Pandemic-enforced remote school was tough on everyone: children who missed their friends, teachers who missed classroom interactions, parents who missed having time to themselves. But school by Zoom provided some relief for at least one group of kids: those at the mercy of bullies.
In a new study, researchers at Boston University's Wheelock Educational Policy Center found rates of bullying fell dramatically in the United States when schools shut their doors in spring 2020-dropping between 30 and 40 percent. Surprisingly-given all those Zoom lessons and spikes in screen time-levels of cyberbullying also fell by a similar rate when children were stuck at home. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, more than one in five children between 12 and 18 reported experiencing bullying pre-pandemic, while around one in six said they'd been victims of cyberbullying.
The research team used publicly available Google Trends data to look at internet searches for bullying before and after schools went remote because of COVID-19, then compared what they found to national bullying survey data.
"This analysis established that internet searches for bullying are strong predictors of actual bullying victimization," says Andrew Bacher-Hicks, a BU Wheelock College of Education & Human Development assistant professor of educational leadership and policy studies. Using Google search data is "particularly useful for tracking real-time trends. In this case, the pandemic evolved so rapidly-and demanded quick policy responses-that real-time analysis was crucial."
The Brink spoke with Bacher-Hicks, who helped lead the study, about the team's findings and their implications for tackling bullying in a post-pandemic world.
The research was also co-led by BU Wheelock faculty members Joshua Goodman, an associate professor of education and economics, Jennifer Greif Green, an associate professor of special education, and Melissa K. Holt, an associate professor of counseling psychology.
