Girls, Friendships, and Cyberbullying

[Dr. Elizabeth Englander]: You know, one of the things that we find in my lab is that the intensity of the relationships between girls is quite different from the intensity of the relationships between boys. That girls tend to have strong, supportive relationships with other girls. They tend to be more invested in these relationships. They tend to be more interested in these relationships and to some extent that lends itself to social problems as well, because then social problems like cyberbullying tend to be more intense as well. So a lot of the conflicts and cyberbullying that we see that is different for girls specifically follows a lot of what we see between girls in person. So we may find, for example, that kids get into a bullying situation and that boys sort of get past it more quickly and that girls tend to be more intense about it.