In Morocco, information and communication technologies are increasingly used in social life. Morocco has 23.7 million Internet users (according to December 2019) [13]. However, there is a lack of data about cyberbullying in middle school in our country. To our knowledge, this is the first large study about cyberbullying among middle-school students in Morocco. This study showed that the prevalence of cyberbullying was considerably important; more than half of the participants were involved in cyberbullying. All over the world, adolescents are the most involved in this phenomenon. Worldwide, prevalence of cyberbullying among adolescents ranges from 2.3–72%, with an average of 21% of victims at some point in their lives [9]. Prevalence of Cyberbullying varies from one country to another, and differences could be substantial [14]. Indeed Kowalski and Limber, in a 2007 study on 3,700 middle-school students in the United States found out, during a period of two months, a prevalence of 11% of victims, 4% of perpetrators and 7% of perpetrators-victims [15].
Mishna, in a 2012 study conducted on a sample of 2186 middle-school students in Canada, showed that more than 50% of students were involved in Cyberbullying during the last three months, 23.8% of them were victims, 8% perpetrators and 25.7% perpetrators-victims [16].
Smith and Mahdavi, in a 2008 study conducted in England on students aged 11–16 years, found out a 6,6% cyberbullying prevalence during the last couple of months [10].
A study performed in Germany in 2018 conducted on a sample of 9512 students with an average age of 14.9 years found out a prevalence of 26,7% of students involved in at least one act of online psychological aggression during the last six months [17].
In Turkey in 2008, a study on a sample of 269 secondary school students found out a prevalence of 35.7% of students who were perpetrators, 23.8% of perpetrator-victims and 5.9% of victims [18].
In Korea in 2014 on a sample of 2000 middle-school students, the prevalence of Cyberbullying during the last six months was 34.5%, of which 18.5% were perpetrators, 36.2% were victims and 41.6% were perpetrator-victim [19].
A study performed in Greece in 2013 conducted on a sample of 666 students with an average age of 14.2 years found that 62.2% of the participants had an experience of at least one event of cyberbullying by any electronic means [20].
This prevalence variability may be influenced by the difference in measurement tools, definitions used, the duration of the study, age, cultural context or internet access in each country [21, 22].
Our results indicated also that gender was not significantly associated with different profiles of cyberbullying. These data were in line with the previous studies. For some studies there were no gender differences [23]. For others, cyberbullying has a gender and profile dimension. Some authors suggested that girls were more often victims [15], while others suggested they were more often perpetrator/victims [24]. Furthermore Boys were more likely than girls to be perpetrators [18, 25]. By sharp contrast, this survey documented that the predominant cyber perpetration behavior experienced by boys was sending unpleasant text messages and excluding the other from the group online. The most frequent act of cyber victimization received by both boys and girls was receiving unpleasant text messages online. These results were consistent with the previous studies [26].These text messages that are privileged by the adolescents could be seen as a means of liberation allowing them to let out their aggressive behavior.
Contrary to what has been shown by some studies that girls were more victimized while boys were more perpetrators in both traditional bullying and cyberbullying [27], our study showed that there is no gender difference in cyberbullying since girls were more likely to be victims and boys were more likely to be perpetrators in traditional bullying. This result agrees with the previous studies, some of whom postulate that girls are more interested in social networking through which cyberbullying is more common [28]. This finding can be probably explained by the fact that the girls who cannot be melted face to face fall to do it behind the screen and usually anonymously or with a pseudo name.
Our results showed that prevalence of cyberbullying was higher than traditional bullying. This finding was different from that of the previous studies [29]. This conflicting result should take into account the Moroccan context. Perhaps in our country adolescents hidden behind the screen prefer to use cyberbullying more than the traditional bullying so as to take revenge.
Considering risk factors of cyberbullying, this study showed that the main one was being involved in traditional bullying as bully/victim. This finding mirrors the results of previous studies [26, 16].The perpetration of aggressive acting online seems to be a more acquired behavior. In fact, it may be an extension of traditional school bullying.
Our results revealed that spending more time online and talking frequently about cyberbullying increase the odds of being perpetrators/victims. This finding was in line with previous researches’ [26, 16, 17]. This result also showed that the adolescents must have knowledge of the risk of using ICTs. High internet use increases probability of becoming involved in cyberbullying. Moreover, the more talking about it the more usual it becomes. Perhaps those involved in cyberbullying are encouraged by wrong crowd. Consequently, adolescents should be sensitized of the risks of using ICTs.
In addition, parents’ conflict was associated with the risk of cyberbullying. This is consistent with previous studies. The family conflict has a major impact on adolescents’ behavior. Indeed, in Morocco, Boughima et al in 2017 showed that 74.8% of women experienced violence at home. Adolescents who happened to witness violence on their mothers in 93% of the cases and were beaten with their mothers in 66.5% of the cases [30]. Such violence may be transmitted to youths and expressed through cyberbullying. The adolescents prioritize parental tyranny and become tyrant themselves. That’s why parents should care more about the stability of the couple and its consequences on the future behavior of their children
[29, 31].
Although the sample was large enough, this study has a limitation: The prevalence was limited only to the region of Rabat. Therefore, we cannot generalize the results to all Moroccans. More extensive researches across the country are needed to access other risk factors and to identify students at risk early and determine the impact of Cyberbullying