WASHINGTON – Over half of the Fairfax County students surveyed about bullying say they have been bullied, teased or taunted more than 20 times in the last year.
The students surveyed are in grades 8 through 12. Fourteen percent say they were cyberbullied, either online, through email or through text messaging.
At the same time, almost half of the students say they have done the same thing to someone else in the last year.
While taunting and teasing are not unusual circumstances in middle and high school, a third of the students who answered the survey say they know someone who has been really hurt by cyberbullying, which often occurs outside of school.
Fairfax schools do have a program aimed at bullying. But with much of it going on outside of school, they have little control over students’ actions.
The statistics are from the annual youth survey conducted in Fairfax County. Seventy percent of the students surveyed say they would report the bullying if they could do so anonymously.
WTOP’s Hank Silverberg contributed to this report.
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