With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that the team at Atlas VPN has recently done some research which revealed that around 45% of Gen Z users face some kind of cyberbullying during their time online. The research involved a survey of over 2,500 students, or 2,546 to be precise, and much of this data also came from statistics provided by the Cyberbullying Research Center.
One thing to note about this research is that it has shown a marked increase in cyberbullying since 2014. Back in 2014, around 34.6% of survey respondents cited facing cyberbullying on social media and other types of internet platforms. This means that in just 8 years the incidents of cyberbullying have risen by over 10 percentage points.
However, most of this growth was seen in just two years. Cyberbullying reports fell over two years to just 33.6% in 2016, and they went up to 36.5% by 2019. That means that in the interim between 2019 and April 2021 when this data was collected, cyberbullying saw an unprecedented rise among Gen Z.
A lot of this increase can be attributed to the global pandemic because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up trapping people in their homes with no outlet for their frustration and vitriol. While that may certainly be the case, it doesn’t change the reality that the internet allows people to vent their hostility under an anonymous guise, and that allows them to dehumanize their targets as well as escape any consequences for their aggression and malicious intent.
by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World
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