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The most shocking thing about the suicide of 13-year-old Megan Meier was when “Josh,” the insensitive boy who had cyberbullied Megan into despair, turned out not to be a boy at all. Megan’s real Internet tormenter was the mother of a schoolmate.

But when it comes to being cruel to each other, kids don’t usually need any help. A recent report by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University found that “bullying and harassment, most often by peers, are the most frequent threats that minors face, both online and offline.”

Michigan 8th-grader Matt Epling committed suicide in 2002 after being roughed up and humiliated by some older kids. It prompted his mother to produce a book, Bullycide in America: Moms Speak Out About the Bullying/Suicide Connection. Brenda High founded the advocacy group Bully Police USA after her 13-year-old son Jared killed himself after being beaten up. Adrianna Sgarlata was so scarred by bullying that after becoming Miss Virginia 2006, she promptly used her celebrity to become an anti-bullying crusader.

These kids are a few of the most high-profile victims of an affliction plaguing 1 in 3.11 6th-to-12th-grade students: bullying.

Bullying touches almost every kind of student, cutting across racial, gender, and socioeconomic status. White students are bullied, and so are Latino and black students, all at about the same rate. Private school students bully at about the same rate as public students. Students are bullied on the playground, in the classroom, after school, and, increasingly, through their cell phones and on the Internet, a rising phenomenon called cyberbullying.

Girls are often bullied through gossip and exclusion, while boys are more often the objects of physical intimidation and assault. But even that norm is changing, as demonstrated by a 2008 assault in Florida.

As many kids in elementary and middle school can attest, bullying is often concentrated in the lower grades. In fact, 6th graders, the youngest group for which data is available, are bullied far more often than older students. While just 1 in 4.26 12th graders experience bullying during the school year, 6th graders have a 1 in 2.33 chance of being bullied—about the same odds that an adult drinks something carbonated every day.

More than 10% of all students bullied said they were faced with it at least once a week. Despite increased awareness of the issue among both teachers and parents, bullying is often ongoing, in part because only 36% of bullied students confide in an adult.

The results can be long-term consequences, including for the bullies themselves, who often carry their aggression with them into adulthood. One study showed that 60% of former bullies had at least one conviction by the time they were 24; 35% had three or more convictions. Another study in Finland claimed males and females who bullied other children had a 1 in 5.43 and 1 in 3.5 chance of needing psychiatric drug treatment in their teens or early 20’s, as did 1 in 6.8 males and 1 in 3.17 females who were bullied. That’s compared to only 1 in 8.26 males and 1 in 6.21 females who did not have frequent experiences with bullying.