According to the study by the Child Health Promotion Research Centre at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia, one in ten Australian teenagers experience cyberbullying, involving nasty messages or photos posted online or sent on mobile phones, every few weeks.

The study also mentioned that most of those being cyberbullied are also bullied face-to-face.

Professor Donna Cross, head of the centre told the National Centre Against Bullying Conference in Melbourne that strategies to deal with cyberbullying could not be isolated and must address other forms of bullying.

About 10 per cent of young people report that they're being cyberbullied in Australia at the moment every few weeks of more often, she said.

I think what's really important here is that 92 per cent of young people ... reported that they were being both cyberbullied and face-to-face bullied.

We're looking at a very similar phenomenon here ... when we think about cyberbullying we must think about face-to-face bullying.

We can't isolate this behaviour and make this behaviour the fad of the month ... we need to keep it in perspective.

We're looking at very similar behaviour just being delivered through a different mode: same wine, just different bottle.

The incidence of cyberbullying increased when students began high school, said Prof Cross.

Most cyberbullying began on mobile phones and graduated to the use of the internet as students got older, she added.

But the access to the internet seems to be getting younger each time we study it, she said.

Bullying through social networking sites is more common as students get older, and cyberbullying's very much related to age.

Young women were more likely to ask adults for help than young males, the research found, but adult intervention didn't always resolve the situation.

Being cyberbullied also affects the school life of the teenager, with the victim six times more likely to feel disconnected to school and seven times more likely to never feel safe at school.

A three-year trial of ways to deal with cyberbullying has just been started by Prof Cross and her team.

The Cyberfriendly Schools Project involves 40 high schools in WA, 3,500 students and their parents, school staff, a web-based resource and training.

Australia