The pandemic has taken a toll on the education system. School enrollment has decreased, teacher turnover has ticked up, and students have experienced substantial learning losses.

But there is at least one silver lining, according to a paper in the American Economic Review: Insights.

Authors Andrew Bacher-Hicks, Joshua Goodman, Jennifer Greif Green, and Melissa K. Holt found that school bullying and cyberbullying dropped by more than 30 percent as schools shifted to remote learning in the spring of 2020.

Their results are based on real-time tracking of internet searches, which they show contain useful information about actual bullying behavior.

Bacher-Hicks and Goodman recently spoke with Tyler Smith about their approach to studying bullying trends and the degree to which bullying originates in schools and then migrates online.