About 16 percent of children aged 11 to 15 were victims of cyberbullying in 2022, compared to 13 percent four years earlier, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) report for Europe covering 44 countries.
"This report is a wake-up call for all of us to address bullying and violence, whenever and wherever it occurs," WHO regional director for Europe Hans Kluge said in a statement released on Wednesday.
According to the study "Health behavior of school-aged children", 15 percent of boys and 16 percent of girls stated that they were the target of cyberbullying at least once in the last few months.
The UN agency pointed out that the pandemic has changed the way adolescents treat each other.
"Virtual forms of peer violence have become particularly relevant since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, when the world of young people has become increasingly virtual during lockdown," the report states.
Other forms of bullying recorded a slight increase.
Eleven percent of boys and girls said they were bullied at school at least two or three times a month in the past few months, compared to 10 percent four years ago.
The highest levels of cyberbullying were experienced by boys in Bulgaria, Lithuania, Moldova and Poland, while the lowest level was recorded in Spain, the WHO said without providing detailed data.
"Because young people spend up to six hours online every day, even small changes in rates of bullying and violence can have profound implications for the health and well-being of thousands of people," Kluge said.
One in eight adolescents admitted to bullying others online, an increase of three percentage points compared to 2018, according to the report.
The number of adolescents who engaged in physical fights, meanwhile, remained stable during the four-year period and amounts to 10 percent - 14 percent for boys and six percent for girls.
The study is based on data from 279.000 children and adolescents from 44 countries across Europe, Central Asia and Canada.
In most countries, cyberbullying peaks when children are 11 for boys and 13 for girls.
The socio-economic status of the parents did not make significant differences in the children's behavior, according to the report.
Canada, however, is an exception in this regard, as less privileged youth are more likely to experience bullying.
In that country, 27 percent of girls from the bottom 20 percent of families said they had been bullied at school, compared to 21 percent of girls from the top 20 percent of families.
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