New research suggests that cyberbullying is less emotionally harmful than harassment that only occurs in person, Medical Daily reported.

Researchers at the University of New Hampshire found that cyberbullying that starts and stays online may be less harmful and disturbing to children than in-person bullying because it's likelier to be of shorter duration and not involve significant power imbalances.

For the study, researchers collected and analyzed data from the Technology Harassment Victimization and focused on telephone interviews conducted in 2013-2014 with nearly 800 American youth between the ages of 10 and 20 years.

Of this group, 34 percent reported 311 harassment incidents in the prior year. Among the harassment incidents, 54 percent were in-person only; 15 percent involved technology only; and 31 percent involved a combination of the two, Examiner reported.

Although technology-only incidents were more likely to involve large numbers of witnesses, they were least likely to involve multiple perpetrators.

"Technology-only incidents were less likely than in-person only incidents to result in injury, involve a social power differential and to have happened a series of times," Kimberly J. Mitchell, lead author of the study, said in a statement. "Mixed episodes, those that involved both in-person and technology elements, were more likely than technology-only episodes to involve perpetrators who knew embarrassing things about the victim, happen a series of times, last for one month or longer, involve physical injury and start out as joking before becoming more serious. It is these mixed episodes that appear to be the most distressing to youth."

The new findings suggest that technology-based bullying - despite having the ability to reach the targets any time of the day or night -- does not increase the seriousness and level of distress associated with peer harassment.

"Instead, data from this study indicated that factors such as duration, power imbalance, injury, sexual content, involvement of multiple perpetrators, and hate/bias comments are some of the key factors that increase youth distress," said Heather Turner, co-author of the study.

The findings are detailed in the journal Psychology of Violence.