Cyberstalking has surged by 70% in the UK since 2012, study finds

On the receiving end of unsolicited text messages, emails, being harassed on live streams, or seeing personal photos posted online without your permission? 

If so, you could be a victim of cyberstalking, an online behaviour that is becoming more common in the UK. 

A new study, published in the British Journal of Criminology, found that cyberstalking is growing at a faster pace than traditional types of stalking. 

It examined responses from nearly 147,800 people who answered crime surveys in England and Wales. The surveys asked about the prevalence and perception of cyberstalking, physical stalking, and cyber-enabled stalking from 2012 to 2020.

The UK’s Crown Prosecution Office describes cyberstalking as “threatening behaviour or unwanted advances” directed at someone online. It can be combined with other types of stalking or harassment.

Cyberstalking could include threatening or unsolicited text messages and emails, harassment on live chats, or posting photoshopped photos of a specific person, their children or workplace on social media, the office said. 

Cyber-enabled crimes are ones that don't depend on technology but have changed significantly because of it, like cyberbullying, trolling, or virtual mobbing.

Over the eight-year period, 1.7 per cent of respondents said they had experienced cyberstalking, up from 1 per cent in 2012.

Cyberstalking identified as ‘wrong but not a crime’

While physical stalking remains more common overall, the 70 per cent rise in cyberstalking over the eight-year period was the only type with a “significant” increase over time, the researchers found.

Complaints of physical stalking increased by 15 per cent and cyber-enabled stalking actually fell during that time period.

Women, young people, and LGBTQ+ people were more likely to say they had been cyberstalked than other groups, the study found.

Almost half of the respondents that had experienced cyberstalking in the previous year said their experience was “wrong but not a crime,” which the authors found could impact the number of people that report their experience to law enforcement.

“There is a clear disconnect between the lived experience of cyberstalking and how it is understood legally and socially,” Madeleine Janickyj, one of the study’s authors and a researcher in the violence, health and society group at University College London, said in a statement.

“This not only affects whether victims seek help, but also how police and other services respond,” she added.

Part of the problem, Janickyj said, could be that young people are “so used to cyberstalking that they don’t see it as a crime”.

The researchers said the UK government should improve public education, clarify legal definitions, and provide additional support for victims of cyberstalking.