**4. Discussion**

Based upon data from 12-17 year-olds surveyed nationally, involvement in bullying and unwanted sexual experiences appears common: 40% report being bullied, 18% report bullying, and 25% report being victims of unwanted sexual experiences in at least one environment that they navigate. Although it is difficult to compare these data with previous studies that have focused more specifically on experiences occurring either at school or online, it is fair to say that our findings provide further evidence that involvement in youth aggression, either as a perpetrator or as a victim, is widespread.

Comparisons of Bully and Unwanted Sexual

receive just as much attention as those focused online.

kids.

well as offline.

English.

**4.6 Study limitations and strengths** 

Experiences Online and Offline Among a National Sample of Youth 211

environments, with school being the one environment most often reported. This suggests that for the majority of youth who are involved in bullying, it is not necessarily something that follows them from the time they wake to the tiime they go to sleep. Nonetheless, there is a very concerning 5% of youth who report being bullied and 2% who report bullying others in four or all five of the environments we queried. Certainly, for these youth, bullying is an experience that likely seems inescapable. Given that they are bullied in multiple environments, this may mean that there are more opportunities to reach them with support and other intervention efforts. It is essential to take steps to identify and target this group of

**4.5 Unwanted sexual experiences happen at school and online with equal frequency**  Certainly, unwanted sexual encounters happening online have received the majority of academic research attention (Mitchell et al., 2001, 2007; Ybarra et al., 2004). A study conducted in 2000 among 2064 8-12th graders attending public school (American Association of University Women Educational Foundation, 2001) suggests that eight in ten students experience sexual harassment at school sometime in their lives. Rates of unwanted sexual experiences in the past year in the current study are the same at school (18%) and online (18%). Efforts to recognize and reduce unwanted sexual experiences in the schools need to

While with good intention, recent public policy efforts to regulate social networking sites to reduce the risk of unwanted sexual encounters for adolescents (Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, 2008) may not reach youth who are most vulnerable. Unlike bullying, youth who are victims of unwanted sexual experiences are more likely to report being targeted both online and at school (42%) compared to youth targeted at school only (29%) or online only (29%). Future research should focus on these dually-involved youth to better understand who they are and what researchers and other professionals working with adolescents might do to reduce their vulnerability online as

This paper is the first to report rates of bullying involvement and unwanted sexual experiences online and offline, in school and out of school, using parallel measures among youth in a national US sample. It also is the first to report relative rates of distress and the frequency of "knowing" the perpetrator among bully victims. It is not however, without limitation. The measures for unwanted sexual experiences are less comprehensive than those for bullying. It is possible that the general prevalence rate for unwanted sexual experiences would be higher if other environments (e.g., cell phone text messaging) were queried. It also is possible that caregivers monitored their children while they were completing the survey. This may have led to under-reporting, although comparisons across environments should still hold as there is little reason to believe youth would be more willing to report bullying at school versus online, for example. The sample is based upon English-speaking households. Findings are not generalizable to households that do not read
