by Claudia Boyd-Barrett posted in Parenting

Good news if you have school-age children or are apprehensive about your little one starting school: Bullying ? including the much-talked-about cyber bullying ? is on a steady decline, the results of a 10-year study suggest.
Researchers surveyed almost 250,000 kids in elementary, middle and high schools in Maryland between 2005 and 2014. Overall, reports of bullying decreased about 2% each year. By 2014, just 13 percent of students reported being victims of bullying compared with 28 percent at the start of the study.
All forms of bullying declined, according to the research published in the journal Pediatrics. These included physical (such as pushing and slapping), verbal (threats, teasing, name-calling, and leaving kids out on purpose) and cyber bullying (shaming or teasing via email, texts or social media). Cyber bullying, which has received a lot of media attention, fell from a high of 8% in 2010, to less than 4% in 2014. Even so, close to half of students in 2014 said they had witnessed bullying and still considered bullying to be a problem.

It?s not clear why bullying rates reportedly declined. The researchers said it could be a sign that widespread focus on bullying prevention is working. Maryland may not be representative of all schools in the state, but researchers said their results appeared to echo findings in other studies on bullying.
Despite the good news, bullying remains a significant problem in schools and can ...