Epidemiology and study of risk and protective factors of cyberbullying with a developmental approach: a narrative review study

n this article, attempts to review with a developmental approach to cyberbullying, prevalence and risk and protective factors it. In the present narrative review article, which is done by the method of text research, articles about cyberbullying from 2010 to 2020 were published in the Google Scholar, ScienceDirect, Elsevier, Scopus, ProQuest, Springer, and PubMed databases were extracted and analyzed by searching for keywords for cyberbullying, cyber-aggression, cyber-victimization, cyberbullies, cyber victims, cyberbully-victims, cyber-harassment, and cyber-violence. Out of a total of 812 collected articles, 54 articles including research, review, and meta-analysis articles in the field of the prevalence of cyberbullying and its effective factors at different ages were selected and analyzed qualitatively based on the researcher's inference from sources and texts. Although there is a myriad of protective and risk factors at personality-Individual, family, peer, school, and community levels that are related to involvement in cyberbullying across a wide range of ages, existing research highlights significant gaps in our knowledge of these risk and protective factors. Research is particularly lacking for elementary grades and adulthood. In addition, there is significantly less attention across age groups to protective factors, compared to risk factors. Given the extent and variety of cyberbullying at different ages, the data suggest that policies and programs must be attuned to developmental differences in the nature and prevalence of cyberbullying, as well as the risk and protective factors that are salient for particular age groups.