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New survey shows online harassment is widespread [San Jose Mercury News]
[October 22, 2014]

New survey shows online harassment is widespread [San Jose Mercury News]


(San Jose Mercury News (CA) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Oct. 22--The sometimes shadowy world of social media suddenly seems a lot darker.

While children traditionally have been considered the most vulnerable to online threats like cyberbullying and stalking, a new poll released Wednesday paints a disturbing picture of how many adults are also being virtually victimized on the Internet.



"It's pretty striking that 73 percent of our respondents said they've seen someone be harassed in some way online and 40 percent have experienced it themselves," said Lee Rainie, director of Internet, science and technology research at the Pew Research Center, which conducted the poll. "The harassment runs the spectrum from garden-variety things like name-calling to incredibly menacing behavior like physical and sexual threats and stalking." The study, said Rainie, portrays our shared online world to be "an environment where people can be both wonderfully altruistic to each other and horribly destructive. One thing that came up repeatedly was how the anonymity of the Internet facilitates harassment -- when people don't have to look each other in the eye, they can be a lot more aggressive." Some of the highlights of the study, in which its authors asked respondents about six different forms of online harassment, include: 60 percent of Internet users said they had witnessed someone being called offensive names; 25 percent had seen someone being physically threatened; and 18 percent said they'd seen someone be stalked.

When respondents were asked if they personally had been harassed, the results were especially chilling: More than 1 in 4 Internet users polled said they'd been called offensive names, while smaller percentages reported being victims of online stalking (8 percent), harassed over a sustained period of time (7 percent), and exposed to sexual harassment (6 percent).


"I'm not surprised by these findings, but I'm thrilled Pew is sharing the numbers because it helps raise awareness of a problem we've been talking about since 1995," said Parry Aftab, executive director of WiredSafety.org which operates an anti-cyberbullying program. "Usually people think the only victims of these behaviors are kids, but adults are doing the same things to each other and often with even greater impacts." The harassment is taking place all over the Internet, but especially in social media as well as gaming sites, in addition to the comment section on various web sites.

Other key findings in the Pew survey include a revelation that young adults 18 to 29 years old are more likely than any other demographic group to face online harassment. Nearly two-thirds of these young Internet users told pollsters that they'd been the target of at least one of the six types of harassment. Among those 18 to 24 years old, 70 percent described themselves as victims of harassment.

"If someone perceives me as trying to take their girl, I often received threats from the boyfriend," one respondent wrote in the survey's report. "Someone I know kept on saying they wanted to fight me and sending me messages; until I blocked them it didn't stop," said another.

A third told the pollsters "While playing Xbox, I was told to kill myself." Young women, in particular, experience the more severe kinds of harassment at disproportionately high levels: Among those 18 to 24, 26 percent of women said they'd been stalked online, while 1 in 4 said they'd been the target of online sexual harassment.

One particularly disturbing version of that type of online behavior is called "revenge porn," an increasingly popular method that involves shaming a victim by sending incriminating photos of her into cyberspace. Aftab said this trend of "using sexual images to hurt someone" is exploding on the Internet among all ages of adults, "even senior citizens." She says it's these sorts of offensive acts that respondents in the Pew survey are complaining about.

"The real message here," said Aftab, "is that when it comes to hurting people, it's not just kids we have to protect, it's everyone." Contact Patrick May at 408-920-5689; follow him at Twitter.com/patmaymerc.

online harassment According to a Pew Research Center survey, respondents who had witnessed harassment said they had seen at least one of the following occur to others online: 60% of Internet users said they had witnessed someone being called offensive names 53% had seen efforts to purposefully embarrass someone 25% had seen someone being physically threatened 24% witnessed someone being harassed for a sustained period of time 19% said they witnessed someone being sexually harassed 18% said they had seen someone be stalked Respondents who have personally been harassed said they were the target of at least one of the following online: 27% of Internet users have been called offensive names 22% have had someone try to purposefully embarrass them 8% have been physically threatened 8% have been stalked 7% have been harassed for a sustained period 6% have been sexually harassed Source: Pew Research Center ___ (c)2014 the San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.) Visit the San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.) at www.mercurynews.com Distributed by MCT Information Services

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