Bullying of girls by text or e-mail is on the increase, with up to a fifth claiming to have been sent nasty messages last year.

A study by York St John University has found that girls are more likely than boys to report being cyberbullied. Over the past five years the number suffering from e-mail or text aggression rose from 14.5 per cent to 20.6 per cent.

Nathalie Noret, part of the research team presenting the findings to a British Psychological Society conference at the University of York, said that teachers and parents needed to realise that children’s mobile telephones and computers were not just means of communication, but also ways for bullies to reach their victims 24 hours a day.

“What we have found is, traditional bullying is moving out of the playground and off the school bus and being played out at home,” she said.

“Parents need to be aware this is happening, and children need to know that if they are receiving these messages they should talk to people.”

Ms Noret added that while common sense dictated that children were safe within their own homes, pupils were increasingly seeing nasty messages appearing on websites such as MySpace and Bebo. The trend was disturbing because it exposed more children to abuse. “Young people are very good at keeping up with the latest technology and have become very adept at setting up their own websites,” she said. “Bullying among girls has always centred more on indirect aggression, such as name-calling, and text-messaging and the internet are ideal vehicles for that.”

While boys continue to be prone to physical bullying and fighting in the playground, girls are more likely to exclude individuals or to call each other names.

Text bullying is another method of this indirect bullying, which, like gossip, spreads quickly outside of the playground. Ms Noret said that while other forms of bullying, such as name-calling and being hit or kicked, appeared to have decreased, bullying by text or e-mail had increased, particularly among girls.

The survey of 15,000 pupils over five years asked questions relating to their experiences at break times and how many friends they had.

The increasing levels of cyberbullying were consistent every year for girls, but the boys’ results showed increases and decreases over the same period.

Children who reported being victims of cyberbullying were also more likely to report that they had few friends and often felt lonely at school.

Last year a wide-ranging survey by Bullying Online found that 69 per cent of 4,772 children who completed it complained of being bullied. Name-calling was the biggest problem and 56 per cent of abusive remarks referred to weight and appearance. More than half of bullied pupils said that they were physically hurt, and 34 per cent of those needed to see a doctor. A total of 3 per cent of attacks involved a weapon.

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