There has been a lot of attention paid to the damage cyberbullying can do (I've written about it here and in Totally Wired), but just as it can be meaner than bullying in person, it can also be easier to block or ignore. I think this is important to remember. I first realized this when I read through the responses of the survey I posted on Tagged.com -- over 2,000 teens responded to a bunch of my questions including one about whether they had ever been harassed online. I got answers like:

"Yep, this girl was mad because I was talking to a boy she liked. I just ignored it."

"I haven't, but some of my friends have. They just closed their email account and made up a new one."

"yes a boy continued to call me a b***h and I just blocked him and I was never bothered again"

You get the idea. Harris Interactive and The National Crime Prevention Council teamed up for research on cyberbullying (.pdf) and found that while it is happening (43 percent of the students they interviewed reported having been "cyberbullied" in the past year), 61 percent of males and 52 percent of females said they were "not bothered by it." Teens view this issue as something that can be controlled by either just not responding, blocking the bully or through moderators intervening online. To them, it's not an issue schools should be addressing. Tell that to the teachers who have to break up a fight in the schoolyard that started online.

Still, I think this research is important because it shows how the media has focused on the worst of these types of incidents (sexually explicit videos being spread around, vile MySpace "slambook" pages posted meant to ruin a teen or teacher's reputation, etc.). And while this stuff does happen, sometimes to the point where teens are forced to switch schools or even move, the majority of peer-to-peer bullying is something teens feel like they can manage or handle themselves. Cyberbullying is still an issue, and is a bigger problem than "stranger danger," but outside of the more extreme cases, it appears to be an issue teens believe they have under control. Oh and the number one reason teens think other teens cyberbully? "Because it's funny." I talk about "the culture of mean" in Totally Wired -- teens get this from popular culture. Think about it when you watch the next round of "American Idol" auditions.