HUBUNGAN ANTARA ANONIMITAS DENGAN CYBERBULLYING PADA REMAJA PENGGUNA MEDIA SOSIAL

Technological developments, including in this digital world, provide positive opportunities for humans to interact through social media. Teenagers are a community group that actively interacts through social media. In addition to positive opportunities, social media also leads to negative consequences, such as cyberbullying that occurs on social media, likely related to anonymous behaviour that refers to an individual's attempt to hide their real identity when interacting on social media. This study aimed to determine the relationship between anonymity and cyberbullying. Three hundred eighty-five active social media users aged 18 – 21 participated in this quantitative study. Active social media users were recruited based on accidental sampling. Participants filled out an anonymity scale and a cyberbullying scale. The results showed a significantly positive relationship between anonymity and cyberbullying, where the higher the level of anonymity, the higher the level of cyberbullying. Teenage boys and girls tend to use Instagram social media. In addition, most male and female participants fall into the moderate category on three aspects of anonymity (unlikability, unobservability, pseudonymity). In cyberbullying, most male participants fall into the low category in the aspect of intention. In contrast, most female participants belong to the low category regarding power imbalance and intention. The implications of different research findings based on gender can be a reference to the interaction of positive associations between anonymity and cyberbullying in adolescent social media users.