Social Bullying Among Undergraduates: The Roles of Internet Gaming Disorder, Risk-Taking Behavior, and Internet Addiction

An issue that affects the academic engagement, performance, health and wellbeing of university undergraduates is bullying. Substantial literature has examined the predictors of bullying perpetration, but there is little research on the contributions of internet-related factors and the propensity to take risks in bullying. We examined the roles of IGD, risk-taking behavior, and internet addiction in social bullying. Four instruments were used for data collection, namely: Young Adult Social Behavior Scale (YASB), the Internet Gaming Disorder Scale (IGDS9-SF), Domain-Specific Risk-Taking Scale, and the Internet Addiction Test (IAT) Scale. Participants were 552 undergraduate students from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka consisting of 143 males and 409 females (age range = 17-32 years; M = 21.45; SD = 2.71). Results of regression analysis showed that gaming disorder (GD) and risk-taking behavior had positive associations with social bullying. Thus, the more people grow addicted to internet gaming and takes more risks, the more they are likely to become bullies. Internet addiction had no significant association with social bullying. Efforts should be made to minimize the rate of dysfunctional Internet use, GD and risk-taking behaviors of undergraduates in order to curtail bullying perpetration.