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Cyberbullying - Could my child be involved?
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Read the Full Report: Online Victimization of Youth: Five Years Later (2006)
Produced in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center, this second groundbreaking national survey of 1,500 youth aged 10 to 17 documented their use of the Internet and experiences while online including unwanted exposure to sexual solicitation, sexual material, and harassment. And it includes recommendations to help make the Internet safer for children. The 2006 report is referred to as YISS-2; YISS-1 refers to the original study released in 1999.
In YISS-2, compared to YISS-1, increased proportions of youth Internet users were encountering unwanted exposures to sexual material and online harassment, but decreased proportions were receiving unwanted sexual solicitations.
In YISS-2 more than one-third of youth Internet users (34%) saw sexual material online they did not want to see in the past year compared to one quarter (25%) in YISS-1.
The increase in exposure to unwanted sexual material occurred despite increased use of filtering, blocking, and monitoring software in households of youth Internet users. More than half of parents and guardians with home Internet access (55%) said there was such software on the computers their children used compared to one-third (33%) in YISS-1.
Online harassment also increased to 9% of youth Internet users in YISS-2 from 6% in YISS-1.
A smaller proportion of youth Internet users received unwanted sexual solicitations in YISS-2 than in YISS-1. Approximately 1 in 7 (13%) was solicited in YISS-2, compared to approximately 1 in 5 (19%) in YISS-1; however, aggressive solicitations, in which solicitors made or attempted to make offline contact with youth, did not decline.
Four (4) percent of youth Internet users received aggressive solicitations — a proportion similar to the 3% who received aggressive solicitations in YISS-1.
In YISS-2 there were also declines in the proportions of youth Internet users who communicated online with people they did not know in person (34% down from 40% in YISS-1) or who formed close online relationships with people they met online (11% down from 16%).
Four (4) percent of all youth Internet users in YISS-2 said online solicitors asked them for nude or sexually explicit photographs of themselves.
As in YISS-1 only a minority of youth who had unwanted sexual solicitations, unwanted exposures to sexual material, or harassment said they were distressed by the incidents. The number of youth with distressing exposures to unwanted sexual material increased to 9% of all youth in YISS-2 from 6% in YISS-1.
Acquaintances played a growing role in many of the unwanted solicitation incidents. In YISS-2, 14% of solicitations were from offline friends and acquaintances compared to only 3% in YISS-1. The same was true of harassers. Forty-four (44) percent were offline acquaintances, mostly peers, compared to 28% in YISS-1. In addition a portion of these unwanted incidents happened when youth were using the Internet in the company of peers — 41% of solicitations, 29% of exposures, and 31% of harassment.
As in YISS-1 few overall incidents of solicitation or unwanted exposure (5% and 2% respectively in YISS-2 and 9% and 3% respectively in YISS-1) were reported to law enforcement, Internet service providers, or other authorities.
Recent studies also have shown that:
18% of students in grades 6-8 said they had been cyberbullied at least once in the last couple of months; and 6% said it had happened to them 2 or more times (Kowalski et al., 2005).
11% of students in grades 6-8 said they had cyberbullied another person at least once in the last couple of months, and 2% said they had done it two or more times (Kowalski et al., 2005).
19% of regular Internet users between the ages of 10 and 17 reported being involved in online aggression; 15% had been aggressors, and 7% had been targets (3% were both aggressors and targets) (Ybarra & Mitchell, 2004).
17% of 6-11 year-olds and 36% of 12-17-year-olds reported that someone said threatening or embarrassing things about them through e-mail, instant messages, web sites, chat rooms, or text messages (Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, 2006).
Cyber bullying has increased in recent years. In nationally representative surveys of 10-17 year-olds, twice as many children and youth indicated that they had been victims and perpetrators of online harassment in 2005 compared with 1999/2000 (Wolak, Mitchell, & Finkelhor, 2006).
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