Economic+Impact+and+Statistics

Cyber bullying has dramatically increased over the past few years. 10-40% of youth have experienced some form of cyber bullying in their lifetime. This is such a wide range because cyberbullying is more common in some age group as opposed to others. (Hinduja and Patchin, 2010a) This is an extremely high percentage of teenagers but the real problem is created when only 100% of them are telling their parents and 18% reported the crime to law enforcement agencies. Nothing can be done about the problem if law enforcement and other agencies do not know how often it is occurring. (Cyber Bully Alert, 2008) In a study done by Hinduja and Patchin, in 2010, 20% of the randomly-selected 4,400 11-18 year old students said they have been a victim of cyberbullying at some point in time. Shockingly, about the same number admitted that they have cyber-bullied someone else. There was also 10% of people who said have both been cyber-bullied and have bullied at least one of their peers. (Hinduja and Patchin, 2010a) When the National Crime Prevention Council asked teenagers why they think people bully others, 81% of them said that the bullies think it is funny. They also said that they don't think it is a big deal and they will not get caught doing it. (National Crime Prevention Council, 2006) In traditional bullying, usually boys report getting bullied physically more often and girls get cyber/verbal bullied more often. (Beran and Qing, 2005) This could be caused by girls being on the internet and their cell phone more often. It has also been shown that girls are more likely to be the ones who are targeting others and bullying them online. There is a direct correlation between the growth of social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace and the growth of reported cyberbullying incidents. These social networking sites are just another tool used by the bullies to reach more people over the internet. (Cyber Bully Alert, 2008)

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