Cyber Bullying Statistics & Cyber Bullying Facts

Cyber Bullying Statistics

Statistics suggest that 40 to 50% of teens have been victims of cyberbullying. To effectively prevent and combat this lethal form of bullying, you must understand how it works.

There are two broad and overlapping categories of cyberbullying: “Direct” and “Proxy.”

Direct cyberbullying happens when cyberbullies directly attack the victim via texts, email, or posts on their own social media. For example, cyberbullies might send a death-threat instant message, send unauthorized pictures of the victim to hundreds or thousands of people, or post degrading information about the victim on the cyberbully’s Facebook page.

Proxy cyberbullying involves an unwitting (most of the time) third party whom cyberbullies set up to do the damage for them. For example, cyberbullies might copy information and pictures from the victim’s Instagram or Facebook account and upload the information and photos to a Web site that traffics children and teens. The traffickers and pedophiles who contact or stalk the victim become the unwitting co-conspirators in the cyberbullying.

Cyber Bullying Facts

How Cyber bullying Works:

Instant messaging
- Cyberbullies send cruel, nasty IMs (instant messages) or texts, death threats, and compromising videos and pictures.
- In collusion with other bullies, they send thousands of texts to the victim, resulting in huge cell-phone bills.
- In collusion with others, they repeatedly report the victim to the victim’s service provider, resulting in the victim’s provider closing the victim’s account. The provider is especially likely to close the account if the victim has attempted to defend himself by retaliating.
- They pose as the victim by creating a username almost identical to the victim and, posing as the victim, engage in cyberbullying

Password stealing – Once they steal a password, cyberbullies can:
- Lock the victim out of his or her accounts.
- Pose as the victim to engage in cyberbullying
- Change the victim’s social-media profiles to make them inappropriate, obscene, racist, etc.
- Hack into the victim’s computer, cell phone, and other electronic devices.

Blogs, Web Sites, Social Media
- Can be created and used by cyberbullies to spread rumors about another person, stalk, bully, sabotage, and post personal information, pictures, and videos of another person.

Email and Texting
- Cyberbullies obtain unauthorized, sometimes lewd or obscene, pictures of the victim, often from the victim’s own accounts, and send the pictures to everyone in the cyberbully’s address book.
- They post unauthorized pictures of the victim to a Web site or file-sharing program from which anyone can download them. Sometimes cyberbullies Photoshop legitimate pictures to degrade the victim.

Junk Mail
- Cyberbullies add their victim’s name to in appropriate mailing lists, such as porn sites, and the victim starts receiving thousands of emails from the site.

Malicious Code
- Cyberbullies can hack into a victim’s computer, control it, and stalk the victim, or they can destroy the computer altogether by sending viruses and other destructive codes to the victim.

Posing as the Victim
- Far and away, impersonating the victim is one of the most serious and damaging kinds of cyberbullying. Impersonation begins when cyberbullies gain control of the victim’s online accounts or gain access to the victim’s computer. Cyberbullies then have access not only to the victim’s accounts but also to personal information about the victim that can be passed on to unknowing, albeit dangerous, third parties.
- Cyberbullies pretend to be the victim and instigate attacks against the victim by attacking others, especially others who are potentially dangerous to the victim, such as a hate group. Cyberbullies attack from the victim’s email or social-media accounts, and the recipients of the attacks believe the attack is coming from the victim and retaliate.
- Cyberbullies send nasty, cruel, rude, or inappropriate messages and email from the victim’s email account to everyone in the victim’s address book.
- Cyberbullies change the victim’s passwords so that the victim has no access to his email or social-media accounts.
- Cyberbullies post profiles of the victim on prostitution sites frequented by child molesters and traffickers.

Protecting Yourself and Your Children Against Cyberbullies:

Keep the security settings on social-media accounts at the highest settings possible. Learn how here: Facebook Instagram Twitter

On Facebook, you can control who sees your posts, who can find you using search, how much of your personal information is shared online, whether posts you are tagged in need to be viewed and approved by you before showing on your timeline, and who can comment among other things. Click here to navigate to Facebook’s online help on setting this up.

Only add people you actually know in real life and be careful of friend requests you receive from people already on your friends list. It may be a hacker or another person posing as your friend in order to gain access to your posts and shared information. Always check with your friend via phone or in person before accepting a second request.

On Instagram, your profile is automatically set to public when you sign up, but you can change this to only allow approved followers to see your profile, images, posts and other information. You will have to be in the mobile app to do this, it can’t be done from a desktop. See how here.

Twitter allows users to protect their tweets, making them available only to approved followers. You can also prevent users from finding your account by your name, email or screen name and, for added security, enable login verification, which sends a unique code to your phone that you have to enter along with your password before you can access the account. This means a hacker cannot get in with just your password. Find out how in the Security and Privacy section here.

Avoid sending intimate messages and photos (“sexting”). These messages can be hijacked by another person, or used later by a disgruntled ex, and be sent to thousands of other people.

Don’t share compromising pictures, information, or messages online.

Be careful when using mobile apps like Snapchat, which were designed to automatically and permanently deletes messages, photos, and videos seconds after they are viewed, but have been hacked in the past, and there are multiple secondary apps out there to permanently capture and save the images, messages and videos sent. The best rule is never to send an image or video you would be uncomfortable with everyone seeing.

Block cyberbullies from email, phone contact, video-conferencing software (like Skype), and social media. A quick Google search on the privacy settings for your email service, phone device and model, or other video or social media account will direct you on how to do this.

Never respond to cyberbullies. Not only does responding encourage cyberbullies; it also jeopardizes you in any legal proceedings that may result.

Never delete the messages and attacks of cyberbullies.

Always tell an adult you trust about any attempt at cyberbullying.

Report to the police any threats to harm you.

Report cyberbullying to the attacker’s Internet provider and/or social-media sites. See how at the following links, view the comprehensive list from the Cyberbullying Research Center, or Google the specific site or provider to get information on how to report cyberbullying. Facebook Instagram Twitter Comcast

See the Cyberbullying Research Center’s list on How to Report on Various Sites, Messaging centers, phone service providers, etc. for a more comprehensive list here.

Consider advocating the adoption of an anonymous bullying reporting app for your child’s school, university, or your workplace. Find out more on one of the top apps, StopIt here.
See an article on a list of Anti-Bullying apps available from AT&T for your or your child’s phones here.

Educate yourself and your kids on cyberbullying, it’s impacts, how to react if it happens to them, and what to do to protect themselves and others. Visit sites such as StopBullying.gov to learn more and consider watching films like Cyberbully (UK – 2015) and Cyberbully (US – 2011) as a family. Check Parental Guidance ratings to ensure the material is appropriate for your child’s age group.

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