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Cyberbullying has been well-documented as a global public health problem. Cyberbullying includes acts such as posting publicly available information on the Internet, being called or receiving messages that threaten or being harassed on the Internet, and others (Patchin and Hinduja, 2006). Compared with traditional bullying, cyberbullying can occur every time and everywhere, and the identity of the perpetrator may not be disclosed (Patchin and Hinduja, 2006). Therefore, cyberbullying may be more frequent and have more serious consequences for the victim. Studies show that cyberbullying significantly affects adolescents, such as increasing the risk of depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation (Klomek et al., 2010; Schneider et al., 2012; Nixon, 2014; Fahy et al., 2016; Pabian and Vandebosch, 2016; Yuchang et al., 2019), as well as causing physical and psychosomatic problems such as difficulty sleeping, headache, and loss of appetite (Beckman et al., 2012; Schneider et al., 2012; Schultze-Krumbholz et al., 2012; Kowalski and Limber, 2013). Cyberbullying is also associated with the onset of substance use, traditional and cyberbullying perpetration, and delinquency (Mitchell et al., 2007; Wong et al., 2014; Chan and Wong, 2020; Estévez et al., 2020). These consequences have been observed in all perpetrators, victims, and observers of cyberbullying (Beckman et al., 2012; Wong et al., 2014; Panumaporn et al., 2020).

Cyberbullying among adolescents is a prevalent phenomenon across nations. A prior systematic review showed that 20 to 40% of adolescents experienced cyberbullying at least once in their lifetime (Aboujaoude et al., 2015), and this rate tends to increase with increasing Internet and social media accessibility (Hamm et al., 2015). In the United States, the rate of adolescents who were victims of cyberbullying was from 3 to 72% (Selkie et al., 2016). A study conducted in seven European countries showed that 13.3–37.3% of adolescents aged 14–17 years were victims of cyberbullying (Athanasiou et al., 2018). In the Asian region, a review in Chinese populations revealed different prevalence of cyberbullying victimization in adolescents, ranging at 14–57% in mainland China, 13–35% in Taiwan, and 12–72% in Hong Kong (Chan and Wong, 2015). In Korea, 14.6% adolescents were cyberbullying victims (Lee and Shin, 2017). Coping strategies when having cyberbullying experience may vary and can be classified into four groups: (1) directly reacting against cyberbullying acts (such as retaliation or constructive feedback); (2) ignoring the cyberbullying behaviors (such as avoidance or doing nothing), (3) seeking support from other sources (such as parents, friends, or teachers), and (4) utilizing technological solutions (such as blocking senders; Perren et al., 2012). A study in Hong Kong indicated that older male adolescents were more likely to have an active approach to cope with cyberbullying such as informing to adults, parents, or teachers; while adolescents, having limited experience with their schools, tended to have avoid (e.g., ignore the cyberbullying behaviors) approaches (Chan and Wong, 2017). Another study in Czech adolescents found that technological strategies were the most common, following by avoidance and finding support (Machackova et al., 2013).

The proliferation of cyberbullying requires accelerating efforts to explore approaches to prevent and mitigate its consequences. Global studies showed that social support is an essential component in protecting adolescents from the consequences of traditional bullying (Kochenderfer-Ladd and Skinner, 2002; Davidson and Demaray, 2007; Rothon et al., 2011). Social support refers to instrumental support (such as providing the victim with helpful solutions or resources) or emotional support (such as spiritual encouragement, belongingness, or value recognition; House et al., 1988; Kerres Malecki and Kilpatrick Demaray, 2002). In literature, many studies have shown that family and friends support can play an important role in protecting adolescents from becoming victims of cyberbullying (Price and Dalgleish, 2010; Fanti et al., 2012; Hellfeldt et al., 2019). In addition, adolescents who are of school age can get help from teachers. Previous research has shown that victims and perpetrators of cyber-violence possibly knew each other at school, and parents, friends, and teachers are important sources of information and support for teens dealing with cyberbullying (Slonje and Smith, 2008).

Although many studies showed that social support helps to prevent cyberbullying among adolescents, its effectiveness in minimizing the psychological consequences of cyberbullying among victims or observers has been in debate. An earlier study found that support from friends alone was effective in reducing psychological problems among victims of cyberbullying (Holt and Espelage, 2007). Another research found that both support from family and friends played an important role in preventing victims from the mental consequences of cyberbullying (Rothon et al., 2011). These results concluded that social support held the potential for minimizing the cyberbullying-related psychological problems in youths. However, the evidence for this effect in different population groups (such as victims, perpetrators, or observers) is limited.

In Vietnam, evidence about cyberbullying among adolescents as well as the impact of social support on cyberbullying is currently limited. Only one previous study was conducted on 215 adolescents and youths aged 13–18 in Hanoi, Vietnam, to measure the cyberbullying experience in these groups (Chi et al., 2020). By using the modified Patchin and Hinduja’s scale, this study found that 45.1% of sample had experienced cyberbullying at least once, with being called by names as the most typical form (Chi et al., 2020). The common responses to cyberbullies included ignoring cyberbullying behaviors and not telling family or teacher (Chi et al., 2020). To date, none of the studies were conducted about the mediation effect of social support on mental disorders in adolescents who were victims or observers of cyberbullying. Therefore, our study was conducted to examine the experience of adolescents aged 11–14 in urban Vietnam, determine how they coped with this issue, and explore the preventive mediation effect of social support to the associations between cyberbullying and mental health issues.

The characteristics of participants are presented in Table 1. Among 484 secondary school students, the mean age was 12.6 (SD = 1.2) years. There were 11.6 and 28.3% of students reporting that they experienced and observed at least one cyberbullying act in the last 3 months, respectively. No difference was observed regarding gender, age, and type of family between those with and without cyberbullying experience (p > 0.05). Meanwhile, the rate of females in the cyberbullying observation group (68.6%) was significantly higher than that in the non-cyberbullying observation (56.2%). A significant age difference was also found between these two groups (p < 0.001).

Table 1 also reveals that people who experienced cyberbullying showed significantly lower levels of attitude against cyberbullying (p = 0.022) and lower levels of perceived family (p < 0.001) and teachers support (p = 0.007), but a higher level of perceived peer support (p = 0.005) and higher depression (p < 0.001), anxiety (p < 0.001), and stress scores (p < 0.001) than did those not experiencing cyberbullying. These differences were also observed between participants with and without cyberbullying observation (p < 0.05), except for the level of cyberbullying attitude.

Figure 1 illustrates the 3-month rate of each cyberbullying behavior in terms of experience and observation. “Stole password to prevent access to blog/email” was the most common behavior when 6.6 and 18.4% of participants ever experienced and observed this behavior, respectively. “Received offensive & insulting messages on cellphone/by Internet” and “Slandered through the Internet, telling lies or spread rumors” were the second and third most common acts.

Among participants experiencing cyberbullying as victims, Table 2 indicates that 26.8% of students felt anxiety and fear and did not want to be close to anyone. Over 21% of victims had reduced study performance, 12.5% had suicidal ideation, and even 10.7% had suicidal attempts. However, only 48.2% tried to stop the perpetrators, and 35.7% told this experience to their friends. None of them told teachers, parents, or relatives. “Try to cope by myself,” “I think my parents, teachers or adults do not understand or believe me,” and “I think there’s nothing my parents, teachers or adults can do to help me” were the three most common reasons for not reporting cyberbullying acts among victims.

Meanwhile, among observers, 111 students (81%) were grouped into the “Intervene” category; 56 students (40.9%) and nine students (6.6%) were classified into “Ignore” and “Join in” categories, respectively (one student could do more than one act toward cyberbullying observation). Being afraid of having limited use of the Internet if they reported cyberbullying behaviors, thinking that adults did not understand or believe, and thinking that adults could not do anything for victims were the three most popular reasons for not reporting the cyberbullying behaviors among observers (Table 3).

Table 4 shows associated factors with cyberbullying experience and observation. Cyberbullying experience was only found to be associated with cyberbullying observation (OR = 5.86, 95% CI = 3.06–11.21). Meanwhile, being female and of higher age were positively related to cyberbullying observation, whereas having a higher level of support from family (OR = 0.76, 95% CI = 0.61–0.94) was negatively associated with the cyberbullying observation.

In regression analysis, only cyberbullying attitude was found to be associated with “intervene” behaviors (OR = 1.53, 95% CI = 1.10–2.12). Participants having a higher level of peer support were more likely to ignore the cyberbullying acts (OR = 1.78, 95% CI = 1.08–2.93), while those having a higher level of teacher support were less likely to ignore these acts (OR = 0.64, 95% CI = 0.42–0.98; Table 5).

The SEM is illustrated in Figure 2. The goodness-of-fit indices were acceptable with RMSEA = 0.052, CFI = 0.983, and SRMR = 0.026. The model shows that only cyberbullying experience showed a significantly positive direct effect on psychological problems. The cyberbullying experience group was significantly related to family and peer support, while the cyberbullying observation group was only significantly associated with family support. Only family support showed to be negatively associated with psychological problems, whereas peer and teacher support showed positive relations with psychological problems.

Table 6 determines the mediation or indirect effects of different types of support. For both cyberbullying experience and observation, only family support was found to partially mediate associations between cyberbullying experience and observation with levels of psychological problems among our participants. Regarding cyberbullying experience, the indirect effect of family support accounted for 18.3% of the total effect and 22.4% of the direct effect. Meanwhile, regarding cyberbullying observation, this indirect effect accounted for 32.5% of the total effect and 48.1% of the direct effect.

Our study contributed to the current literature about the experience and coping strategies of adolescents toward cyberbullying and the potential effects of different support to mitigate the psychological consequence of cyberbullying. Our study suggested a low rate of cyberbullying experience and observation in secondary school students, as well as a high risk of psychological problems among those experiencing cyberbullying. Moreover, family support was an important protective source and helped mediate the relationship between cyberbullying and psychological problems.

The rate of adolescents involving in cyberbullying as victims over the past 3 months in our study was low, according to the self-report information from the participants. This rate was much lower than previous research in Hanoi, Vietnam, which showed that 45.1% of adolescents aged 13–18 were victims of cyberbullying in the past 12 months (Chi et al., 2020). Our result was equivalent to a previous study in the United States with 11% of adolescents who studied grades 6 to 8 being bullied online in the past 2 months (Kowalski and Limber, 2007). Overall, the estimated prevalence of cyberbullying varied significantly between different studies and countries due to the difference of cyberbullying definition, time frame, and methods of measurement (Berne et al., 2013; Selkie et al., 2016; Brochado et al., 2017), which results in the problematic study comparisons. Indeed, using the Cyberbullying Test, which was a valid scale to measure cyberbullying (Garaigordobil, 2017), was advantageous to our study compared with other prior research. This measure contains 15 cyberbullying behaviors, enabling us to capture more comprehensive aspects that participants might suffer or observe during the recall period than other previous studies (Hellfeldt et al., 2019; Livazović and Ham, 2019; Chi et al., 2020; Panumaporn et al., 2020).

Notably, our results showed that though the impact of cyberbullying was significant, the proportion of participants taking specific actions against cyberbullying was not high. In addition to the impact on academic performance, there was a high proportion of individuals who experienced cyberbullying suffering the negative psychological effects such as anxiety, fear, and even suicidal thoughts. This was similar to previous studies showing the serious consequences of cyberbullying on the lives of victims (Schneider et al., 2012; Nixon, 2014). Nonetheless, the findings showed that only nearly 50% of the victims tried to stop this act of the perpetration, and 33.9% tried to leave cyberspace. We also observed that victims only shared with friends about the issue of cyberbullying but did not share it with parents or teachers. The most common reasons for not sharing with parents or teachers were because the adolescents were afraid that the adults did not believe or the adults will not be able to do anything for the adolescents. Another reason was that the victims wanted to solve this problem themselves. In a previous study in Vietnam, it was found that ignoring this behavior and blocking the perpetrator’s account were the two most common measures (58.8 and 54.6%, respectively; Chi et al., 2020). However, problems caused by cyberbullying were not easy to deal with because these behaviors can occur at any time and can reach large numbers of audiences in a short period of time (Patchin and Hinduja, 2006), causing a feeling of stigma and isolation among victims (Bossler et al., 2012; Burton et al., 2013) and, in turn, worsening the consequences of cyberbullying. Therefore, equipping adolescents with appropriate coping strategies against cyberbullying is essential and should be prioritized in school and family.

Our study also examined the rate of cyberbullying observers among adolescents and identified how they reacted to cyberbullying behaviors. As expected, we found that the majority of observers were in the group “Intervene” who responded to the cyberbullying acts by reporting these behaviors or helping victims. This result was similar to the study in Thailand showing that most observers belonged to the “Intervene” group (Panumaporn et al., 2020). However, our study was different from study results in Belgium, where the authors show that most adolescents belonged to the “Ignore” group when observing cyberbullying behaviors (Van Cleemput et al., 2014). We assumed that the cultural factors might be attributable to this difference. While the Western culture highlighted individualism, the Asian culture emphasized the role of collectivism, which might motivate them to help others when they faced problems (Sittichai and Smith, 2015). On the other hand, similar to the victim group, the main reasons that participants in the observer group did not report violent cyber behavior included (1) being afraid of limited Internet use and (2) believing that adults were unable to address this issue. This result suggested a huge gap in the relationships between parent-teacher and adolescents, especially among cyberbullying victims or observers. Interestingly, results of the multivariate models indicated an opposite trend between peer and teacher support, when higher peer and teacher support were associated with higher and lower likelihoods of being “Ignore” people. This phenomenon could be justified that adolescents’ peers might not perceive this issue as a problem as adults did (i.e., parents and teachers; Slonje and Smith, 2008). Moreover, even when youth perceived the impacts of cyberbullying, they could not provide adequate support due to the lack of knowledge and resource needed. Therefore, instead of recommending interventions on the issue, they were more likely to advise to ignore cyberbullying behaviors. It should be noted that the attitude against cyberbullying played an important role among adolescents in the “Intervene” group. This finding was consistent with previous studies on both cyberbullying and traditional bullying (Yang and Kim, 2017; Panumaporn et al., 2020). Therefore, campaigns to motivate adolescents to intervene in cyberbullying are critical to diminish this behavior and its impacts.

The findings of this study echoed previous evidence showing that cyberbullying experience was associated with psychological problems (Beckman et al., 2012; Schneider et al., 2012; Nixon, 2014; Wong et al., 2014; Panumaporn et al., 2020). Moreover, our study underlined the protective mediation effects of family support on the association between cyberbullying experience and observation with psychological issues. Unlike traditional bullying where parent, friend, and teacher support helped to mitigate the impact of bullying acts on victims’ lives and mental health (Price and Dalgleish, 2010; Fanti et al., 2012; Hellfeldt et al., 2019), in our study, friend and teacher support did not buffer against the psychological problems among cyberbullying victims and/or observers. In literature, adolescents are concerned that sharing their experience with the teacher was an ineffective strategy (Price and Dalgleish, 2010), and reporting the problem to their parents could hinder their freedom in Internet use (Hoff Dianne and Mitchell Sidney, 2009). However, in a previous survey in Sweden, parent and teacher support was found to buffer against depressive and anxiety symptoms in cyberbullying victims and bully victims (Hellfeldt et al., 2019). Another longitudinal study found that adolescents who were victims of cyberbullying had lower levels of depressive symptoms if they had family support (Machmutow et al., 2012). As discussed above, we believed that parents could offer appropriate emotional support to help adolescents in controlling the psychological distress caused by cyberbullying behaviors (Livazović and Ham, 2019). Moreover, they may be more likely to perceive accurately the problem of cyberbullying, while friends might not fully recognize the trouble of cyberbullying involvement, resulting in the provision of inadequate support (Slonje and Smith, 2008). This result is critical since most of the victims in our study sought help from friends rather than their parents. Thus, parents should be proactive in building a strong bond with their children (Nixon, 2014; Slonje et al., 2017). On the other hand, our finding partially affirmed that peer support might not be the best focus to address cyberbullying and its consequence (Hellfeldt et al., 2019). However, further longitudinal studies should be performed to test the effect of peer support on buffering the relationship between cyberbullying and psychological impairment in different contexts.

The current study indicated several implications. First, educational campaigns should be performed to raise adolescents, parents, and teachers’ awareness and attitude toward cyberbullying, motivating them to become involved to intervene and prevent cyberbullying behaviors. The contents of these interventions should include knowledge and practices on cyberbullying, communication and Internet use skills, and prosocial behaviors, empathy, and coping strategies with cyberbullying (Hutson et al., 2018). Regular training sessions should be performed to help adolescents in acquiring skills and abilities to actively cope with cyberbullying, help other victims, and prevent them from joining in cyberbullying. Previous studies found that active strategies to cope with cyberbullying victimization were effective to address the cyberbullying-related issues (Ybarra et al., 2007; Riebel et al., 2009; Chan and Wong, 2017). Second, according to the study, leaders in schools and communities should implement activities that increase parents’ roles in addressing cyberbullying and its consequences among adolescents. Positive parent-children relationships could encourage adolescents to find support when dealing with difficult situations (Chan and Chui, 2015; Chan and Wong, 2017). Finally, given that cyberbullying is an emerging problem but school regulations for this issue do not exist in Vietnam, current policies should consider this type of bullying and its impact, especially among adolescents.

Interpretation of the study results should be done cautiously with the following limitations. First, given that cyberbullying is a sensitive issue, relying on only self-reports from participants may underestimate the actual rates of cyberbullying in adolescents. In literature, approaches that used information from multiple sources such as peers and teachers would be recommended (Brochado et al., 2017). Further studies that involve multiple reporters to measure the prevalence of cyberbullying should be taken into account. Second, we used the cross-sectional design, which limited our ability to establish the causal associations. Thus, conclusions about the associations and effects in this study cannot be definitely drawn. Future studies should use longitudinal designs to investigate the influence of cyberbullying and social support on psychological well-being in middle school adolescents. Third, the rate of cyberbullying experience and observation was low, resulting in a small sample size for statistical tests. Moreover, we used a modified instrument to measure cyberbullying experience rather than use the original one, which might underestimate or overestimate the rate of cyberbullying victimization and observation. Finally, other characteristics such as traditional bullying exposure, the Internet or social media use, and cyberbullying perpetration were not fully investigated. These factors were found to be associated with cyberbullying victimization in previous work (Beckman et al., 2012; Athanasiou et al., 2018; Chi et al., 2020). Hence, further studies should be elucidated to measure these relationships between these factors and cyberbullying experience.

Our study suggested that the 3-month rate of cyberbullying experience and observation among urban adolescents aged 11–14 in Vietnam was low. However, current coping strategies against cyberbullying in this group were not sufficient. Family support is an important factor that should be considered for designing interventions to mitigate the impacts of cyberbullying on the mental health of adolescents.

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by Hanoi Medical University. Written informed consent to participate in this study was provided by the participants’ legal guardian/next of kin.

AN, AT, BT, LN, MH, and TrN: conceptualization. AN, AT, BT, TrN, LD, and GV: methodology. AN, AT, LN, MH, and GV: formal analysis and investigation. AN, AT, BT, LN, MH, TrN, LD, GV, TuN, HD, CL, RH, and CH: writing—original draft preparation, and review and editing. BT, CL, RH, and CH: supervision. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.