Bullying at School, Cyberbullying, and Loneliness: National Representative Study of Adolescents in Denmark

Aims: The aim was to examine how loneliness was associated with bullying victimization at school and online.

Methods: We used data from the Danish arm of the international Health Behavior in School-aged Children (HBSC) study from 2022. The study population was a nationally representative sample of 11–15-year-olds who completed the internationally standardized HBSC questionnaire at school, n = 5382. Multilevel logistic regression was applied to study the associations between bullying victimization and loneliness.

Results: The prevalence of reporting loneliness often or very often was 9.0%; 6.3% of the sample experienced habitual bullying victimization at school, and 4.8% incurred cyberbullying. There was a strong and graded association between loneliness and bullying victimization at school and cyberbullying. The associations were significant for boys and girls, and the association between exposure to bullying at school and loneliness was steeper for boys than girls. The gradients were steeper for physical bullying than for cyberbullying. Students exposed to habitual bullying in both contexts had an adjusted OR (95% CI) of 11.21 (6.99–17.98) for loneliness.

Conclusion: Exposure to bullying at school and cyberbullying are strongly associated with loneliness. It is important to reduce bullying at school and on the internet and to promote effective interventions to reduce continuing loneliness.