LEARNING OUTCOME 11.4 Discuss the importance of peer groups to adolescents, and how adverse and
positive peer group experiences affect adolescent development.
Parents and peers offer different kinds of social experiences which complement each other. Sometimes,
a quiet evening at home watching TV with Mum and Dad will seem preferable to the cut and thrust
of a peer outing, which can be stressful for teenagers, as well as fun. For example, a school dance
brings with it the dreaded possibility of being a ‘wallflower’ — or having one’s advances towards the
opposite sex rejected in public. At other times, adolescents seek out the much needed companionship of
their age-mates and, as children enter adolescence, peer relationships become increasingly prominent in
their lives.
Studies have shown that as adolescence progresses, teenagers spend increasing proportions of their time
outside the family circle. Much of this time is spent with peers. Reviewing more than 40 international
studies, Larson (2001) found that teenagers enjoyed unrestricted (free) time of between four and eight
hours per day and that this time included increased opportunities for adolescents to interact with peers.
In earlier investigations of US adolescents, Larson and his colleagues (Larson, 1997; Larson, Richards,
Moneta, Holmbeck, & Duckett, 1996) studied Years 5–12 students from Caucasian, working- and middleclass
backgrounds who carried electronic beepers and provided reports on their activities and companions
when contacted at random times over the course of a week. Figure 11.2 shows the amount of time adolescents
spent with family decreased from 35 per cent of waking hours in Year 5 to just 14 per cent in
Year 12. The increasing family disengagement was unrelated to levels of family conflict, but instead to
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attractions from outside the family, including peer activities (Smetana, 2011). In early adolescence, time
spent alone at home replaced time with family, whereas for older adolescents, access to friends, having
a car, and having a job all displaced family time.
FIGURE 11.2 Age differences in time spent by adolescents with family members
Between Year 5 and Year 12, the amount of time spent with various family members decreases.
The greatest decrease is in time spent with the whole family group.
20
15
10
5
0
5 6 7 8
Year in school
Waking hours (per cent)
9 10 11 12
Combination of parents or
parent(s) and sibling(s)
Father only
Mother only
Siblings only
Extended family
Peers are developmentally important during adolescence, since they provide a vital bridge between the
social roles experienced in the family and the social roles of the wider adult world. During adolescence,
the peer group becomes a vital influence in teenagers becoming emotionally independent from parents.
Increasingly, adolescents identify with their peer group, rather than with their family group, which is a
normal part of the process of becoming autonomous. The intense emotional and psychological bonds
to parents that are typical of childhood are broken and are refocused on peers. This constitutes a way
station on the road to mature adult relationships. Thus, peers provide opportunities for adolescents’ selfexploration
and their deeper understanding of other people, which are essential precursors to the intimate
relationships that characterise adulthood.
Adolescent peer groups
A groundbreaking participant–observer study of Sydney teenagers during the 1960s identified two basic
types of adolescent group. Dunphy (1963) found that most adolescents belonged to a small, closely knit
group of three to nine members, which he called a clique. At the same time, adolescents were also part of
a wider organisation, which he labelled a crowd. The crowds identified by Dunphy were generally a loose
amalgamation of two or more cliques, averaging a membership of 20 individuals. To become a member
of a crowd, adolescents had to first belong to a clique. The adolescent peer group structures that Dunphy
identified over 40 years ago have been confirmed in different countries and over successive generations
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of teenagers, and have become the basis for understanding the development of peer groups and peer
relation transitions during adolescence and early adulthood (Brown, 2004; Smetana, Campione-Barr, &
Metzger, 2006).
The boundaries of cliques are quite rigid, and adolescents wishing to join have to conform to group
values and activities, such as substance use or non-use, or academic effort/non-effort. Thus, the clique
reflects similarity of background, interests and attitudes, and teenagers within a clique develop in-group
identity, distinguishing themselves from other cliques or out-groups. Cliques are also characterised by
close relationships, with friendships being the basis of some cliques. Alternatively, friendships grow out
of cliques that are initially founded on other grouping characteristics; for example, the shared activities
of a sport (Brown, 1989). The major activity within a clique is talking and generally ‘hanging out’, with
cliques meeting during the school week as well as at weekends.
The advantages of clique membership include the provision of security, a feeling of importance, and
acquisition of socially acceptable behaviours, such as academic, social or athletic competence, which
may be part of conforming to the clique’s norms. However, conformity can also suppress individuality
and may promote negative values and behaviours, such as in-group snobbishness and intolerance of other
groups and individuals. Involvement with a clique of antisocial peers is associated with various adolescent
adjustment problems, including substance abuse, school dropout, antisocial behaviour and gang membership.
Whether the clique is the cause of such behaviour is debatable, as the clique may have formed
around a focus of antisocial behaviour. Kiesner, Dishion, and Poulin (2001) maintain that during childhood,
aggressive and antisocial boys who are rejected by prosocial peers tend to gravitate towards each
other in school and other social settings.Within these groupings, antisocial behaviour tends to be mutually
reinforced. These groupings form a developmental pathway to gang membership in late adolescence.
Crowds are larger, more impersonal groupings than cliques and, unlike cliques, are not necessarily
involved in shared activities. Thus, some crowds are simply reputational in nature and provide a group
identity for teenagers. An exhaustive review by Sussman, Pokhriel, Ashmore, and Brown (2007) of existing
studies on adolescent identification worldwide has isolated five basic types of reputational crowds:
elites, athletes, academics, deviants and others. These basic types of peer grouping often have different
names according to diverse cultures; for example, ‘the nerds’, ‘the cool group’ and ‘the stoners’, representing
various sets of behavioural norms with which individual adolescents might identify (Brown,
2004). Nonetheless, Sussman et al.’s (2007) research suggests that in affluent Western countries such
groupings have a similar function and are predictive of certain behaviours. For example, identification
with the deviant group is predictive of greater participation in drug-taking than is identification with
either the athletic or academic group.
Teenagers might not necessarily identify with a specific crowd, but their burgeoning cognitive abilities
allow them to readily discriminate crowds according to their characteristics in more sophisticated ways
than younger children do. Instead of differentiating school-based groups on the basis of shared activities,
such as ‘the footballers’ or ‘the kids who play chess’, adolescents typically distinguish high school
crowds by their common values or philosophies of life; for example, ‘goths’ who are arty types valuing
individualistic expression, and ‘nerds’ who are married to their computers and who place little emphasis
on social relationships (Sussman et al., 2007).
The interactive crowds that Dunphy (1963) first identified usually gather on weekends at parties or
at the local shopping centre. Crowds often adopt a uniform appearance that identifies them as a specific
group, often involving markers such as similar footwear, clothing, tattoos and body piercings. Markers
provide an obvious indication of like-minded individuals, assisting adolescents in negotiating socially
within large secondary schools. Some adolescents even try out various identities in different groups
(Cotterell, 1996). Thus, crowd membership provides opportunities to interact with individuals from a
broad range of backgrounds and experiences, but it can also promote exclusiveness and may pose real or
imagined threats to parental and teacher authority.
The advent of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter have extended the concept of
cliques and crowds to virtual groupings that exist in cyberspace. Interestingly, social networking groups
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reflect the same kind of similarity that is found in the tangible cliques and crowds that Dunphy (1963)
originally described. Facebook and Twitter users tend to interact with people who have similar interests
to themselves, forming online groupings of virtual strangers that some users identify as their ‘tribe’.
Moreover, there seems to be a two-way traffic between real-world friendship groups and those that are
forged online. For example, many Facebook users interact with real-world friends online; and they often
arrange to meet ‘in the flesh’ friends who they have initially contacted online. Thus, the effect of the
internet has been to increase the size and accessibility of social networks beyond anything that young
people have experienced in previous generations (Subrahmanyam & Smahel, 2011; Sydell, 2011). Access
to digital media is changing how and who we interact with at an incredible pace, and it will be interesting
to see what develops in this space in the future.
The structure of the peer group changes dramatically once puberty has occurred. As discussed in the
chapter on psychosocial development in middle childhood, childhood peer groups are exclusively samesex,
exhibiting strong gender segregation. At puberty, hormonal changes and societal pressures lead to
opposite-sex interest and the weakening of gender segregation. Adolescents begin to view each other as
possible romantic partners for the first time. In line with this breakdown of gender segregation, Dunphy
(1963) found systematic developmental changes in the structure of cliques and crowds, which have been
confirmed in later research (e.g. Smetana et al., 2006). At the earliest stage of clique and crowd development,
around age 11 to 13, cliques are mostly unisex and isolated, with little or no coordination of cliques
into a larger crowd. Clique members are only vaguely aware of opposite-sex cliques and generally express
distaste for contact with them. At the second stage, boy and girl cliques become aware of each other and
begin to socialise, but in fairly superficial ways. For example, at formal mixed-sex events, such as school
dances and parties, young adolescents mainly socialise within their same-sex groups, making occasional
contact with the opposite sex. By the third stage, high-status boys and girls, the leaders of same-sex
cliques, band together to form a mixed-sex clique. In the fourth stage, the remaining members distribute
themselves into various mixed-sex cliques that are loosely linked as a mixed-sex crowd. During the fifth
and final stage in late adolescence, cliques and crowds disintegrate, as couples form and go their separate
ways. At around 17 to 18 years, the couple replaces the group as the major focus for male–female
interactions. Thus Brown and Klute (2003) found that the importance of belonging to a clique or crowd
declined with age over the period of adolescence.
Gender segregation and its breakdown in peer groups has been investigated in several countries, but
self-segregation on the basis of race or ethnicity in adolescent peer groups has been largely investigated
in US high schools. This is despite these countries having a similar history to the United States in terms
of education systems that were officially segregated on racial grounds for over 100 years. For example,
the dual system of education in New Zealand with separate M¯aori schools was disbanded as recently
as 1968, echoing the desegregation of schools in the United States following the1954 landmark case of
Brown vs Board of Education (Stephenson, 2006).
Most US research into racial segregation in adolescence concerns relationships between the largest
racial minority, African-American youth, and mainstream Anglo-American adolescents (and, to a lesser
extent, Hispanic students). In the desegregated US schools, there is a reasonable amount of interracial
contact and interaction during the elementary school years, but research has shown that by middle adolescence,
racial segregation is striking. Adolescents of different racial groups rarely mix outside of formal
school activities (DuBois & Hirsch, 1990). The Brown vs Board of Education case sought to increase the
racial heterogeneity of US schools, but increases in heterogeneity have not automatically resulted in racial
desegregation at a social level in many American high schools over the past 50 years.
The reasons for the strengthening of racial segregation during adolescence are complex, and exist at a
number of different levels. At an individual level theorists have argued that reasons for racial segregation
may lie in the need to establish identity. Associating with one’s own ethnic or racial group reinforces
adolescents’ ethnic identity. As well, associating with peers who are perceived as similar to oneself may
increase the individual’s feelings of acceptance within a group, as well as increased peer understanding.
So, racial self-segregation might not be a deliberate, conscious, racially based decision, but merely
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a tendency to gravitate towards individuals or groups who offer an increased a sense of comfort
(Freeman, 1998).
At a dyadic level, similarity of personal attributes and shared values is recognised as a powerful factor
in friendship choice at all ages; hence, individuals of similar race or ethnicity are more attractive to each
other than are those who are dissimilar on these dimensions. Heider’s (1946) balance theory predicts that
a friend of a friend will also be a friend, since social networks avoid the strain of enmity from dissimilarity
within their ranks. Therefore, if a friend is of the same race, then the extended network is also likely to
be same-race.
More recently, researchers have focused on structural reasons for racial segregation within schools.
According to Allport’s (1954) contact theory, if the positional hierarchy in a school setting is correlated
with race, then interracial friendship is unlikely. Therefore, racial segregation may be due to the
over-representation of racial minority groups in lower-achieving classes in schools in which rigid
academic tracking is practised. If classes are organised according to academic achievement and because
achievement is related to ethnic and socioeconomic factors, these classes therefore tend to be racially
homogeneous. In such schools, students usually spend little or no formal class time with students of
other races. This provides limited opportunity for interracial interactions both inside and outside the
classroom. Indeed, Moody (2001) found that when school administrators assign most minority students
to non-academic tracks, the school itself becomes effectively segregated. In schools in which mixed
ability classes are the norm and racial integration is actively supported, racial segregation is much less
pronounced (Lucas & Behrends, 2002).
Contact theory also predicts that cooperative interdependence between different racial groups in
achieving a common goal promotes cross-race friendships. Moody (2001) found that in schools where
extracurricular activities such as sports, drama, music and clubs were structured to be racially mixed,
racial segregation was far less likely than in schools where these activities were organised along racial
lines. Moody found that integrated extracurricular activities with strong school leadership in desegregation,
were the single most powerful factors in encouraging cross-race friendships and harmonious
ethnic relationships in American high schools. So, despite the important role that individual and dyadic
factors play in racial segregation during adolescence, it is still possible to socially engineer the school
environment to promote positive interracial relations.
Regardless of their racial or gender makeup, peer status is important within adolescent peer groups.
Sometimes called ‘popularity’, it can be a preoccupation of teenagers who may value it above academic
success. Adolescent peer groups can be divided into individuals with different peer statuses, similar
to those identified during childhood: popular, rejected, neglected and controversial, as discussed in the
chapter on psychosocial development in middle childhood. Popular adolescents are more involved in peer
and extracurricular school activities, and disclose more about themselves. They show similar personal
qualities related to the socially skilled behaviour that is associated with popularity during childhood.
However, during adolescence, antisocial behaviour and popularity show a positive relationship that is
generally absent during middle childhood. It is possible that antisocial behaviour is valued as a sign of
independence from adult authority and that such individuals are viewed by peers as having a leadership
role in this regard (Kiesner & Pastor, 2005). Indeed, Farmer, Estell, Bishop, O’Neal, and Cairns (2003)
found that controversial boys who were aggressive but also socially skilled were likely to be leaders
and influential in adolescent peer groups. By contrast, aggressive boys without social skills tended to
be rejected by peers. Neglected and rejected adolescents engage in fewer peer activities, and have less
contact with peers of the opposite sex (Becker & Luthar, 2007; Zettergren, 2003).
Peer group conformity
Peer groups can exert powerful pressures to conform to in-group norms and values, giving rise to a
popular belief in the generation gap, a perspective espousing a separate teen culture and total rejection
of adult values. Movies of the 1950s such as James Dean’s Rebel Without a Cause popularised this
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stereotype of teenager–adult relations. In groundbreaking research during the turbulent 1960s, Brittain
(1963) found the stereotype of mindless conformity to peers typified by the generation gap to be a myth.
Brittain established parents and peers both influence teenage behaviour, providing important sources of
information and values for adolescents. However, adolescents seek different advice and information from
parents and peers. Brittain found teenagers are more likely to seek guidance from parents in areas in
which they perceive parents have some expertise; for example, in regard to educational decisions and
career choices. However, in regard to fashion, music or movies, peer opinion and guidance is sought.
Later research confirmed Brittain’s original findings. Carlson, Cooper, and Spradling (1991) and Grusec,
Goodnow, and Cohen (1996) found that in matters of popular culture and social norms, teenagers agreed
more with their peers than with their parents. Yet, in regard to the basic attitudes and values that guide
long-term life choices, adolescents consistently rated parental advice more highly than that of their peers.
Despite the general dispelling of the myth of the generation gap in the research literature, parents of
adolescents may still be concerned that their children will be excessively influenced by peer pressure and
that peer influence will replace their own guidance. In response to this concern, Steinberg and Levine
(1990) made suggestions for parents to help adolescent children withstand negative peer pressure that
might lead them into antisocial or self-destructive behaviours. Figure 11.3 lists these guidelines.
FIGURE 11.3 Peer pressure: guidelines for parents
Helping adolescents deal with peer pressure
Build self-esteem by helping your adolescent discover her or his strengths and special talents.
Encourage independence and decision making within the family.
Talk about situations in which people have to choose among competing pressures and demands.
Encourage your adolescent to anticipate difficult situations and plan ahead.
Encourage your adolescent to form alliances with peers who share his or her values and your family’s
values.
Know your adolescent’s friends.
Do not jump to hasty conclusions based on peers’ appearance, dress, language or interests.
Allow time for peer activities.
Remain close to your adolescent.
When to be concerned
If your adolescent has no friends at all.
If your adolescent is secretive about her or his social life.
If your adolescent suddenly loses all interest in friends.
If all of your adolescent’s friends are much older than him or her.
Source: Adapted from Steinberg & Levine (1990), pp. 183–187.
General conformity to peers does not automatically and dramatically increase during adolescence.
Instead, there are more complex changes in adolescent conformity. Vulnerability to peer pressure varies
according to an interaction between individual and environmental factors. Some teenagers are possibly
more susceptible to peer pressure, simply because they have a personality that is easily influenced. Also,
the social environment might give rise to greater susceptibility to peer influence; for example, if a teenager
badly wants to be included in a particular peer group, they are more likely to strongly assimilate the values
and ideas of the group. If parents do not approve of the group norms, adolescents can experience significant
parent–peer cross-pressures. In this situation, the antithetical values of the peer group and those of
the parents set up a conflict for the individual.
Adolescents will often choose between parents and peers according to their greater dependency needs.
This is in contrast to more mature decision making, in which the young person actively chooses the
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option that has been thoroughly thought out. Thus, teenagers may sacrifice developmentally important
experiences with adults for the sake of peer relationships that appear to offer greater fulfilment of their
immediate needs. If they do this, they are less likely to seek advice from their parents and are more likely
to consult with friends about important issues. In some cases, they might orient towards peers so strongly
that they are willing to forgo their parents’ rules, their schoolwork and even their own talents to ensure
peer acceptance.
Although parent–adolescent alienation and excessive peer orientation can have serious negative longterm
implications, this is the exception rather than the rule (Arnett, 2004; Fuligni & Eccles, 1993).
Nonetheless, conformity to peer pressure can be particularly disruptive during early adolescence. If, in
particular, the family fails to serve as a constructive corrective force with parents acting as responsible
(but not over-involved) caretakers, peer pressures have the potential to contribute to a prolonged period of
identity diffusion, or to premature identity foreclosure; for example, adolescents may become a teenage
parent, a drug addict or a gang member (Dishion, Reid, & Patterson, 1988; Kroger, 2006a; Patterson &
Dishion, 1985).
Adolescent gangs
Groups of adolescents who share a collective identity characterised by antisocial and often criminal
activities are found in different cultures all over the world, and are predominantly made up of adolescent
and young adult males. Known as a gang, these groups are relatively stable collections of individuals
with a clear leadership and hierarchical structure. Members may identify with each other using specific
symbols, often claiming a territory that is defended against other groups or gangs. Youth gangs are generally
the product of adverse economic conditions, providing protection for members as well as a means
of social and economic advancement when legitimate paths to success are minimal. Thus, gangs are
frequently involved in criminal activities such as drug dealing and theft (Winfree, Backstrom, & Mays,
1994). In August 2011, gangs were held responsible for the large-scale looting, arson and attacks on
private citizens that occurred in several British cities over a number of days before the police were able to
bring the rioting under control. Gang activities were apparently coordinated by using mobile telephones
and social media. These gang activities provoked much soul-searching amongst British authorities
with regard to the role that economic disadvantage and cultural alienation played in sparking the riots
(Muehlenberg, 2011).
Youth gangs are clearly identifiable in the larger cities of the United States, but their existence in
Australia is more controversial. In the first in-depth examination of Australian youth gangs, White,
Perrone Guerra, and Lampugnani (1999) interviewed street-frequenting youth from a wide variety of
ethnic backgrounds in Melbourne. A rather ambiguous picture emerged of the ethnic youth gangs that
have been the subject of media reports. The respondents had some difficulty in distinguishing between
adolescent groups with similar activities, appearance and ethnic identity, and ‘gangs’ per se. They
acknowledged conflicts within and between different ethnic-based ‘gangs’, involving street fighting with
weapons, and intergroup conflicts at school, called ‘school fights’. School fights and street fighting were
often linked to racism. No mention was made of overt criminality within these groups, an essential
element of overseas youth gangs. However, many of the ethnic youth interviewed by White et al. reported
negative relationships with authority figures, such as police. Youth representing all of the ethnicities
interviewed heavily criticised the media for exaggerating accounts of youth gangs, which they felt were
based more on ethnic stereotypes than on reality.
However, there are documented accounts of established ethnic gangs in Australia, including Cabramatta’s
5T Vietnamese gang, which had its heyday in the 1980s and whose membership was the offspring
of refugees from the fall of the Republic of Vietnam. Other ethnic gangs include Aboriginal gangs known
as The Evil Warriors and the Judas Priests, who apparently operate in Wadeye, Northern Territory, the
Dlasthr (the last hour), an Assyrian criminal gang reputedly centred in Fairfield, Sydney, and the African
Power and the Bloods and Crips gangs, comprising Sudanese youth based in the Melbourne suburbs of
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Collingwood and Carlton. The Sudanese gangs ostensibly mimic the infamous gangs of Los Angeles by
taking similar names. Nonetheless, it is unclear whether these ethnic gangs are primarily youth gangs, or
are adult criminal gangs (Anyuak Media, 2008; Lindsay, 2007). As well as minority ethnic gangs, there
is evidence that mainstream Anglo-Celtic Australian gangs, such as the Bra Boys, also exist in Australian
cities (Doherty, 2009).
Gangs can provide the context in which adolescents most readily express antisocial behaviour, including
acts of violence, arson, theft and vandalism. In such groups, the leader or leaders are often the most
antisocial members and readily model aggressive behaviour. For example, a group of adolescents characterised
as ‘a teenage gang’ was responsible for wreaking havoc at Merrylands High School, Sydney,
in September 2008. The 15-year-old ringleader was apparently addicted to meth-amphetamines and was
jailed for 17 months (Barrett, 2008). At-risk teenagers who are characterised by aggressive, acting-out
behaviour can be attracted to gangs because their behavioural styles make them rejectees from more legitimate
peer groups (Laird, Pettit, Dodge, & Bates, 2005). Within a gang, antisocial acts often become an
entrenched pattern of personal behaviour that is instilled by group norms and mutual reinforcement by
gang members; a process known as deviancy training.
Adolescents who are vulnerable to antisocial and criminal activities appear to be of two types. The
early onset type is typically an individual who shows negative temperamental characteristics from an early
age, and might also have cognitive deficits, as well as difficulties in self-regulation. Coupled with inept
parenting and particularly uninvolved parenting, these individuals develop persistent behavioural styles
that are characterised by defiance and aggression. Academic failure and peer rejection at school precipitate
associations with other similar individuals. Individuals who facilitate each other’s behaviour may coalesce
later into a youth gang. The outlook for early onset types is poor and, with little likelihood of successful
rehabilitation, many graduate into a lifelong career of criminality (Rutter, 2003). The late onset type
typically begins exhibiting antisocial behaviour at puberty, generally arising from peer influences rather
than lifelong patterns of antisocial behaviour. These individuals engage in petty crimes, such as shoplifting
and vandalism, but the pattern of antisocial acts does not become permanent. Finding employment and
stable close relationships in late adolescence or early adulthood generally means that these individuals
abandon earlier antisocial forms of behaviour (Clingempeel & Henggeler, 2003).
Bullying
Bullying is the repeated victimisation of an individual by intentional physical or verbal abuse, exploitation
and exclusion, within a context in which there is an imbalance of power (Olweus, 1995). Such behaviour is
enjoyed by the perpetrator and instils a sense of being oppressed in the victim. It is considered to be a subset
of aggressive behaviour as well as a relational problem, because power is exercised through aggression
within a relationship (Murray-Harvey & Slee, 2007). Olweus, a Scandinavian researcher who pioneered
the scientific study of bullying, has been examining the phenomenon for nearly 40 years. He estimates
that around 10 per cent of children and adolescents between the ages of 7 and 16 years have experienced
bullying at some time in their lives (Olweus, 1993, 1995). Rigby (2008), a prominent bullying researcher
in Australia, calculates that around half of Australian children and adolescents have experienced bullying
at some stage in their lives, and that 15 per cent of Australian children and adolescents are bullied on a
weekly basis.
Bullying is a feature of middle childhood and frequently occurs in the school context. With the
increasing cognitive abilities and perspective-taking associated with adolescence, it might be expected
that children ‘grow out’ of bullying. Nonetheless, it still persists during this period of development.
Rigby’s (2008) Australian research shows an overall decrease in bullying with age — around 30 per cent
of Year 4 children report regular bullying, whereas less than 10 per cent of Years 11 and 12 students
report weekly bullying. However, there is a significant increase in bullying as young adolescents
make the transition between primary school and high school — before the downward trend resumes
(Rigby, 2008).
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During adolescence, bullying takes on new, more sophisticated forms, such as cyber-bullying. Here,
information technology is used to perpetrate relational aggression, undermining another person’s
relationships through insinuation, rumour spreading and friendship exploitation (Merrell, Buchanan,
& Tran, 2006). Adolescents’ reputations are damaged when false rumours and electronically doctored
photographs or compromising footage taken with mobile telephones are displayed on the web. Chat
forums, social networking sites, mobile telephones and email can be used to target an individual with
derogatory messages and unflattering images, as well as personal threats (Bamford, 2004; Campbell,
2005; Raskauskas & Stoltz, 2007). Campbell and Gardner (2005) found that 14 per cent of a sample of
Brisbane adolescents reported having been victimised using technology such as the internet and mobile
telephones, a percentage that is similar to other countries such as the United Kingdom and the United
States. Campbell (2005) reports that the incidence of cyber bullying is increasing worldwide as new
technologies are adopted. There is also an age-related escalation in cyber bullying, with technologies
more commonly used by adolescents than by younger children. Despite an increase in cyber bullying,
Samara and Smith (2008) found that many high school anti-bullying policies in the UK still did not
cover cyber bullying. Likewise, recommendations were made by Spears, Slee, Owens, and Johnson
(2008) for a review of school anti-bullying policies in Australia.
Bullying can have a devastating effect on the victim’s wellbeing, including psychosomatic symptoms
such as headaches and sleep problems, depression and loneliness (Fekkes, Pijpers, & Verloove-
Va
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