Cyber bullying in Australia explodes as victims become online trolls

The truth about who is a cyber bully in Australia has shocked researchers. Here are the signs to look for.

Cyber bullying victims are turning trolls themselves inflicting the same online abuse they endured on to others.

Psychology researcher Dr Evita March was told the issue of cyber bullying would be a “flash in the pan” when she began investigating it a decade ago.

Instead, Dr March said it has gotten far worse over time, and shows no sign of slowing down.

“Across a number of studies now over a number of years, I have found that there are two personality traits that are pretty reliably associated with trolling behaviours,” the Federation University researcher said.

She said the first trait was “psychopathy – so being callous, lacking a personal responsibility for your behaviour and lacking guilt for your actions”.

Dr March features in a documentary Haters Online: Erin Molan Fights Back by Sky News and radio host Erin Molan which tackles the issue of cyber bullying head-on.

Online trolls all show similar key traits, research shows.

“But also sadism, so enjoying causing other people’s psychological and physical harm. They have pretty reliably now emerged as strong predictors of trolling,” Dr March said.

She said trolling is now becoming more mainstream because it is being “normalised”.

“What I have learned is the more it becomes normalised the more likely we are to engage in it ourselves, even if we maybe didn’t wouldn’t have done that,” she said.

People who had high sadism were even prepared to risk harm to themselves – if it meant hurting someone else.

“They are intent on hurting somebody and they can be quite good at it,” Dr March said.

Dr Evita March, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Federation University. She appears in Sky News documentary Haters Online: Erin Molan Fights Backs. Picture Supplied

She is about to delve into new research she hopes will shed light on the people behind this abuse – investigating a new personality trait about people who thrived on “chaos”.

“And I’m going to go out on a limb and say that people who are trolling are going to be higher on the need for chaos. They actually quite liked creating that mayhem.”

Dr March has been gathering data she hopes to publish over the next year in a further attempt to uncover why people are causing so much misery by examining the mental health of cyber bullies.

“Things like how depression, anxiety and stress … Those strains can exacerbate trolling behaviours,” she said.

A real-life case study played out during the pandemic and the lockdown when large numbers of people, under stress, went online and lashed out.

Erin Molan is investigating the issue of online trolls.

“Those reports and increase of abuse is actually is good evidence for that theory that people were frustrated and stressed unable to get out do things and see people and so they were more likely to abuse people online.”

eSafety research during the pandemic showed nearly 40 per cent of Australians had a negative experience, from unwanted contact to being sent inappropriate contact, to deliberately being provoked to cause an argument.

Separate research by eSafety found about 80 per cent of Australians had a good understanding negative things could happen online, over half were not confident dealing with cyber bullying.

Haters Online: Erin Molan Fights Back available to subscribers from October 22.