD= 1.46): the first episode was about sexting; the second focused on weight stigma; the third concerned outing. After reading each episode, adolescents answered to an open question regarding possible solutions to the problem. Their answers were categorized by considering the involvement of author person, victim person or community in the resolution process. For each category was computed the frequency and performed the chi-square analysis to know gender (boys vs. girls) and age (middle vs. high school) differences.

Results:
In all the tree episodes, students recognized victim person's needs and proposed solutions (sexting: 69.4%; weight stigma: 66.8%; outing: 56%) rather than avoidance strategies (sexting: 19.8%; weight stigma: 22.8%; outing: 34.1%), despite 5.2%, 5.4% and 3% blamed the victim person for being involved in the first, second or third episode, respectively. In most cases, no action was planned against authors of cyberbullying episodes (sexting: 57.9%; weight stigma: 63.5%; outing: 72%), but when they were mentioned, actions were punitive in 36.2% (sexting), 27.5% (weight stigma) or 17.7% (outing) of cases and restorative in 0.3% (sexting), 4% (weight stigma) or 3% (outing) of cases. Little community involvement characterized all the episodes (sexting: 8.9%; weight stigma: 5.7%; outing: 5.9%). Gender difference concerned victims’ actions in the sexting, χ2(2) = 7.065, p = .029, and outing episode, χ2(2) = 8.830, p = .012: boys avoided the problem while girls were oriented to solve them. Difference related to students’ age emerged for the community involvement (sexting: χ2(2) = 19.490, p = .000; weight stigma: χ2(2) = 8.140, p = .004; outing: χ2(2) = 8.820, p = .012): middle school adolescents involved the community more than high school adolescents.

Conclusions:
Adolescents tended to focus on victim people or authors of cyberbullying episodes. Specifically, actions to answer to victim people’s needs are widely proposed (especially by girls), whereas actions toward author people are absent or mainly punitive. The community is rarely taken in consideration, especially among older adolescents, and this seems to show the lack of a systemic and complex vision of the phenomenon. Educational interventions and possible future studies about restorative justice are discussed.

Keywords:

Adolescence, cyberbullying, restorative justice, education, community.