The Impact of the School Closures on Bullying and Cyberbullying in Spain

Abstract

The government closure of schools in the spring of 2020 due to Covid-19 has had multiple effects on the school population. One of them has been the possible evolution of bullying and cyberbullying as a result of this school closure period. Bullying and Cyberbullying are two growing problems in today’s societies with important effects on public health. The COVID-19 pandemic brought about a very significant change in the lives of students with confinement. In this context, and following Backer-Hicks et al. (2022), we applied weekly data by Google trends for the period from September 2017 to August 2022 for all the Spanish regions, using the topic “Acoso escolar”, “Bullying” and “Cyberbullying”. Results show a drop in the relative intensity of searches in the period after Covid-19. However, the variation in search intensity was recovered in the 21–22 academic year with the return to full face-to-face classes. In relation to cyberbullying, our results reveal no change in the pattern of behaviour of this phenomenon. Finally, an interesting relationship emerges as is the influence of climatic conditions on the effect of “bullying” and “cyberbullying”.