Has the COVID-19 pandemic affected the susceptibility to cyberbullying in India?

Owing to the COVID-19 induced lockdown in India, most people’s internet activity surged, leading to an expected increase in the rate of cybercrimes. This research focuses on analyzing whether the factors significant in cyberbullying susceptibility changed with the lockdown. The study was conducted by surveying 256 students before the pandemic, in October 2019, and 118 students during the lockdown, in June 2020. This included questions about the respondents’ demographics, online presence, experience with offline bullying, perception of other’s opinions, and the instances of cyberbullying that apply to them. The results showed factors important in both timespans, namely (i) experience with offline bullying; (ii) individuals’ perceptiveness to others’ opinions; (iii) frequency of social media posts. Additionally, in the period before lockdown, factors namely (i) tendency to interact with strangers online; (ii) whether they’ve started a relationship online (iii) hours spent on social media; were found significant. Conversely, during the lockdown, additional distinct factors namely (i) being opinionated on public platforms; (ii) preference of Instagram; (iii) preferred gaming platform; (iv) number of games played; (v) sexual orientation; (vi) age were significant. With the change in variables in the two timespans, we can conclude that the pandemic has affected our susceptibility to cyberbullying.