Nineteen percent of U.S. high schoolers said they’d been bullied on school property in the past year, according to the CDC’s 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, the most recent national data available. That’s a jump from 15% just two survey cycles earlier, in 2021, and it arrived alongside a parallel climb in how many students said they skipped school entirely because they didn’t feel safe getting there or being there, up from 9% to 13% over the same stretch. Together, the numbers describe something more specific than a vague sense that “kids are struggling”: a measurable rise in how often school itself, the building and the walk to it, felt unsafe.
What the Survey Found
The CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey is conducted every two years among a nationally representative sample of high school students, and it’s the closest thing the U.S. has to a consistent, government-run gauge of what teenagers are actually experiencing rather than what adults assume they’re experiencing. In the 2023 round, 19.2% of students reported being bullied on school property in the prior 12 months, and a separate 16.3% said they’d been bullied electronically, meaning a meaningful share of students are dealing with both in-person and online harassment at once, not one or the other.
The 13% who said they’d missed school specifically over safety concerns is arguably the more consequential number of the two. Being bullied is one thing; avoiding the classroom because of it is another, and it’s the kind of behavior that shows up later in attendance records, missed instruction and disengagement long before it shows up on a survey.
A Reversal, Not a Straight Line
It’s worth being precise about the trend line here rather than flattening it. In 2019, before the pandemic disrupted in-person schooling, the CDC’s survey put school-based bullying at roughly 19.5%, nearly identical to where it sits now. In 2021, with many students still in hybrid or remote learning, that figure dropped sharply to 15%, according to the CDC’s 2021 Youth Risk Behavior Survey report, which attributed part of the dip to students simply spending less time physically on school property. The 2023 data shows that number snapping back to roughly where it was before the pandemic, not climbing to some unprecedented new high. What’s genuinely new is the safety-related absenteeism figure, which has climbed past its 2019 level and kept rising even as in-person schooling fully resumed.
Why It Matters
Bullying research consistently links chronic peer victimization to depression, anxiety, and lower academic performance, and the CDC’s broader 2023 survey data, released in the same report, found elevated rates of persistent sadness and hopelessness among students overall. A school that a student is actively avoiding isn’t functioning as a school for that student, regardless of what’s on the syllabus. And the electronic bullying figure matters because it means the problem doesn’t end when the school day does; a student who left campus safely can still be targeted that evening from their own bedroom.
There’s also a practical, immediate stake for families right now: this data lands during the same weeks kids are settling into a new school year, when social hierarchies reset, new students arrive, and patterns of who’s targeted often get established early.
What It Means for Parents
The survey doesn’t just describe a national mood; it points to specific, actionable gaps. A 13% school-avoidance rate suggests plenty of students are quietly managing a safety problem on their own, without necessarily telling a parent or teacher directly, since “I don’t want to go to school” is a symptom families often initially read as ordinary reluctance rather than a safety signal. Pediatric and school-mental-health guidance generally recommends asking specific, low-pressure questions rather than a single broad “is everything okay at school,” since bullied kids frequently downplay what’s happening the first time they’re asked. It also means schools’ anti-bullying policies and reporting systems deserve more scrutiny from parents than a form letter sent home in September, given that the number of students affected didn’t shrink after in-person school fully returned. It grew past where it stood before the pandemic ever started.
The bounce-back to pre-pandemic bullying rates might read as a return to normal. The safety-driven absenteeism climbing higher than that says the normal wasn’t good enough to begin with.
