CYBERBULLYING

Patchin and Hinduja (2006) found that 60% of their bullying survey sample had been ignored by others online, 50% had been disrespected by others, almost 30% had been called names, and 21.4% reported being threatened by others while online. Also, many of the youth reported that they had been picked on by others (19.8%) and 19.3% reported that someone had made fun of them online. Another major concern about cyberbullying is that it is very easy for students to spread rumors about others, to a large population. In this study, 18.8% of the respondents had reported that they were the victim of rumor-spreading online. Online bullying has become a large problem within and outside of our schools. In this same study, 30% of adolescent respondents reported that they had been the victim of some sort of online bullying. Though this study involved people from many ages, they limited their conclusions to those who were 9-17 years old. Patchin and Hinduja (2006) also discovered that gender was not a factor in the prevalence of cyberbullying. Traditional bullying usually occurs among boys more often than girls, but cyberbullying occurs equally across genders. Another study reported that most victims were cyberbullied by other students in one of their classes (20.7%) or in their same class/year (28.0%). None of the victims reported being cyberbullied by students who were in a lower class/year than them. When the victims were asked to report the gender of their attacker, 25.7% of the victims reported that they did not know the gender of their attackers. Some of the victims reported that they knew they were being attacked by one boy (24.3%) or one girl (21.4%). Cyberbullies oftentimes attack individuals in groups. The victims reported that 18.6% of them knew they were being attacked by a group of girls and 7.1 % were attacked by a group of boys. Of the victims, 3% reported that they were victimized by a group of boys and girls (Smith et aI., 2008). Students use different electronic