## 4 Discussion  
The aim of this work was to describe the coping strategies adopted by young adult self-declared victims of cyberstalking. As described below, this phenomenon mainly affects young adults since they are more prone than others to use the internet and technology to keep in touch with friends and relatives [1; 2]. As a consequence, they are also more prone than others to be victims of some forms of violence. When the misconduct is repeated over time and the persecutor intentionally causes the victim to have a feeling of fear (for their safety or for others close to victim), the phenomenon is called cyberstalking. Findings from this investigation confirmed that among victims, females were more prone than males to experience cyberstalking (respectively, 65% and 35%) [11; 14], with females experiencing a higher percentage of more than one form of cyberstalking behavior than males. Young adult male victims used the internet principally for online gaming, and for this activity, they experienced more cyberstalking behavior than females (these latest data confirmed the results of [PERSON] and colleagues [4]). In most cases, the perpetrator was a male, and the victim-cyberstalker relationship was a friendship or an acquaintance. For the coping strategies adopted, the findings indicated that the victims were more prone to use avoidance tactics than proactivity behavior and passivity strategies, confirming the results from [PERSON] and colleagues [22] and not those from [PERSON] and [PERSON] [20]. Thus, hypothesis 1 of the present study was not confirmed. Young adults involved in this investigation mainly used avoidance tactics to cope with the stressful situation, which implies that they preferred to decrease the use of the internet or stop online contact than collect evidence and try to contact and reason with the cyberstalker or increase the misuse of alcohol of psychotropic substances. Moreover, females were less prone to use proactive behavior than expected. According to [PERSON] [23], our hypothesis was that females were more prone than males to use these coping strategies; however, our findings did not support this hypothesis. Our findings suggested that males were more prone than females to adopt passivity strategies, while females were more prone to adopt avoidance tactics. An interesting \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l c c c} \hline  & **BDI** & **STAIY1** & **STAIY2** \\ \hline Proactive coping & 0.09 & 0.06 & 0.06 \\ Avoidance coping & 0.15 & 0.13 & 0.06 \\ Passivity coping & 0.39 ** & 0.17\({}^{*}\) & 0.25 ** \\ \hline \end{tabular} \({}^{*}\) The correlation is significant at the 0.05 level. \({}^{**}\) The correlation is significant at the 0.01 level.  
\end{table} 
Table 7: Coping strategies, depression, anxiety: Pearson bivariate correlations in victims (\(n=180\)). \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l c c c} \hline  & **BDI** & **STAIY1** & **STAIY2** \\ \hline  & FEMALES/MALES & FEMALES/MALES & FEMALES/MALES \\ Proactive coping & 0.13/0.02 & 0.01/0.18 & 0.05/0.12 \\ Avoidance coping & 0.19/0.10 & 0.12/0.17 & 0.09/0.09 \\ Passivity coping & 0.48 **/0.39 ** & 0.29 **/0.098 & 0.39 **/0.12 \\ \hline \end{tabular} \({}^{*}\) The correlation is significant at the 0.05 level. ** The correlation is significant at the 0.01 level.  
\end{table} 
Table 8: Coping strategies, depression, anxiety: Pearson bivariate correlations in female (\(n=117\)) and male (\(n=63\)) victims. finding was about the relationship among cyberstalking behavior and coping strategies adopted by victims. The data showed that proactivity behavior was adopted more in the case of online contacts and online identity fraud, while passivity strategies were adopted in the case of online threats. This is very interesting because it gives us some suggestions about prevention. It would be useful, for example, to direct information campaigns or law enforcement not only toward the importance of the request for help but also including the message that some coping strategies could be used effectively to cope with cyberstalking behavior.