A Systematic Review of the Prevalence and Microsystem Risk Factors of Bullying Victimization Among Adolescents

Bullying has substantial short- and long-term psychological consequences for adolescents. However, systematic reviews synthesizing global evidence on the prevalence of bullying victimization and its microsystem risk factors remain limited. This review aimed to synthesize evidence on the prevalence of bullying victimization and identify microsystem risk factors at the individual, family, peer, and school levels among adolescents. PubMed, ScienceDirect, and ProQuest were searched for original quantitative studies involving adolescents aged 12-19 years that reported the prevalence and risk factors of bullying victimization. Review articles, qualitative studies, studies outside the target age range, studies focusing only on bullying perpetration, and those without prevalence or risk factor data were excluded. Study quality was assessed using the Hoy Risk of Bias Tool. Findings were synthesized narratively by bullying type and microsystem domain. Twenty-six studies involving 138,506 adolescents were included. The prevalence of traditional bullying victimization ranged from 3.37% to 86.2%, while cyberbullying victimization ranged from 2.13% to 52.2%. Thirty-one microsystem risk factors were identified across four domains. The most consistently reported factors were younger age, male sex, frequent internet or social media use, psychological distress, poor parent-child relationships and parental support, low peer support, previous bullying experiences, and limited teacher support. Bullying victimization remains a major public health concern among adolescents. Prevention strategies should target multiple microsystem domains, particularly family, peer, and school environments, while future studies should adopt standardized definitions and measurement approaches to improve comparability.