Cyber-aggression among members of college fraternities and sororities in the united states

Today’s college students are digital natives for whom digital technology is not a novelty but rather a part of the fabric of their lives. The availability and increasing affordability of smartphones, tablets and laptop computers makes it commonplace for college students to live digitally. The term cyberbullying is widely used to describe online aggressive behavior, but the earlier focus groups with college students showed that they find the term juvenile and inappropriate for the kinds of negative behavior they observe and experience. Greek life is a prevalent American college phenomenon. Such groups are appealing to new students at a large university because they appear to provide a vehicle to establish a social identity at a time when developmentally, this is a salient task. Participants in our study were clear that while negative behavior can occur online, cyberbullying and personal attacks were not really a problem. Instead, the real issue was described as competitiveness and segregation across groups.