Study Finds Increase in Cyber-Bullying

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

In the wake of the Megan Meier case comes a study that says that all forms of cyber-bullying, including text message as well as Internet-based bullying, are on the rise.

Hateful text messages, abusive e-mails and cyber-gossip are giving bullies new power over their victims — even in the supposed safety of their own homes, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.

“Internet bullying has emerged as a new and growing form of social cruelty,” Kirk Williams and Nancy Guerra of the University of California at Riverside wrote in one of a series of reports published in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

The reports, from researchers organized by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, show a 50 percent increase in the number of kids aged 10 to 17 who said they were harassed online — from 6 percent in 2000 to 9 percent in 2005. Source: Reuters

We Say: What surprised me the most was that 2/3 of the victims had never been bullied before. So what, are we opening up a new way of bullying and a new population of victims, due to the anonymity of a lot of these methods?