Eating regular dinners as a family can help to protect children from cyberbullying, according to a new study in the US.
The research, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics, found that being a victim of cyberbullying could be linked to mental health and substance abuse problems in adolescents. However, teenagers who ate dinner with their families four or more times a week were likely to have fewer problems.
Experts said this was likely to be because families who ate together were also better at communicating, meaning that parents could help to spot and deal with problems earlier.
However, Robert Scott-Jupp, a consultant paediatrician from Salisbury, cautioned that eating dinners as a family was not a miracle cure for cyberbullying. “The researchers have chosen family dinners as a proxy for a much more vague concept of being a family that communicates well,” he said. “Most parents would say it is a good thing, but if you force a reluctant adolescent to sit down for a family meal when all they want to do is sit in their bedroom on the computer, it wouldn’t make much difference.
“But as a message to families with younger children – it might be a good habit to get into.”
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Researchers gathered data from 18,834 students age between 12 and 18 from 49 schools in the United States, asking them about anxiety, depression, self-harm and suicide, as well as fighting and vandalism, and use of alcohol and drugs.
One fifth had experienced cyberbullying during the previous year.
The research found that eating regular family meals almost halved the risk of victims developing mental health or substance abuse problems.
Scott Freeman, founder of the anti-cyberbullying charity Cybersmile, said that online bullying could feel more intense than playground bullying: “One of the things we hear a lot is this feeling of persecution and paranoia, this all-encompassing fear and overwhelming feeling of pressure bearing down on them wherever they are.
“With conventional bullying, children got it at school, for example, but not at home in their bedroom. Now they never feel completely safe.”