THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF TEENAGERS PARTICIPATING IN BULLYING AND CYBERBULLYING

Abstract

The article provides a solution to the current scientific problem of interpretation and identification of similar and different signs of bullying and its modern derivative form – cyberbullying, and also notes the complexity of the consequences in the case of their symbiosis in relation to the same person. Оutlines the most pressing issue that led to the choice of the topic of the article – the threat to the physical, mental health or life of children and adolescents that accompanies these phenomena. The key features of traditional bullying and its types are identified, due to which it is determined that cyberbullying is one of the forms of bullying that spreads and functions in the virtual plane (Internet). It was noted that one of the sources of the emergence and development of the phenomenon of cyber-violence is the media space, including mass media, films, cartoons, series, which in recent years actively reflect situations of aggressive behavior aimed at humiliating another person, bullying and dominating him. In a similar way, the information saturation of the virtual and media space negatively affects the personality of a teenager, whose age-specific physical, psychological and social development is quite specific and vulnerable-unstable to social negative influence. On the basis of scientific analysis and personal observations, the author identified similarities in the causes of bullying and cyberbullying, the components of these processes (i.e. participants: victim, aggressor, observers, defenders), in some personal characterological and behavioral features of adolescent participants of these types of violence in real life and virtual the world In parallel, the main differences between bullying and cyberbullying as phenomena are analyzed and explained: by the fame-unknownness of the aggressor; by spatial and physical implementation; by the time and duration of implementation and existence; by the scale and speed of spread; by the breadth of the circle of observers; by the possibility of repeated viewing; by gender. A parallel is drawn between the psychological characteristics of the victim and the aggressor, their behavior in the case of bullying and cyberbullying.