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A 2026 study of 4,280 students in 13 Brazilian schools found that cyberbullying did not form a separate, purely online group in the analysis that best fit its data. Instead, reported online involvement appeared within profiles that also included traditional bullying. That is evidence of overlap in this sample—not proof that cyberbullying always grows out of school conflict or that bullying causes mental-health symptoms or substance use.
What did the study find?
The study, published in Psychiatry Research on 22 July 2026, used latent class analysis to group students according to reported involvement in bullying and cyberbullying. Its best-fitting model identified three profiles: “Uninvolved,” “Predominantly Traditional Victimized,” and “Multicontext Victim-Perpetrators.” It did not identify either a purely cyber-involved group or a pure aggressor group, according to the journal article record and abstract.
In other words, the analysis found that online bullying was not isolated from traditional bullying in the model’s profiles. It did not establish which form came first, or whether one causes the other.
How the three profiles differed
Agência FAPESP’s October 2026 account of the study gives the following approximate shares and descriptions. These percentages are from the institutional coverage, rather than figures independently verified here against the journal article’s full tables.
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| Profile | Share reported by FAPESP | Reported pattern |
|---|---|---|
| Uninvolved | 48% | No significant association with violence, as summarized by FAPESP. |
| Predominantly Traditional Victimized | 46% | Frequently bullied at school, sometimes bullied others, and rarely involved in cyberbullying. |
| Multicontext Victim-Perpetrators | 6% | Involved as both targets and perpetrators across traditional and online contexts. |
The figures describe profile shares in the study sample; they are not estimates of how common these experiences are among adolescents generally.
What was associated with multicontext involvement?
The journal abstract reports that the multicontext victim-perpetrator profile was more strongly associated with psychological symptoms and substance use. It reports no association with screen time. These are associations, not evidence that bullying caused the outcomes or that screen time explains involvement.
FAPESP reported that 52.4% of students in the multicontext group had psychological symptoms at a clinically significant level, compared with 12.5% of students not involved in bullying. It also reported that seven in ten students in the multicontext group had consumed alcohol at some point in their lives. These figures are the funder’s account of the findings; the journal abstract does not provide the full estimates or methods needed to interpret them as causal effects.
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What “extension of school violence” means—and what it does not
Study coordinator Zila Sanchez, head of UNIFESP’s Department of Preventive Medicine, told Agência FAPESP: “Sanchez said that violence against the same young person occurs both at school and online, indicating that cyberbullying is often an extension of in-person conflict.” That is Sanchez’s interpretation as quoted in the institutional coverage, not a direct quotation from the journal article.
The wording “often an extension” should be understood in light of the study’s design and sample. The analysis grouped reported involvement patterns at one point in the study; it did not track a sequence proving that in-person bullying leads to cyberbullying. Nor does the absence of a pure cyber-involved class in the best-fitting model rule out that pattern in other students, schools, countries, or analyses.
Who took part, and how widely do the results apply?
The journal record describes a census-based sample of 4,280 students in grades 7–12 from 13 schools in Brazil. FAPESP’s English-language account rounds the sample to 4,200. The study’s profile percentages should therefore be read as results for this particular group, not as a global adolescent prevalence estimate.
The journal abstract does not state the specific measures, recruitment dates, confidence intervals, or full model comparisons. Those details are needed to assess the estimates and modeling choices more fully. The article’s bibliographic record and abstract are available from Psychiatry Research and PubMed.
How the findings relate to a school program
FAPESP reported that the findings contributed to Prisma, a program launched in São Paulo in 2026 for eighth- and ninth-grade students. The release said the program was being tested in 36 state schools across six cities, involving nearly 5,000 adolescents, with teacher training and student lessons on substance-use prevention, bullying, cyberbullying, and emotional education. Those are reported program details, not evidence that Prisma has been shown to work; initial follow-up results were expected after the end of 2026.
Best Value
FAPESP also described the study as part of Prev.Action, a thematic project evaluating adolescent alcohol-prevention strategies in four municipalities in São Paulo state. The program context does not change what the bullying analysis itself can establish.
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