It's horrible now. I was bullied in middle school pretty badly by this one girl. She would stop me in the hallway, especially if I was alone, and call me names, taunt me, laugh at me, call me fat, etc. She would bring her friends and they would basically create a wall around me so that I could not escape. I would try to stand up to her, tell her to go away, etc., but it never worked, except for that one time my one friend, who could get really scary when she was mad, told her to turn around and walk away before the girl could even open her mouth. It got to the point that I was afraid to walk alone in the hallways, though. I reported it to the administration when it happened. Know what the administrator said? "Oh, typical girl trouble." I even got in trouble for telling her to shut up. Really? There are a lot worse things that I could have said to her.
My dad finally made a phone call to the administrator. Let's just say the problem stopped after that.
In retrospect, I am glad that my parents made the decision to not allow me to have social media until I was older. I was on sites where I was anonymous, like this one, in high school, but no Facebook (or MySpace, which was the popular website for a while) or anything with my name on it until age 18. I could have an instant messaging account and email, but nothing else. I think it probably saved me from a good deal of bullying, especially in middle school. Maybe in high school too, although my one friend said he never really observed it by then.