Despite the growth of social media, the internet and their central role in modem childhood, traditional bullying - such as name-calling or being excluded by others - remains considerably more common than cyberbullying, according to the largest study of its kind published in The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health journal.

Next, traditional bullying is harder to stop than cyberbullying. Parents can control what their child sees or uses on the internet. Parents can do this by blocking or monitoring certain social networking sites and their child’s E-mails. This may drop cyberbullying dramatically or end cyberbullying all together because the parent can see that cyberbullying is taking place. Then, the parents can take action to defend their child. The child that is being bullied may help stop cyberbullying.

The study estimates that less than 1% of 15-year-olds in England report only being bullied online regularly, while more than one in four (27%) experience only face-to-face bullying methods. With nine out of 10 of the teenagers who are bullied online also facing regular traditional bullying, the researchers suggest that cyberbullying is an additional tactic in the bullies’ arsenal, and that both forms must be tackled together to prevent bullying and improve teenagers’ resilience.

Concerns have been raised that cyberbullying has the potential to cause more harm than traditional bullying due to the relative anonymity of perpetrators in many cases, larger audiences, increasing prevalence, and permanence of posted messages. However, in the study, the experience of only cyberbullying was found to have a very small association with well-being and life satisfaction when compared with traditional bullying alone.