Cyberbullying on social media

A new report from online protection company McAfee finds that there has been an increase of cyberbullying on social platforms. Children as young as 10 years old are seeing racist attacks and other forms of online harassment. The report finds that globally more than one in four children face some sort of racism in the media, while one in six are affected by sexual harassment. It is notable that cyberbullying is increasingly coming from people that children know, with 58% saying they had been victimized by someone they know, and 46% saying they were cyberbullied by a stranger. Some platforms have had more success than others in improving safety. McAfee found that Meta’s Facebook sees twice the cyberbullying of Twitter and WhatsApp sees four times the rate of Discord. Instagram and Facebook lead the numbers of online harassment against young people and there is still some way to go in reducing peer-to-peer bullying online.