While bullying tends to peak at age 13-14 and decline sharply as youth progress through high school, boys who are gay/bisexual are bullied at significantly higher rates their heterosexual peers after leaving school, suggests a new study by Joseph P. Robinson, left, and Dorothy Espelage, both faculty members in the College of Education.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. Bullied teens often are assured that "it gets better." And a new study suggests that bullying does, indeed, tend to decline as teens progress through high school and move toward adulthood. However, boys who identify as gay or bisexual report significantly higher rates of bullying than their heterosexual peers after leaving high school, higher even than heterosexual boys who reported nearly identical rates of victimization during school. The study, in the Feb. 4 edition of the journal Pediatrics, examined developmental trends in bullying and emotional distress among British teens over several years. The researchers found that bullying peaked for all youth, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, when participants were 13 or 14 and significantly declined over time. At age 13-14, the first years of the study, 57 percent of lesbian/bisexual girls and 52 percent of gay/bisexual boys reported being bullied.
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