Paper—Cyber Bullying and Traumatic Experiences: The Impact on Learning Disabilities Cyber Bullying and Traumatic Experiences: The Impact on Learning Disabilities

The aim of our research is to investigate the effects of traumatic experiences that teens with learning disorders had to go through. The sample of our study is consisted of 160 high school students who were referred in a web line evaluation form, due to low school performance. The research tool that was used was ACHENBACH’s self-report questionnaire for children and teenagers and more specifically the subscales for anxiety-depression and depressionwithdrawal. Frequencies, percentages of responses and means have been calculated. An analysis of variance (one way anova) to assess the differences in the averages of students' responses to the variable "experiencing a traumatic event" was also performed. The results showed that there are significant differences in the level of statistical significance p <0,01 between the means of students who say they have experienced a traumatic event and those who report that they haven’t. Particularly decisive traumatic experience for the students' mentality seems to be the in-school violence received by students and the death of a loved one. Application features that have to do with the cyber bullying are also presented briefly. Keywords—cyber bullying, new technology, psychological problems, trau-

traumatic experience and learning disabilities of secondary school pupils are going to be presented thoroughly.

Wound and Puberty
Freud was the first to describe the mental trauma as "a righteous in the defense mechanisms of the individual" and in 1926 he stated that the person at the time of the traumatic experience is characterized by a sense of total disability [8]. Traumatic experience can be a formative influence in emotional and cognitive development. It is estimated that 25% of the children have experienced a traumatic event until the 16 years [9]. Many studies report that about 15 to 43% of girls and 14 and 43% of boys have experienced a traumatic event by 16 ages. Of these, 3 to 15% of girls and 1 to 6% of boys may appear intense psychological problems. The intensity of psychological problems is high and reaches severe levels of dysfunction in 100% of children and adolescents who witnessed domestic violence, 90% in the case of children and adolescents who have been sexually assaulted, 77% for children who have been armed school environment and 35% of children and adolescents exposed to violence within the community living [10], [11], [12], [13], [14]. Many of these children achieved to overcome the wound, adapt and integrate their experience and develop naturally. In some, however, the intensity of psychological problems reaches clinical levels causing serious dysfunctions in their daily lives and significant cognitive deficits [15], [16]. Among the most common symptoms are those that affect: a) cognitive perception (they can not stop thinking about the traumatic experience or feel that everything around them is precarious), !) the emotional nature of the child (loneliness, nightmares, anxiety and horror) c) socio-behavioral disorders (aggressive and abusive behavior, rejection of parental authority and that of teachers, denial of all kinds of activity, d) cognitive behavior disorders (attention disruption and low school performance) and d) physical symptoms (headaches, stomach anxiety and hypochondriasis) [17], [18], [19].Children usually avoid specific thoughts, positions, games and behaviors that remind them of the traumatic experience. They can interrupt pleasant activities or do not make unknown situations to avoid feelings of fear and anxiety. This type of traumatic avoidance can affect daily activity or generalize into a more phobic behavior by inhibiting both the cognitive development and the positive social experiences of the child [20].

Applications Features and Cyber-Bullying in Schools
Technological developments including smartphones, social media, and mobile apps have changed the way individuals interact with each other. Bechtoldt,et al. [21] assert that today's teenagers use features to share images and videos (e.g., Instagram, Keek), send limited-time messages (e.g., Snapchat), and for hyper local communication (e.g., Yik Yak, Whisper) significantly more than a decade ago. Correspondingly, cyber bullying now occurs in forms that were impossible or uncommon a few years prior. Cyber bullying is defined as: "When the Internet, cellphones or other devices are used to send or post text or images intended to hurt or embarrass another person". According to a National Crime Prevention Council report, more than 40% of US teenagers have reported being cyber bullied. This is especially worrying, as multiple studies found that cyber bullying victims often have psychiatric and psychosomatic disorders and a British study found that nearly half of suicides among young people were related to bullying. These factors underscore an urgent need to understand, detect, and ultimately reduce the prevalence of all cyber bullying [22].
Exposure to bullying, physical violence and sexual abuse may result in an array of negative outcomes, such as poor mental health, physical health and lower sense of well being [23]. This study as it was mentioned and above is mainly focused on potential negative consequences of bullying, violence and death of a loved one in terms of academic achievement. As it is well known, adolescents' academic achievements are of great importance for prospective school choices and consequently a long-term career [23]. Previous researches have found that bullied and abused children or adolescents perform worse in school compared with their no abused peers [24]. Few studies on bullying have investigated the influence of school-level factors on individual academic performance and thus research has indicated that school-level factors may explain 10% of the variance in individual grades [25]. Konishi et al. [26] conducted one of the few multilevel studies in this area and found that school-level bullying was associated with lower grades. This stresses the need to simultaneously investigate individual and contextual influences on students' academic achievement. For victims of abuse, the social environment becomes especially important because it may serve as a protective factor against some of the negative consequences of the abuse and potentially affects the adolescent's development in a positive way [27]. On the other hand, a negative school climate may contribute to a negative personal development [27]. Additionally, a growing body of literature shows that victims and perpetrators of cyber bullying are at greater risk for experiencing a myriad of mental health problems including depressive symptoms, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts. Despite awareness of the mental health risks associated with cyber bullying, few studies have applied a theoretical framework to understanding the perpetration of cyber bullying [28].
As a result of the above statements, in order to inform prevention/intervention of cyber bullying behaviors, the Theory of Reasoned Action is a tool that was developed for this reason. Heirman and Walrave [29] defined cyber bullying as ''intentionally hurting or harming someone you personally know online or offline through the use of digital media such as the Internet or mobile phone,'' (p. 616). Empathy toward cyber bullying victims was also included in the models. Participants completed the cyber bullying perpetration scale of the Cyberbul-lying Experiences Survey [30] that assesses four types of cyber bullying (deception, malice, public humiliation, and unwanted contact). Across all four models, results showed that lower empathy toward cyber bullying victims predicted more favorable attitudes toward cyber bullying perpetration, more favorable attitudes toward cyber bullying predicted higher intentions to cyber-bully, and higher cyber bullying intentions predicted more frequent perpetration of cyber bullying behaviors. Injunctive norms regarding cyber bullying (e.g., perception of peers' approval of cyber bullying perpetration) predicted intentions to engage in malice and unwanted contact behaviors. The results demonstrate that the TRA is a useful framework for understanding cyber bullying perpetration [30].
Moreover another research team states that social networking sites provide a fertile medium for bullies, and teens and young adults who use these sites are vulnerable to attacks. Through machine learning, the team says that it is easier to detect language patterns used by bullies and their victims, and develop rules to automatically detect cyber-bullying content. The data that was used for this project was collected from the web-site Formspring.me, a question-and-answer formatted website that contains a high percentage of bullying content. The data was labeled using a web service, Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Additionally, it was used the labeled data, in conjunction with machine learning techniques provided by the Weka tool kit, to train a computer to recognize bullying content. Both a C4.5 decision tree learner and an instance-based learner were able to identify the true positives with 78.5% accuracy. By recording the percentage of curse and insult words within a post, we were able to correctly identify 78.5% of the posts that contain cyber bullying in a small sample of Form spring data. The final results indicate that such features do a reasonable job of identifying cyber bullying in Form spring posts and also that there is plenty of room for improvement on this timely and important application of machines learning to web data [31].
Furthermore, because of the rising popularity of communications taking place in social networks, an inconsiderable part of interpersonal interactions of young people is performed online. As an effect, new risks and threats, such as cyber bullying,stalking and online grooming, emerge. The main affected group in this context is children between 12 to 17 years old [32] (eMarketer, 2013). A recently conducted team developed a research agenda for a Facebook Watchdog application pursuing the aim to detect the above-mentioned threats to improve the situation. The research supports the idea that threat indications are determined by image analysis, social media analytics, and text mining techniques in order to raise awareness about ongoing attacks and to provide assistance for further actions [33]. More specifically, the developers highlighted open research areas, which are required to develop a Facebook Watchdog app aiming at protecting adolescents against bullying and grooming attacks. They suggested a modular implementation enabling an easy way for extending the Watchdog with new modules that facilitate the exchange between research groups interested in the topic. Particularly important is thought the development of an evaluation matrix based on the weighted Facebook Watchdog modules. Also, in order to make more reliable statements about human behavior, the participation of social workers and young people themselves during the development process is thought necessary. Lastly, the project team believes that the weighted evaluation matrix establishes the basis for combining several image processing, text mining, and social analytics modules to detect cyber bullying and online grooming behavior [33].
Last but not least, another study investigated the influence of newer mobile app features like frequent sharing of images and videos, limited-time messages, and hyper local communication on cyber bullying in high school settings. Data analysis suggests that emerging app features play a significant role in how cyber bullying takes place in school settings. Specifically, the researchers found that differences in users' understanding of ephemerality can lead to scenarios where one party in a conversation may handle much more power than the other, and can exploit this to their advantage. Additionally, students are more directly affected by visual content, as it can be used as evidence or to reinvigorate arguments and as a result students are sophisticated enough to hold app designers responsible for the consequences of use of their apps. These findings, according to the researchers, have broaden our understanding surrounding the complex interplay between novel app-features and cyber bullying in school settings and pave the way for future app design refinements, as well as intervention studies [34].

4
Methodology of our Research

Purpose of our Research
The aim of our study was to investigate the relationship between traumatic experience and learning disabilities of secondary school pupils.

Main research question
The main research question that we were concerned about was whether there is a relationship between the appearance of learning disabilities of secondary school students and the experience of a traumatic event.

Data collection
Questionnaire Youth Self Report [35] was the instrument used in collecting the data . In particular, the questions of subscales "anxiety/depression" and "withdrawal/depression. In addition the students had access to an online form that was installed in their school to record demographics data and experiencing a possible traumatic event.

Participants
The survey involved 160 pupils aged 12-17 years studying in Secondary General and Vocational Secondary Education Schools in Athens who came to Center of Assessment and Support due to their learning disabilities. For the same students, we received some information from a online form that was installed in their school. Of the pupils 101 were boys and 59 were girls. Three (3) pupils were 12 years old, 30 pupils were 13 years old, 28 were 14 years old, 34 were 15 years old, 46 were 16 years old and 19 were 17 years old. About the class they were attending, 24 pupils were in first grade, 27 pupils attending second grade, 23 pupils were studying at the third grade, 39 pupils were studying in the 1st Lyceum, 30 pupils were studying in the 2st Lyceum and 17 pupils were studying in the 3st Lyceum.

Procedure
We collected our data from October of 2016 to May of 2017. Each participant had completed an online form that was installed in his school. The pupils who participated had visited Center of Assessment and Support due to learning difficulties. The pupils in a special session completed the questionnaire Youth Self Report on a tablet that was made available to them after they and their parents were asked.

Statistical analysis
Statistical analysis of the data was carried out with the SPSS 23 statistical package. The frequencies and percentages of answers to Achenbach [35] self-report questionnaires for children and adolescents, as well as the student's statements regarding the traumatic event were measured. Our results are presented in the form of graphs and tables. Figure 1 shows the rates of student responses in the self-report questionnaires for children and adolescents

4.8
Correlations Between the Questions from The Youth Self Report Questionnaire And The Variable The Variable Traumatic Event Experience Table 1 presents the correlations between the self-report questionnaires with variable traumatic event experience (** P <0.01 -* P <0.05). (Only results that were statistically significant)

4.9
Analysis of variance of self-report questionnaire for children and adolescents on the occurrence of a traumatic event Table 2 presents the analysis of variance of questions in the self-report questionnaire for children and adolescents on the occurrence of a traumatic event (one way anova). Only results that were statistically significant. For the statement: "I'm afraid to go to school" in the self-report questionnaire, the students who are victims of cyber bullying have a higher average than the students without reporting traumatic experience, the students who have experienced intrafamily conflicts-ugly divorce and students who have experienced neglect and noncommunication with a father. For the statement: "I'm afraid to think or do something bad", students who are victims of cyber bullying have a higher average than students without reporting traumatic experience, students who have experienced a threatening illness, inter-family conflicts-ugly divorce, and students who have experienced neglect and non-communication with a father. For the statement: "I feel inferior", students who have experienced neglect and non-communication with a father have a higher average than students without reporting traumatic experience. For the statement: "I prefer to be myself", students who have experienced the death of a family member show a higher average than the students without reporting traumatic experience. For the statement: "I'm easily embarrassed", students who have experienced neglect and non-communication with fathers have a higher average than students who have experienced family conflicts -ugly divorce. For the statements: "I think of suicide" and "I have no energy", students who have experienced family member death show a higher average than students without reporting traumatic experience. For the statement: "I feel unhappy" students who have experienced family member death show a higher average than the students without reporting traumatic experience and students who have experienced a threatening illness, inter-family conflicts-ugly divorce, and cyber-bullying students. Also, students who have experienced neglect and non-communication with a father have a higher average than students without reporting traumatic experience. For the statement: "I prefer to be myself rather than others", students who have experienced family member death show a higher average than the students without reporting traumatic experience, students who have experienced a threatening illness, domestic conflicts-ugly divorce, and neglect and noncommunication with a father. Also, students who have experienced neglect and noncommunication with a father have a higher average than students without reporting traumatic experience.

Conclusion
The results of our study show that the highest response averages are found in groups of adolescents who are victims of cyber-bullying, who have experienced family member death and neglect and non-communication with the father. Cyber bullying has been defined as 'an aggressive act or behavior that is carried out by the use of electronic means by a group or an individual repeatedly and over time against a victim who cannot easily defend himself [36]. Hence cyber bullying is a systematic abuse of power, which occurs through the use of information and communication technologies. Recent studies have investigated cyber bullying via a range of more specific media. They present seven main media ways described by secondary school pupils: mobile phone calls, text messages, picture/video clip bullying, e-mails, chat room, instant messaging, and websites [37]. When victims manage to defend themselves, negative psychological effects are diminished. However, when a victim finds no help or support, then the phenomenon can become particularly negative and the consequence on the victim's mental health extremely pernicious [38]. Studies showed that internalized fear might accompany the feeling of being defenseless, while an angry and reactive fear may feed a stress reaction. Stress, itself associated with reactive emotions such as anger, may support an attitude of either confrontation or avoidance. Frequently cyber bullying victims experience negative feelings over which they have little control and which affect their well being and influence in the school and wide social environment [39]. Furthermore researches demonstrated a link between suicidal ideation and experience with bullying and cyber bullying victimization [40]. Youth suicide is a significant public health concern. It is the third leading cause of death among young people. Review of many studies found a consistent association between being bullied and suicidal thoughts among youth. Furthermore, both perpetrators and targets of bullying and cyber bullying are at higher risk of depression, suicide ideation, and suicide attempts than adolescents not involved in bullying [41]. Additionally, victims of cyber bullying consistently report academic problems in relation to the preoccupation with the cyber bullying event. Students illustrated a sudden drop in their grades, increased absences and tense for social isolation, and emergent perceptions that school is no longer safe. Other serious academic problems such as cutting class, accumulating detentions and suspensions, and delinquent behavior are also reported. Decrements in academic performance can be credited to victims' poorer concentration and higher levels of frustration with the bully and situation [42].
Sample groups, who have experienced family member death and neglect and noncommunication with the father, have high averages in responses that particularly refer to feelings of isolation and misery. The results of the study confirm the international literature that claims that teenagers during their lamentation experience feelings of withdrawal and isolation from their normal activities. The findings are consistent with the international literature that claims that the teen mourns at intervals, which is due to his lack of strength to experience feelings of pain and sadness for a long time [43]. Also neglecting and not communicating with the father causes feelings of inferiority, isolation and misery. The absence of a parental pattern, at the time when the teen is experiencing a storm of both biological and social changes towards adulthood, creates a variety of negative emotions [44], [45].
Greece. During his educational career, he has also taught among others at Intrainstitutional and Inter-Institutional-Interdepartmental Master studies for the University of Athens and the Piraeus University of Applied Sciences, the Democritus University of Thrace and the Institute of Informatics and Telecommunications, NCSR "Demokritos". He has written books and articles in Greek and International journals.
Georgia Kokkalia (MSc in Specific Learning Difficulties) is a Special Education Teaching Professional and Phd Candidate in University of Athens. She has participated in various research projects regarding the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in Special Education and in Kindergarten Athanasios Drigas is a director of research at N.C.S.R. Demokritos. He is the Coordinator of Telecoms Lab and founder of Net Media Lab since 1996. From 1985 to 1999 he was the Operational manager of the Greek Academic network. He has been the Coordinator of Several International Projects, in the fields of ICTs, and e-services (e-learning, e-psychology, e-government, e-inclusion, e-culture etc). He has published more than 300 articles, 7 books, 25 educational CD-ROMs and several patents. He has been a member of several International committees for the design and coordination of Network and ICT activities and of international conferences and journals.
Article submitted 08 January 2018. Final acceptance 02 February 2018. Final version published as submitted by the authors.