More than one in six U.S. high school students reported electronic bullying during the previous year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. A World Health Organization study across 44 countries and regions placed the adolescent cyberbullying rate at 15%, with 12% admitting they had targeted someone else. Both WHO figures had risen compared with the organization's earlier research.
Platform harassment rates, by the numbers
A 2026 Pew Research Center study found roughly three-quarters of teen users on TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat said harassment and bullying were problems on those platforms. Snapchat showed the sharpest personal exposure: nearly three in 10 teen users said they had personally experienced at least one form of harassment, including offensive name-calling, rumor spreading, and physical threats. The figure fell to about one in five among teen Instagram and TikTok users.
| Platform | Teens who see harassment as a problem | Teens who personally experienced harassment |
|---|---|---|
| Snapchat | ~75% | ~3 in 10 |
| ~75% | ~1 in 5 | |
| TikTok | ~75% | ~1 in 5 |
Female students reported electronic bullying more often than male students, the CDC notes.
The parent-child communication gap
A 2025 Pew Research Center survey found 80% of parents felt highly comfortable discussing their teenager's mental health. Only 52% of teens felt equally comfortable raising that topic with a parent. The 28-percentage-point gap matters because a child experiencing harassment may assume the conversation leads to punishment or school escalation, and stay quiet.
On the connection question, 74% of teens told Pew that social media helped them feel part of their friends' lives. At the same time, 39% said it made them feel overwhelmed by drama, and nearly one-third said it sometimes left them feeling excluded. Advising a child to delete an app removes the harassment and the social infrastructure at once.
AI-generated content raises the floor on harm
The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children received more than 400,000 CyberTipline reports with a generative AI connection during 2025. NCMEC also identified more than 275 direct victims of AI-generated child sexual abuse material during 2024 and 2025; in many of those cases, the person responsible had direct access to the child. NCMEC warns that classmates can use the same tools to produce fake images for bullying, blackmail, or sextortion, with copies that keep circulating after the original post is removed.
StopBullying.gov recommends saving screenshots, emails, and messages before reporting cyberbullying. NCMEC's Take It Down service creates a digital fingerprint of eligible images or videos so participating platforms can detect copies without the image leaving the device.