COVID-19, school closures and (cyber)bullying in Germany

Helen Rahlff, Ulf Rinne and Hendrik Sonnabend

Education Economics, 2025, vol. 33, issue 6, 852-865

Abstract: We analyse the prevalence of bullying in Germany during COVID-19, both as in-person bullying (in our context: school bullying) and via social media and electronic communication tools (cyberbullying). Using Google Trends data from 2013 to 2022 and exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic as a natural experiment when schools switched to distance learning, we document stark changes in the prevalence of (cyber)bullying in Germany: Our results indicate that during school years affected by COVID-19, online searches for school bullying decreased by about 29 percent, while online searches for cyberbullying increased by about 40 percent during the same periods.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/09645292.2024.2427644

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