Traditional school bullying has been a problem for decades. While the researchers and educators tried to prevent traditional school bullying, as the computer and the Internet usage increases among adolescents, cyber bullying which was defined as “sending or posting harmful or cruel text or images using the Internet or other digital communication devices” (Willard, 2005, p.2) to hurt others exists as a new problem. Sending hurtful SMS or e-mails, insulting people in the chat room, slandering people by using fake photos of them on the Internet could be listed as acts of cyber bullying. In order to determine those who are in the risk group of being a cyber or traditional bully and prevent them before engaging in bullying as well as conducting intervention studies at schools, researchers examined cyber and traditional bullying with regard to age and gender. Males reported more frequent traditional bullying experience than female (Scheithauer, Hayer, Petermann & Jugert, 2006). However, researchers failed to report consistent results for gender difference in cyber bullying. For some researchers, males cyber bullied others more than females (Li, 2006), and for some other researchers, there wasn’t significant difference between males’ and females’ cyber bullying experience (Syts, 2004). Additionally, a third group of researchers hypothesized that females’ cyber bullying experience exceed males’ because cyber bullying was considered as relational type of bullying which was performed by females frequently (Keith & Martin, 2005). The age distribution of bullying was investigated as well. Traditional bullying seems to peak during 6th and 9th grades (Scheithauer, et al., 2006). Similarly, Williams and Guerra (2007) claimed that cyber bullying peaked at the middle school ages. On the other hand, Kowalski and Limber (2007) investigated the age and gender interaction on cyber bullying experience and found a significant interaction effect which indicated that for females, as the age increases cyber bullying experience decreases whereas, for males as the age increases cyber bullying experience increases. Therefore, the main aim of the study is to examine the age and gender differences of Turkish adolescents in terms of cyber and traditional bullying experience in order to determine the risky age group and gender for engaging in cyber and traditional bullying.

Data was collected from 717 adolescents who aged between 13 and 21 living in Ankara and Sinop. Cyber Bullying Inventory (CBI; Erdur-Baker & Kavşut, 2007) was revised and Traditional Bullying Questionnaire (TBQ) was developed for the present study. The revised CBI includes 26 statements and TBQ includes 7 statements to measure bullying experience on a 4-point Likert scale (1=never to 4=more than three times). The exploratory factor analyses yielded in one-factor solution for both CBI and TBQ. By means of confirmatory factor analyses one-factor solution was confirmed for both scales. Cronbach alpha coefficient was .86 for CBI; and .78 for TBQ. A demographic form asking age and gender of the participants was utilized for data collection. 2 (gender) X 7 (age groups) MANOVA was utilized. Age was grouped into seven categories; ages 13-14; and 20-21 were added up due to low cell size.

Results indicated that for both cyber and traditional bullying, male participants reported more frequent experience than females. Neither age nor interaction of age and gender has a significant effect on cyber and traditional bullying. The findings of the present study would be helpful to adolescents, parents, school counselors and educators and will shed light for future researchers. The studies conducted on cyber bullying are aimed to understand the nature of cyber bullying and prevent it before it occurs if possible. Preventing adolescents before they engaged in cyber bullying is important for keeping the potential cyber victims safe. In summary, this study found that especially males were in the risk group for both types of bullying. Therefore, parents and teachers should have extra attention and care for at risk adolescents.