STUDY: 40% Of Internet Users Have Been Trolled, 65% Of Millennials Have Been Harassed

The Pew Research Center has released their first ever study on trolling, and online harassment, and the results may be shocking to some.

I say that they may be shocking to some people because as someone who spends all of my time on the Internet, pumping out blog articles tens of times each day, I’m pretty accustomed to being told to kill myself by spineless, nameless Internet trolls. And when you spend as much of your time on the Internet as we do here at BroBible it’s easy to forget that trolling isn’t the norm (for the record: it makes it more fun when you guys troll in the comments).

So, the Pew Research Center has released some interesting data that basically proves trolling is commonplace.

Of the more illuminating findings:

 73% of adult internet users have seen someone be harassed in some way online and 40% have personally experienced it
 60% of internet users said they had witnessed someone being called offensive names
 53% had seen efforts to purposefully embarrass someone
 25% had seen someone being physically threatened
 24% witnessed someone being harassed for a sustained period of time
 19% said they witnessed someone being sexually harassed
 18% said they had seen someone be stalked
 27% of internet users have been called offensive names
 22% have had someone try to purposefully embarrass them
 8% have been physically threatened
 8% have been stalked
 7% have been harassed for a sustained period
 6% have been sexually harassed

Also, the types and was in which online harassment/trolling is experienced is very different when comparing men vs. women:

Methodology:

Data in this report are drawn from the Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel, a
probability-based, nationally representative panel. This survey was conducted May 30 – June 30,
2014 and self-administered via the internet by 2,849 web users, with a margin of error of plus or
minus 2.4 percentage points. For more information on the American Trends Panel, please see the
Methods section at the end of this report.

So, we now know how prevalent trolling is, but how and to what degree does it effect individuals?

• 14% of those who have experienced online harassment found their most recent incident
extremely upsetting
• 14% found it very upsetting
• 21% said it was somewhat upsetting
• 30% reported it was a little upsetting
• 22% found it not at all upsetting

To read the study in full, if you’re in to that sort of thing, you can head on over HERE to PewInternet.org, and a tip of the hat to ThinkProgress for reporting on this.

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