The number of cyber-bullying cases and crimes is increasing every year in proportion to the Internet usage of people worldwide. Our society is trying to prevent cyber bullying by implementing education; however, this is not enough to attract people's attention, and the effectiveness of prevention education seems to be significantly inferior. In this study, we propose content that can help understand and empathize with the situation from the perspective of cyber bullying victims by utilizing the advantages of virtual reality, which provides a high sense of immersion to users. Unlike existing virtual reality contents, we tried a format that interacts with the controller simultaneously by combining a mouse rather than experiencing it only using a controller. Depending on the scenario, it is designed to attract the interest of the trainee by adding an interactive element. Thirty adult men and women who had received cyberbullying prevention education from the Ministry of Education during their school years participated in the survey. The results indicated that the proposed virtual reality cyberbullying prevention education was more effective than traditional cyberbullying prevention education. Utilizing virtual reality to raise awareness of cyberbullying and enhance the effectiveness of prevention education demonstrates its potential applicability in other educational fields.
M. Kim, M. Ellithorpe, and S. A. Burt, “Anonymity and its role in digital aggression: A systematic review,” Aggression and Violent Behavior, vol. 72, p. 101856, Sep. 2023, doi: 10.1016/j.avb.2023.101856.
De Luca Picione, Raffaele, et al, “Different Cyberbullying Experiences and Sensemaking Processes about the Sociocultural Context,” Mediterranean Journal of Clinical Psychology, vol. 11, 2023, doi: 10.13129/2282-1619/mjcp-3766.
S. Y. Paek, Y.-J. Choi, and J. Lee, “Exposure to harmful content and cyberbullying perpetration among South Korean adolescents during COVID-19: The moderating role of parental support,” Children and Youth Services Review, vol. 155, p. 107280, Dec. 2023, doi: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2023.107280.
Mohammed Rasheed Igbal, Ubaadah Bin Iqbaal, Neelam Hazoor Zaidi, and Shaista Snehal Kumar, “Cyberbullying Among Tertiary Students: Self-Reported Prevalence And Nature Of Cyberbullying,” Journal of Namibian Studies: History Politics Culture, vol. 37, pp. 976–1012, Oct. 2023, doi: 10.59670/jns.v37i.5269.
N. Li, S. Guo, and H. Park, “Cyberbullying Among Adolescents in East Asian Societies: Explanations Based on General Strain Theory,” International Journal of Bullying Prevention, Jan. 2024, doi: 10.1007/s42380-023-00204-7.
A. Bozyiğit, S. Utku, and E. Nasibov, “Cyberbullying detection: Utilizing social media features,” Expert Systems with Applications, vol. 179, p. 115001, Oct. 2021, doi: 10.1016/j.eswa.2021.115001.
Choi joohee, Lee dasom, Jo Youngoh, “Correlates of Cyber Delinquency School Level,” The Journal of Police Science, vol. 23() pp. 247-274, 2023, doi: 10.22816/polsci.2023.23.4.247.
P. Yi and A. Zubiaga, “Session-based cyberbullying detection in social media: A survey,” Online Social Networks and Media, vol. 36, p. 100250, Jul. 2023, doi: 10.1016/j.osnem.2023.100250.
A. Schonfeld, D. McNiel, T. Toyoshima, & R. Binder, “Cyberbullying and Adolescent Suicide,” The journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, vol.51, 2023, doi: 10.29158/JAAPL.220078-22.
K. Subaramaniam, R. Kolandaisamy, A. B. Jalil, & I. Kolandaisamy, “Cyberbullying challenges on society: A review,” Journal of positive school psychology, vol. 6(2) pp. 2174–2184, 2022.
Korea Internet & Security Agency, 2022 Report on the Survey of Cyber Bullying, Korea Communications Commission, Korea, March 2023, [Online]. Available: www.kcc.go.kr/user.do
S. Shin, “A Study on the Effect of Juvenile’s Strain and Anger on the Cyber Bullying,” The Journal of Humanities and Social sciences 21, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 1289–1304, Jun. 2023, doi: 10.22143/hss21.14.3.90.
An Hwasil and Park Jungdoe, “Analysis of cyberbullying literatures published in Korea,” Korean Juvenile Protection Review, vol. 23 pp. 125-157, 2013.
A. Paszkiewicz, M. Salach, P. Dymora, M. Bolanowski, G. Budzik, and P. Kubiak, “Methodology of Implementing Virtual Reality in Education for Industry 4.0,” Sustainability, vol. 13, no. 9, p. 5049, Apr. 2021, doi: 10.3390/su13095049.
J. Pirker and A. Dengel, “The Potential of 360° Virtual Reality Videos and Real VR for Education—A Literature Review,” IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, vol. 41, no. 4, pp. 76–89, Jul. 2021, doi: 10.1109/mcg.2021.3067999.
Estefania Duran. New anti-bullying app developed in honour of Amanda Todd (2016) Global News, https://globalnews.ca/news/2849862/new-anti-bullying-app-developed-in-honour-of-amanda-todd/
Class VR. Anti-Bullying in Virtual Reality (2019) Class VR, https://www.classvr.com/blog/anti-bullying-in-virtual-reality/
Untiversity of Warwick. Virtual reality games could help bullying victims (2009) EurekAlert, https://warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/virtual_reality_games/
K.-E. Stavroulia, A. Ruiz-Harisiou, E. Manouchou, K. Georgiou, F. Sella, and A. Lanitis, “A 3D virtual environment for training teachers to identify bullying,” 2016 18th Mediterranean Electrotechnical Conference (MELECON), pp. 1–6, Apr. 2016, doi: 10.1109/melcon.2016.7495417.
F. Lara and J. Rueda, “Virtual Reality Not for ‘Being Someone’ but for ‘Being in Someone Else’s Shoes’: Avoiding Misconceptions in Empathy Enhancement,” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 12, Aug. 2021, doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.741516.
CRediT Author Statement
The authors confirm contribution to the paper as follows:
Conceptualization: Chaerim Sung and Sanghun Nam;
Methodology: Sanghun Nam;
Software: Chaerim Sung;
Data Curation: Chaerim Sung and Sanghun Nam;
Writing- Original Draft Preparation: Chaerim Sung and Sanghun Nam;
Visualization: Sanghun Nam;
Investigation: Chaerim Sung and Sanghun Nam;
Supervision: Sanghun Nam;
Validation: Sanghun Nam;
Writing- Reviewing and Editing: Chaerim Sung and Sanghun Nam;
All authors reviewed the results and approved the final version of the manuscript.
Acknowledgements
Author(s) thanks to Dr.Sanghun Nam for this research completion and support.
Funding
No funding was received to assist with the preparation of this manuscript.
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.
Availability of data and materials
Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study.
Author information
Contributions
All authors have equal contribution in the paper and all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Corresponding author
Sanghun Nam
Department of Culture and Technology, Changwon National University, Gyeongsangnam-do, South Korea.
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NoDerivs is a more restrictive license. It allows you to redistribute the material commercially or non-commercially but the user cannot make any changes whatsoever to the original, i.e. no derivatives of the original work. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Cite this article
Chaerim Sung and Sanghun Nam, “Immersive VR Content for Effective Cyberbullying Prevention”, Journal of Machine and Computing, pp. 950-955, April 2025, doi: 10.53759/7669/jmc202505075.
