NEW YORK - Nearly a third of online teens say they have been harassed on the Internet, with girls and participants of social-networking sites more likely to be targets, a study finds.
However, two-thirds of teens say bullying and harassment occur more often offline.
According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, the most common forms of cyberbullying are publicly disclosing someone else's private e-mail or messages, sending threatening or aggressive messages and spreading rumors online.
Pew also counts as cyberbullying the posting of an embarrassing picture of someone else without permission.
Thirty-two per cent of online teens said they have experienced at least one of those acts. It rose to 38 per cent among online girls and 39 per cent among users of social-networking sites like News Corp.'s MySpace and Facebook.
The telephone study of 886 U.S. Internet users age 12 to 17 was conducted Oct. 23 to Nov. 19. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
