Unfriendly Facebook worst for teen web bullying

More teens are being bullied over Facebook than other sites and in real life, according to a new survey.

Knowthenet's study of 2,001 teenagers found that 19-year-old males are the most likely to be attacked on social networks, with 85 per cent saying they had been through some form of online bullying or trolling.

Of those who said they had been targeted, 87 per cent said the bullying had taken place on Facebook, while only 19 per cent said that they'd received tweeted abuse. BBM, Ask.fm, Bebo and Whatsapp complete the trolling hall of fame - although there's a fair point to be made that some of these are platform agnostic whereas Twitter and Facebook are universal.

With Facebook proving a hotbed of emotional abuse, it sounds as though most of the bullying is being done by people that the respondents know in real life, although a fifth of the teenagers also said they'd seen offensive comments on public pages like memorial groups.

Hubba hubba

KnowTheNet has launched a "trolling hub" in support of the findings - not a place for trolls to get together and share tips, but a site where teens can get advice on how to deal with online attacks.

But it basically boils down to two top tips: don't feed the trolls and always report those nasty suckers to the site in question.

At least one thing is clear: the 2,001 people taking part in the survey weren't big 4Chan users.