At the Cyberbullying Research Center we have been collecting data from middle and high school students since 2002. We have surveyed more than 35,000 students from middle and high schools from across the United States in fourteen unique projects. The following two charts show the percent of respondents who have experienced cyberbullying at some point in their lifetime across our twelve most recent studies. Our two earliest studies (from 2004 and 2005) are excluded from this because they were online convenience samples and therefore cannot be easily compared to the other studies. The thirteen most recent cyberbullying studies have all been random samples of known populations which allows for improved reliability, validity, and generalizability. Even though we present these data as bar charts over time, it is risky to compare rates over time given that each study represents a different sample. This is especially true of our earlier school-based samples. Since 2016, though, our samples have all been selected from a national US population to be representative of the population of youth on the basis of age, gender, race, and region of the country. Please see our Research in Review addendum for more details about each of the samples.
As illustrated in the chart above, the rates of cyberbullying victimization have varied over the years we have studied the phenomenon. On average, about 31% of the students who have been a part of our most recent 13 studies have said they have been the victim of cyberbullying at some point in their lifetime. The rates of cyberbullying offending have also varied among the research studies we have conducted. On average, about 16% of the students who have been a part of our last 12 studies have admitted that they have cyberbullied others at some point in their lifetime. Note that we did not collect cyberbullying offending data in 2023. (click on the images for a larger versions)
When it comes to more recent experiences, an average of about 13% of students have been cyberbullied across all of our studies within the 30 days prior to the survey. There does appear to be a trend over the last several years of this rate increasing steadily. For offending, across all of our studies, 6% of students admit to cyberbullying others. Again a reminder that we did not collect offending data in 2023. (click on the images for a larger versions)
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