18 Investigates: State of the Youth, Part 4 (Bullying)

LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WLFI) - According to Stomp Out Bullying's website as many as 160,000 kids stay home on any given day because they're afraid of being bullied. The most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows 20 percent of students in grades 9 through 12 have been bullied.

A statistic Benton Community Schools Superintendent Destin Haas said he doesn't like.

"Everybody who says you don't have a bullying problem, I think that's not right," Haas said. "I mean, I think every school cooperation does and society does. In the workforce you see it and the schools, but our job is to make sure that we're doing whatever we can to stop it, address it and educate them [students]."

Haas and Benton Community schools staff have created an anonymous tipline that allows students to report bullying when they see it. Through the program Cyber Bully Hotline students can send a text message or call the hotline. That report is then sent directly to Haas's phone and email.

"It's like one of those old adages. You tell your 5 year old to quit telling on your brother but when they get older you always say, 'Hey, we want you to tell on somebody that makes things unsafe.' It's one of those that we truly believe our students are our best resources for telling us what's going on," Haas said.

Many of those reports aren't about people being bullied in the hallway, but through social media.

"Just like every school corporation in the state we're anti-bullying because we know it goes on through social networking, it goes on texting, and in goes on face-to-face," Haas said.

"Cyberbullying has become more and more of an issue," Clinical Psychologist Dr. Shari Stembel said.

According to the 2011 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey, 16 percent of high school students had been victims of cyberbullying nationwide.

Stembel said access to social media as made bullying an even bigger problem.

"Years ago we might've said something mean but it didn't reach a group of 300 people in five seconds," Stembel said about access to social media's role in bullying. "Where now something that gets out there and a lot of the drama that happens between teenagers anyway really gets played out in a different arena today."