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The findings of this study suggest that cyberbullying exerts a greater emotional impact on female adolescents due to their increased need for social cohesion and resulting fear of social ostracization. In the main, female adolescents exhibited a greater need to fit in with their peers and be socially accepted, and consequently threats to their social cohesion are perceived as more significant. As a result, they tend to internalise the cyberbullying experience to a greater degree than would be the case for males. A key implication of this finding is that for any attempt to successfully address the impact of cyberbullying on females, it must be sensitive to the social context within which the student exists and not seek to weaken membership of their social grouping. It points to the need for the reportee, whether principals, teachers or parents, to recognise the importance of such social dynamics for females when seeking to resolve cyberbullying incidents.

The fact that females are more strongly impacted also relates to the differing nature of the cyberbullying experience for girls. For example, female students in this study reported being the subject of relationship gossip and negative comments regarding their personal appearance, far more frequently than was the case for male students. Their cyberbullying experiences were predominantly relationally focused with the express intention of ensuring humiliation and social exclusion of the individual, maximizing the scope of their public humiliation and their sense of ostracization. Although not exclusively the case, the majority of females in this study reported that the cyberbullying had been effected by female peers who made comments via technology platforms, disseminating them widely and repeatedly, whilst in some cases, groups of girls cyberbullied a common target on an on-going basis. The tendency of females to focus on the appearance of other females may be explained in part by the Two-Culture theory, which proposes that the distinctive play styles of the two sexes manifest themselves in distinctive cultures that develop within boys and girls groups as children grow older (Maccoby, 1998; Crombie & Desjardins, 1993). Girls do tend to rely on more indirect forms of aggression than is the case for boys, and therefore these findings are in line with previous work (Kowalski and Limber, 2007) in other countries, which found that girls engaging in cyberbullying behaviour outnumber boys. Whilst the results of this study confirm that finding and suggest that girls tend to rely on more indirect forms of aggression as typified in cyberbullying, it is worth noting other factors (such as context) which may provide further explanatory details behind female-female cyberbullying. For example, many of the students reported that they knew of peers who engaged in cyberbullying, but would never behave that way in public, which raises the issue as to why they would do so in an a technology-mediated context. This may be partly explained by digital or online identity, which is the psychological identity of the individual in the cyberspace environment. It facilitates the opportunity for individuals to create a persona and to enact a behaviour that is different to their usual perceived personality and behaviour in the physical world. Other variables influence this difference in persona and behaviour, particularly the opportunity to remain anonymous and unidentified. Students reported that when cyberbullying perpetrators were challenged, such students tended to “water down” their virtual or online behaviour, attempting to excuse it. The perceived social unacceptability of female aggression and the benefits

of digital anonymity may therefore encourage the increased adoption of female- female cyberbullying.

Male adolescents also differed from females in terms of how they dealt with cyberbullying through one-to-one confrontation, thereby lessening its impact. However, direct confrontation infers that the perpetrator can be identified, which is not always the case, particularly for female-female cyberbullying. In many cases, female adolescents reported removing themselves from particular social groups online, an outcome that confirms the findings of Nansel, et al. (2001) who found that non-reporting behaviour can result in the adolescent choosing to self-ostracize from previous social groups in order to control social interaction problems. Awareness of the implications of such actions provides valuable indicators for the adolescent’s parents and those concerned with their emotional and social well-being. The intensity and duration of adolescent females’ experiences of cyberbullying also differed from that of male informants, with a number of female students describing experiences that had persisted unremittingly over a period of years. Such findings regarding a greater number of female adolescents experiencing cyberbullying is paralleled by a number of studies in other countries, including that of Holfeld and Grabe (2012) in the US. The intensity, duration and personal nature of this cyberbullying behaviour increased the impact on the victim. This is unsurprising as psychological research shows that acceptance and belonging amongst children with peers and family is critical to their healthy psychological development (e.g. Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Crick & Zahn- Waxler, 2003). This study therefore confirms those findings and extends our insight by providing a level of detail regarding the experiences that was previously unavailable.

Whilst being the target of social aggression can be a devastatingly hurtful experience for both genders (Sharp, 1995), the female participants in these focus groups reported a more pronounced distress. This finding is consistent with research by Bauman and Newman (2012), which found that perceived levels of distress associated with cyberbullying were significantly higher among adolescent females than their male counterparts. The fact that some of these female informants were still distressed by experiences, which in some cases had taken place 2 years previously, confirms not only the psycho-social effects resulting from cyberbullying, but also that indirect

bullying is more harmful than its direct form (Bauman, 2010; Bauman and Summers, 2009; Baldry, 2004; Hawker and Boulton, 2000; Sharp, 1995) for Irish adolescents. For example, the serious psychosocial effects of cyberbullying experiences reported by the female adolescents in this study, such as a desire to avoid school, confirms the negative effects of cyberbullying on educational outcomes. Therefore, repeated school absences may provide an indicator or warning signal to a parent or teacher that all is not right in the adolescent’s world and indicate the need for vigilance to identify if cyberbullying is causing these outcomes.

The reasons why the female adolescents in this study reported greater distress as a result of cyberbullying experiences relate to the fact that they feared social humiliation amongst their peers to a greater degree than was the case for males. As the desire for emotional and social attachment is stronger amongst females than males (Crick and Zahn-Waxler, 2003), adolescent girls’ friendships tend to be more exclusive than those of boys (Hallinan 1980), and they are particularly sensitive to the importance of protecting social relationships (Collins & Laursen, 1992). Adolescent girls’ friendships also tend to be more exclusive than those of boys (Hallinan 1980). As a result, the psychological distress reported by adolescent girls who have been the target of social aggression is likely to relate to their sensitivity to the importance of protecting social relationships, a sensitivity that is paramount for them during this developmental period (Collins & Laursen, 1992). It is therefore unsurprising that this group of female informants reported such distress. Reference was made to suicidal thoughts, either in relation to themselves, or as related to them by their friends who had experienced cyberbullying. Again, such references are consistent with findings obtained in other countries including that of Schenk (2011). The findings of these focus group interviews should not be interpreted to indicate that male adolescents are less distressed by their experiences of cyberbullying, but simply that the female members of this group of informants reported greater distress outcomes.

It is worth noting that the informants in this study did not lay emphasis on the technology platform that was used. For both genders, it was the context and nature of the incident that distressed them more than the method of how it was enacted (i.e. the technology platform). It would appear, therefore, that form is not the distinguishing feature associated with level of distress, a finding that confirms research conducted in

other countries (e.g. Bauman and Newman, 2012). The devastating impact of these experiences on the individual can be understood through the lens of social impact theory (Latane 1981) which contends that extent of impact is the result of social forces including the strength of the source of impact, the immediacy of the event, and the number of sources exerting the impact. The differing nature of the cyberbullying experience for this sample of Irish female adolescents is consistent with that obtained from the international literature (Kowalski and Limber, 2007; Maccoby, 1998; Crombie and Desjardins, 1993; Paquette & Underwood, 1999; Underwood, 2003; Sharp, 1995; Collins and Laursen, 1992). However, the results of this study extend existing work in this area in two key ways; Firstly, as the first study of its kind in an Irish context, it confirms that cyberbullying experience exerts a greater impact on Irish female adolescents, thereby providing considerable support for the body of researchers who contend that gender-based impact outcomes may be culture independent. Secondly, the majority of international studies on cyberbullying have measured and captured impact in a broad-based way, but did not provide granular self-reported descriptions of the actual nature of the impact. On the other hand, this study provides powerful narratives, which were self-reported and based on the experience of a large sample of female adolescents. These have implications for those involved in provision of adolescent female education, as well as for parents. For example, the unique insights that they contain have potential to generate greater awareness of and sensitivity to the extent of cyberbullying impact on female adolescents for teachers and policy makers, as well as parents. They also provide an urgent impetus for the reformulation of school policies to specifically address female- female cyberbullying – in terms of prevention, addressing existing complaints, and post-experience support provision.

As previously stated, for both genders, the most common choice of reportee was their peers or older siblings. However, female informants were more likely to confide in peers than was the case for males. Reasons for this included the bonding and support that takes place amongst females when discussing troubles, the empathy of the peer and their ability to relate to the situation and understand its impact on the adolescent. In addition to peers, the effectiveness of the support that the adolescents in this study received from their older siblings was particularly evident. There are several reasons that peers and siblings were considered the most trusted and also the most competent