HENDERSON, Ky (WEHT) – Bullying can happen at any age but from 12 to 18 years of age, about 20% of students experience bullying.
It can take place in many forms: in-person, online, or both. It can also take many forms from violence, and insults to even on the internet.
Not only can bullying have many adverse physical, emotional, and psychological effects, but the Association for Psychological Science found both bullies and/or victims are more likely to experience poverty, and academic/professional failure and are more likely to commit crimes and abuse drugs and alcohol than those that didn’t experience either.
Even schools themselves feel the financial effects. When students stay home to avoid being bullied, schools can lose millions of dollars in attendance-based funding.
To understand where Indiana ranks among this issue, WalletHub conducted a study about the prevalence and prevention of bullying in 47 states and the District of Columbia based on 20 key metrics from bullying-incident rates to truancy costs to share of students being bullied online.
According to the study, Indiana had one of the lowest ranks of bullying problems at 42nd.
When broken down into individual categories, Indiana ranks as follows:
- Bullying Prevalence – 34th
- Bullying Impact & Treatment – 28th
- Anti-Bullying Laws – 35th
In the rest of the Tri-State, Kentucky ranked 26th and Illinois ranked 29th.
For a full list of results, click here.
Data from Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington were excluded due to data limitations.
