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ABSTRACT
Internet trolls, often equated with online harassment, have gained public notoriety of late. As a result, this preliminary study was undertaken to explore the extent of trolling victimization of undergraduate business students, those that will be responsible for business communication in the future. Findings suggest that although there are five primary social networking sites utilized by students, nearly half of students had been trolled within the past six months and each student was trolled more than one time per month. Twitter users accounted for the largest percentage of students that were trolled while Snapchat and Instagram users had the highest incidence per victim. There were, however, mixed results with regard to the relationship between online social media usage time and trolling. Results imply that proactive and reactive measures may need to be implemented to minimize activity and assist victims in adequately dealing with the pressures and negative issues such as depression that may be associated with being trolled.
INTRODUCTION
Social media usage has seen incredible growth since 2010. A survey of more than 800 small business owners, for example, found that from 2010 to 2013, the percentage of businesses using LinkedIn increased from 37% to 57% (Ickert and McCracken, 2013). Facebook increased from 33% to 50%, Twitter increased from 12% to 26%, Google+ increased from 0% to 24%, YouTube increased from 0% to 19%, Pinterest increased from 0% to 6%, and Instagram increased from 0% to 2%. By August 2016, Twitter had 310 million monthly active users and LinkedIn had 106 million (Fortune, 2016). Moreover, in 2013, only 24% of US smartphone users age 18-24, 5% age 25-34 (millennials), and 2% age 35+ used the Snapchat app (Lella, 2016). By 2016, the user base had grown dramatically to 69% of smartphone users age 18-24, 38% age 25-34, and 14% age 35+. Interestingly, in 2014, 70% or 28 million online individuals age 51-70 had a Facebook account as compared to 88% of millennials (Carstensen, 2016; Wallis, 2014).
In concert with the increased usage of social media has been the increase in related challenges. The Internet Security Threat Report, for instance, indicates that social media remains problematic with regard to scammers leveraging the trust users have in their own social circles to spread scams, fake...