Social Media Bullying Statistics 2026: Platforms, Teens and Trends

58.2% of the middle and high school students surveyed in the United States reported that they experienced cyberbullying at some point in their lifetimes. The Cyberbullying Research Center (CRC) surveyed 3,466 students in May of 2025. Social media bullying statistics show much of that abuse landing on the apps teens open every day. Pew Research Center’s 2026 three-platform teen study found 27% of Snapchat users have experienced at least one of three types of harassment asked about, a share that drops to 19% for Instagram and 18% for TikTok.

The headline rate depends on what each survey counts as bullying, which ages it covers, and how far back it asks. The figures below keep each source’s own definition and date rather than blending them. The data covers prevalence, platforms, trends, types of abuse, gender, adults, helpline reports, and the UK.

Key Takeaways

• 21% of teen girls on Snapchat vs. 14% of boys have had a rumor spread about them on the app, and 27% of Snapchat users have faced at least one of three types of harassment there.
• Lifetime cyberbullying rates rose from 33.6% in 2016 to 58.2% in 2025 in the Cyberbullying Research Center’s national samples.
• Adolescent boys were more likely than girls to have experienced cyberbullying as a target (36.6% vs. 28.6%) in 2025, a change from earlier findings.
• In 2025, 16.1% of students reported they cyberbullied another person in the last 30 days, compared to about 5-6% of students from 2015-2021.
• Frequent social media users had an adjusted prevalence ratio of 1.54 for being electronically bullied, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
• European helplines placed 41% of platform-identified cases on TikTok, with a further 25% on Snapchat and 23% on Instagram in early 2026, per the Better Internet for Kids helpline report.

Editor’s Choice

• Teens ever cyberbullied in the Pew survey: 46% of US teens report ever experiencing at least one of six cyberbullying behaviors.
• Students cyberbullied in the last 30 days: 32.7% said they had been cyberbullied in the most recent 30 days.
• Adolescents cyberbullied, World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe (WHO/Europe) study: 15% of adolescents (around 1 in 6) have experienced cyberbullying.
• Children bullied online in England and Wales, per the Office for National Statistics (ONS): 847,000 children (19.1%) experienced online bullying behaviour in the last year.
• Valid cyberbullying complaints to Australia’s eSafety Commissioner: 2,978 in 2024, a 25% increase compared to the previous year.
• Contacts to Insafe helplines in the first quarter: 17,103 contacts were made to Insafe helplines during the reporting period.

How many teens experience cyberbullying?

• 58.2% of students reported cyberbullying at some point in their lifetimes, and 32.7% in the most recent 30 days, in the CRC’s 2025 survey.
• Nearly half of US teens (46%) report ever experiencing at least one of six cyberbullying behaviors in Pew’s 2022 survey.
• In total, 28% of teens have experienced multiple types of cyberbullying.
• Half (50%) of US teens experienced any online harassment in the past 12 months in ADL’s 2024 survey, a rate ADL says held steady from the year before.
• About 12% (1 in 8) of adolescents report cyberbullying others, according to the WHO/Europe Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study.
• Overall, 77.0% of US high school students reported using social media at least several times a day, the baseline exposure behind the CDC’s bullying analysis.

Source: Cyberbullying Research Center 2025, Pew Research Center 2022, CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) 2024, WHO/Europe 2024, ONS 2024

About This Data

The figures come from 19 publications: 11 from government bodies, regulators, EU programs and platforms, and 8 from research centers and nonprofits, published between January 2021 and October 2026. Every statistic comes from a survey, official statistics release, or transparency report with a stated method, while the Recent Developments entries also draw on official announcements and event notices. Figures are reviewed on a rolling basis and updated when sources publish new editions.

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Which social media platforms have the most cyberbullying?

• Pew asked 772 teen Snapchat users whether they had been called an offensive name, physically threatened, or had rumors spread about them on the app.
• Snapchat leads at 27% of its teen users reporting at least one of the three types of harassment there, versus 19% on Instagram and 18% on TikTok, a share Pew’s summary rounds to both about a quarter and roughly three-in-ten.
• Rumors split by gender: 21% of teen girls on Snapchat vs. 14% of boys, and 12% of teen girls on TikTok vs. 7% of boys.
• A somewhat smaller share of teens use Snapchat (55%), and just under half visit it every day (46%), so its harassment rate applies to a large daily audience.
• Pew surveyed 1,458 US teens and their parents online from Sept. 25 to Oct. 9, 2025.

What are the top 3 social media platforms students are cyberbullied on?

Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok are the three platforms Pew compared. Pew found 27% of Snapchat users have experienced at least one of three types of harassment, and these shares drop to 19% for Instagram and 18% for TikTok. Helpline data puts 41% of platform-identified cases on TikTok instead.

Which social media platform has the most cyberbullying?

In Pew’s survey, Snapchat users report harassment at somewhat higher rates than Instagram or TikTok users, at 27% of teen users on Snapchat. That is a rate per user, so a platform with a larger audience, which the Snapchat usage statistics measure for Snapchat, can still host more incidents in total. Better Internet for Kids, whose helpline data ranks TikTok first, suggests the popularity of these three apps with young people may explain that ranking.

Recent Developments

• October 6, 2026: The #NotOnOurFeed youth contest on cyberbullying drew 30 submissions, and the winner will attend the Safer Internet Forum on December 3, 2026.
• August 27, 2026: Meta’s Integrity Reports, H2 2026 put global enforcement precision at the end of H1 2026 at around 91% on Facebook and around 92% on Instagram, with prevalence of violating content consistent across most problem areas.
• August 24, 2026: The Better Internet for Kids (BIK) #NotOnOurFeed campaign took place in August and September 2026, built around the back-to-school period.
• August 17 to 21, 2026: Australia’s eSafety Commissioner promoted Bullying No Way Week from August 17 to 21, 2026, under the theme “Small Acts, Big Impact”.
• April 15, 2026: Pew reported that roughly three-quarters of each site’s teen users see harassment and bullying on the platform as a problem for people their age.

Social Media Bullying Statistics Over Time

• Lifetime cyberbullying rates climbed from 33.6% in 2016 to 58.2% in 2025 across the CRC’s national samples.
• Recent victimization nearly doubled, from 16.5% in 2016 to 32.7% in 2025.
• On average during that period, about half (46%) of the students reported they have been the victim of cyberbullying at some point in their lifetime.
• On average from 2016 to 2025, 23.3% of students had been cyberbullied recently.
• From 2018 to 2022, reports of being cyberbullied escalated from 12% to 15% for boys and from 13% to 16% for girls in the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) data.
• Across the 44 HBSC countries and regions, approximately 11% of adolescents have been bullied at school, a rate WHO/Europe says has stayed stable since 2018 while cyberbullying increased.
• WHO’s Europe director pointed to young people spending up to 6 hours online every single day.

Source: Cyberbullying Research Center, Summary of Our Cyberbullying Research 2025

The European series points the same way over a shorter window, for boys and girls alike.

Why it matters: Dr Hans Henri P. Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe, noted young people spending up to 6 hours online every single day. At that exposure, even a few-point rise in cyberbullying reaches a large number of children, and it shows up in two independent survey series at once.

Most Common Types of Cyberbullying

• The most common forms in the previous 30 days were being excluded from a text or group chat (32.5%) and mean or hurtful comments posted online (31.6%).
• About 20% had intentionally excluded someone from a group text or chat, mirroring the victim data.
• 15.7% had posted mean names or comments about one’s physical appearance.
• In Pew’s 2022 survey, name-calling was the most commonly reported behavior, with 32% of US teens saying they have been called an offensive name online or on their cellphone.

Pew’s earlier teen survey adds image-based abuse and monitoring to the picture. 17% have been sent explicit images they didn’t ask for, and 7% have had explicit images of them shared without their consent.

Cyberbullying by Gender

• Boys were more likely to have experienced cyberbullying as a target (36.6% vs. 28.6%) and as an aggressor (21.7% vs. 10.4%) in the CRC’s 2025 data.
• Online bullying was significantly higher for girls (486,000; 22.5%) than boys (361,000; 16.0%) in England and Wales.
• In-person bullying showed no significant difference between girls (779,000; 36.0%) and boys (765,000; 33.8%).
• Boys (14%) are more likely to report cyberbullying others than girls (9%), per WHO/Europe.

Key finding: The CRC called the gender gap statistically significant and a change from most of its previous research, which found boys and girls equally likely to have experienced cyberbullying. The other three surveys still show girls level or ahead, so the 2025 boys figure is a single-survey signal that needs a second edition to confirm.

How Teens Rate Harassment on Each Platform

• Pew put the question to 908 Instagram users, 772 Snapchat users and 996 TikTok users.
• Roughly three-quarters of each site’s users see harassment and bullying on the platform as a problem for people their age, and 29% of Instagram and Snapchat users call it a major problem, as do 27% of TikTok users. Pew rounded each share to a whole number, so TikTok’s three ratings in the chart below total 99%.
• In 2022, 53% of teens said online harassment and bullying were a major problem for people their age, and just 6% said they were not a problem.
• Seven-in-ten Black teens and 62% of Hispanic teens call it a major problem, compared with 46% of White teens.

Social Media Use and Electronic Bullying

• Frequent social media use was more prevalent among female students compared with male students (81.8% versus 72.9%).
• 17.0% of frequent users were electronically bullied, compared with 15.9% of less frequent users.
• The adjusted prevalence ratio for persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness was 1.35 among frequent users.
• The analysis covered 20,103 respondents in the 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS).

Source: CDC MMWR, Youth Risk Behavior Survey 2023

Heavy use is the norm for this age group, with 77.0% of US high school students on social media at least several times a day, and the social media screen time statistics show how those daily hours stack up by age.

By the numbers: Raw electronic bullying rates were 17.0% for frequent users and 15.9% for others, yet the adjusted prevalence ratio reached 1.54. Once age, sex, race and ethnicity, and sexual identity are adjusted for, heavy social media use carries a clearer link to being bullied online than the raw gap suggests, though the survey shows association, not cause.

Online Harassment Among Adults on Social Media

• 41% of Americans have personally experienced some form of online harassment, per Pew’s 2020 survey.
• 22% of Americans experienced severe harassment on social media in the past 12 months, an increase from 18% in 2023, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
• Physical threats increased from 7% to 10% in the same ADL survey.

Source: Pew Research Center 2021, ADL 2024

What percentage of cyberbullying happens on social media?

Social media is the most common venue. 75% of targets of online abuse, equaling 31% of Americans overall, say their most recent experience was on social media. Facebook remains the most common platform where harassment was experienced at 61% of harassment, while incidence rose on Telegram (from 7% to 13%) and on WhatsApp (from 14% to 25%), an app whose reach the WhatsApp user statistics measure.

Cyberbullying Reports to Helplines and Regulators

• Insafe helplines received 17,103 contacts from January 1 to March 31, 2026, an increase of 14% on the previous period.
• The most common reason for reaching out was cyberbullying, at 12.75% of contacts.
• Contacts related to cyberbullying rose 75% since Q4 of 2025.
• 1,385 (46%) of eSafety’s 2024 cyberbullying reports were in relation to children 13 years old and younger.

Helplines also log where the harm happened, and TikTok, whose young audience the TikTok user statistics measure, tops that list. When helplines identified a specific social media platform, across 3,695 cases, 41% took place on TikTok, and one helpline said most cyberbullying cases are found on TikTok and often involve fake or anonymous profiles.

Worth noting: The platform split counts every type of harm reported to helplines, not only cyberbullying, and covers only the 3,695 cases where a platform was identified, from around half of the helplines that submitted data. It counts contacts, not users, so it measures where problems surface in volume rather than how risky each app is per teen.

Cyberbullying Statistics in the UK

• 19.1% of children aged 10 to 15 years experienced online bullying behavior in the last year, and 34.9% experienced in-person bullying, per the Office for National Statistics.
• 18.1% who experienced online bullying behaviour did not tell anyone.
• 92.6% of children went online daily or almost daily, with 58.1% spending three or more hours a day online on a school day.

Source: Office for National Statistics (ONS), year ending March 2023

How Platforms and Governments Are Responding

• 66% of teens say parents are doing at least a good job addressing online harassment, and just 18% say the same of elected officials.
• 44% of teens say elected officials have done a poor job addressing online harassment and online bullying.
• The European Commission adopted the EU Action plan against cyberbullying on February 10, 2026.
• Over 9 in 10 Europeans (92%) say public authorities should take urgent action to protect children online from cyberbullying and online harassment.

Source: Pew Research Center, Teens and Cyberbullying 2022

Meta says bullying can be especially harmful for minors and that its policies provide heightened protections for them. Because bullying is highly personal, Meta also relies on people to report it so it can be identified and removed. Teens dealing with the mental health effects of social media meet bullying alongside sleep and self-image pressures.

Is cyberbullying getting worse?

Yes, on the two longest-running measures. The CRC’s lifetime rate rose from 33.6% in 2016 to 58.2% in 2025, and WHO/Europe recorded cyberbullying rising from 12% to 15% for boys and 13% to 16% for girls between 2018 and 2022. Survey methods differ between editions, so the direction is clearer than the exact size of the increase.

Conclusion

58.2% of surveyed students in the United States reported being cyberbullied at some point in their lifetimes, and Snapchat’s rate of 27% of teen users harassed on the app tops Instagram and TikTok. The sources do not move in step: CRC and WHO/Europe rates rose while ONS and ADL’s teen survey found flat rates, Snapchat leads per teen user, TikTok leads helpline cases, and boys and girls trade places by survey. Platform habits sit underneath all of it, and the broader Gen Z social media data shows how much of teens’ day now runs through these apps.

The next markers to watch are the second edition of Pew’s platform survey, whether the CRC’s next survey repeats its 2025 gender finding, and how quickly the reporting and support app the EU plans to back reaches Member States. Better reporting should push recorded numbers up before it pushes harm down.