Adolescents’ moral evaluations and ratings of cyberbullying: The effect of veracity and intentionality behind the event

•We examined adolescents’ ratings of cyberbullying events depicting false and true stories.•We studied the impact of participants’ age and their experience with cyberbullying in the evaluation of such events.•Adolescents evaluate as more negative online situations depicting false stories.•Younger adolescents have difficulties recognizing intentions underlying online situations.•Adolescents who have cyberbullied others are less severe than those who have not in their ratings.

The constant exposure to electronic media has increased the likelihood of adolescents experiencing hurtful events such as cyberbullying. The current study examined how adolescents’ moral evaluations of cyberbullying are affected by different aspects of the event including falsity of posts, power imbalance and intention to harm. Adolescents between 12–13 years of age (n = 77) and 15–16 years of age (n = 77) read moral vignettes and were asked to evaluate the actions of the protagonist. They were also asked if the behaviour in the vignette was an incident of cyberbullying. Participants also filled out a questionnaire about their own experiences with cyberbullying. It was found that adolescents evaluated as more negative those situations depicting false stories, imbalance of power, and intention to harm; Younger children had difficulties recognizing the intentions behind on-line posts. Adolescents who have cyber-intimidated others were less severe in their evaluations and less likely to rate vignettes as cyberbullying compared to other youth.