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Cyberbullying Across the Globe pp 99–114Cite as

Family Relationships and Cyberbullying

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Abstract

This chapter analyzes the relationship between family and cyberbullying, a type of technological harassment among peers which is of growing concern in the scientific community and in today’s society. First, this chapter discusses factors associated with family functioning that may predict cyberbullying, particularly the family climate (cohesion, expressivity, and conflict) and parent–children communication. It also examines the role of parental socialization styles and their continuity with parental styles on the Internet: authoritarian style, laissez-faire, permissive and authoritative. In relation to parental styles, one section in this chapter describes the parental monitoring of Internet use and the various types of parental mediation strategies used by parents to control their children’s online behavior. The chapter ends with a section on preventing cyberbullying in the family itself. It concludes that parent–children communication helps create a positive family climate to implement emotionally suitable socialization styles and, in short, to prevent risky behaviors in children.

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Acknowledgments

This study forms part of Research Project PSI2012-33464 “school violence, dating violence, and parent–children violence in adolescence from the ecological perspective,” subsidized by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and Project SM-I-16/2014 “Preventing suicide and depression in adolescent victims of CB in the Valencian Community,” subsidized by the Regional Valencian Ministry of Health (Spain).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social Psychology, University of Valencia, 46010, Valencia, Spain

    Sofía Buelga

  2. Department of Education and Social Psychology, Pablo de Olavide University, Seville, Spain

    Belén Martínez-Ferrer

  3. Department of Psychology, Pablo de Olavide University, Seville, Spain

    Gonzalo Musitu

Authors
  1. Sofía Buelga
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  2. Belén Martínez-Ferrer
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  3. Gonzalo Musitu
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Correspondence to Sofía Buelga .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Castilla-La Mancha, Cuenca, Spain

    Raúl Navarro

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Castilla-La Mancha, Cuenca, Spain

    Santiago Yubero

  3. Department of Psychology, University of Castilla-La Mancha, Cuenca, Spain

    Elisa Larrañaga

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Buelga, S., Martínez-Ferrer, B., Musitu, G. (2016). Family Relationships and Cyberbullying. In: Navarro, R., Yubero, S., Larrañaga, E. (eds) Cyberbullying Across the Globe. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25552-1_5

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