Online Harassment Is A Growing Problem Here In America, And 41% Of People In This Study Have Experienced It
While the internet is known to have intense downsides, a Pew Research Center report revealed that severe encounters with online harassment have increased in prevalence since 2017. This fact and others were released in their report entitled The State of Online Harassment.
From September 8 to September 13 of 2020, Pew Research Center surveyed just over ten thousand adults in the United States to gauge the prevalence and severity of online harassment encounters.
According to the report, online harassment is defined as including six specific behaviors: offensive name-calling, purposeful embarrassment, stalking, physical threats, harassment over a sustained period of time, and sexual harassment.
The report also deemed “more severe” online harassment as including “any stalking, physical threats, sustained harassment or sexual harassment.”
Some frightening fast-facts from the report include:
Forty-one percent of Americans report experiencing any form of online harassment.
Twenty-five percent of Americans have experienced any kind of “more severe” online harassment.
Twenty percent of Americans have been harassed online due to their political ideology.
Seventy-five percent of Americans who have been harassed online said their most recent encounter occurred on social media.
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Demographic differences also play a prominent role in the amount and type of online harassment received.
According to the report, men are five percent more likely to be harassed online than women– forty-three percent of men reported being bullied on the internet compared to thirty-eight percent of women.
These rates drastically increased for LGBTQIA+ individuals. According to the report, “Roughly seven in ten have encountered any harassment online, and fifty-one percent have been targeted for more severe forms of online abuse.”
Additionally, fifty-four and forty-seven percent of Black and Hispanic individuals reported being harassed online because of their race, respectively.
Only seventeen percent of White individuals reported encountering online harassment on this basis.
While the prevalence of online harassment has not increased since 2017, it has grown six percentage points since 2014. And the severity of online harassment has increased seven percent since 2017. This rise mirrors growing social and political tensions even before the COVID-19 pandemic.
About ninety percent of Americans recognize online harassment, or bullying, as a problem. The survey respondents also reported extremely high disapproval of how social media companies are combatting this issue.
According to the report, seventy-nine percent of people said: “social media companies are doing an only fair or poor job at addressing online harassment or bullying on their platforms.”
Despite this overwhelming majority who recognize the issue, only a third of Americans believe that platforms should be held legally responsible for any harassment occurring on their websites.
Instead, survey respondents could select a variety of other actions that they believe would be “very effective in helping to reduce harassment or bullying on social media.”
Fifty-one percent of people said users should get permanently suspended for bullying or harassing others.
Forty-eight percent believe social media platforms should require users to disclose their true identities.
Forty-three percent think users who bully or harass should personally face criminal charges.
Forty percent believe that social media companies should proactively delete inappropriate posts.
Thirty-two percent believe that users should be temporarily suspended for bullying or harassing others.
Social media sites like Instagram and Facebook do tout having “zero-tolerance policies” for bullying. Still, it appears that policy updates are in dire need.
To read the complete Pew Research Center report, visit the link here.
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