A new report has revealed the true extent of online bullying as well as the impact it is having on young women. It shows that 53% of teenagers have had their photograph posted online to embarrass them, and nearly one in five teens have been threatened online.
The research by the University of Buckingham and Sir John Cass’s Foundation included detailed interviews with children and parents and found that online bullying and in-person bullying were linked - with one-third of the children in the study being bullied both online and offline.
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The teenagers interviewed revealed that the consequences of this online bullying meant they sometimes didn’t want to go to school because they were scared, and some recounted having fake social media accounts set up for them by bullies, who then posted fake pornographic images on them.
Only 7.2% of the parents surveyed thought that their child had been threatened online - in reality, this had happened to one in five teens.
Another study released this week highlights some of the debilitating effects of bullying and hyperconnectivity on young people.
A new report from the University of Manchester has revealed that self-harm among teenage girls is up 68% in three years, and self-harm among young people aged 10-19 was three times more common among girls than boys.
The study also found that those who self-harm are more likely to commit suicide later on, between 2001 and 2014, on average 37.4 girls per 10,000 and just over 12 boys per 10,000 reported their first episode of self-harm and self-harming is more common among teenagers in deprived areas.
We're living our lives increasingly online, it's clear that behaviours - like bullying - which occur anyway are as bad, if not worse, online than they are in real life. The question is what needs to be done to protect young women from this sort of thing and ensure that what goes on on the Internet isn't negatively impacting them IRL.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.