Published Paper Details:

The present study was conducted to examine the effect of cyberbullying on psychological abnormality among school students. In the digital age, school students are increasingly exposed to online communication through smartphones, social media, messaging applications, online games and digital learning platforms. Cyberbullying in the form of abusive messages, threatening comments, fake accounts, online exclusion, trolling, spreading rumours, body shaming and digital humiliation has emerged as a serious psychological and educational problem. The study was based on descriptive survey research design and included a sample of 600 secondary and senior secondary school students from Dehradun district. Cyberbullying was taken as the independent variable, while psychological abnormality was taken as the dependent variable. Gender, locality and school type were considered as demographic variables. Data were collected with the help of the Cyberbullying Scale, Psychological Abnormality Scale and Personal Information Schedule developed for the study. The data were analysed through percentage, mean, standard deviation, t-test, Pearson product moment correlation and regression analysis. The findings revealed that the majority of school students were found at the moderate level of cyberbullying and psychological abnormality. Boys showed significantly higher cyberbullying than girls, whereas girls showed significantly higher psychological abnormality than boys. Urban students and private school students showed higher cyberbullying and psychological abnormality than rural and government school students. A significant positive relationship was found between cyberbullying and psychological abnormality, with a correlation value of 0.68. Regression analysis further showed that cyberbullying explained 46.2% variance in psychological abnormality, indicating that cyberbullying is an important predictor of psychological abnormality among school students. The study concludes that cyberbullying is a serious risk factor for anxiety, depression, stress, aggression, withdrawal, low self-esteem and poor adjustment among students. Therefore, cyber-safety education, digital citizenship, parental monitoring, teacher awareness, school counselling and strong anti-cyberbullying policies are urgently required to protect the psychological health of school students.