Seven out of 10 young people claim to have been bullied on social media

The report, published by national anti-bullying charity Ditch the Label, sampled 10,008 young people aged between 13 and 22 and found that levels of cyberbullying were much higher than previously reported.

Liam Hackett, founder of the Brighton-based charity, set up the Annual Cyber Bullying Survey, in partnership with teenage social networking site Habbo Hotel, because more than 30,000 young people were visiting Ditch the Label’s virtual bullying support centre on the Habbo website every week. He said: “In February, we launched our groundbreaking Annual Bullying Survey 2013 research taken from over 2,000 British teenagers. We found that cyberbullying was a growing trend within the sphere of bullying and we were naturally inclined to investigate further. We found that 69 per cent of young people had experienced cyberbullying and that 20 per cent of those said it had been very extreme.”

Mr Hackett said that 20 per cent of young people reported extreme cyberbullying daily and that they were twice as likely to be cyberbullied on Facebook than on any other social network. Fifty-four per cent were bullied on Facebook.