It was once very common for parents to consider bullying a natural part of growing up. Those were the days when high school bullying consisted of locking smaller kids in their lockers and calling them names like "four eyes."

While that type of high school bullying was far from acceptable or right, it was very different from the type of bullying suffered by high school students today. Bullying is growing worse with the years, since bullies can now reach their bullies outside of the school halls through cell phones and the Internet. With nonstop harassment around the clock, it's no wonder that we have a growing epidemic of "bullycide" occurring around the country.

A recent study by the Josephson Institute of Ethics revealed some startling statistics about high school bullying in our modern world. There were more than 40,000 teenagers involved in this study, which makes it the largest ever conducted on high school bullying today.

Consider a quick list of some of the findings from this study:

50% of participating high school students admit to bullying someone else within the past year.

47% of participating high school students say they were bullied in a way that caused serious upset in the past year.

24% of participating high school students do not feel safe at school.

33% of participating high school students feel violence is an issue at their school.

52% of participating high school students admit to hitting someone out of anger within the past year.

While the statistics on high school bullying from this study are startling, they aren't new to anyone who has been following the trends on bullying. There have been other studies on a smaller scale that presented similar results, with half or nearly half of teenagers admitting to being bullied to one degree or another.

High school bullying today is a lot more physical than it was in previous generations and it is nearly nonstop, without limits to the school hallways. Bullying now occurs online as well as through text messaging and can occur at all hours of the day and night.

Another change in high school bullying is the high rate of athletes and very successful kids who are bullied. It used to be that the kids who were bullied were shy, smaller than their peers, or somehow not "cool." Today, it seems highly successful, bright and beautiful kids with many talents are also falling victim to bullies.

In some communities, it almost seems like being smart and accomplished could be a sentence to bullying since other kids are threatened by that talent and brightness. Rather than being the "in" group today, successful kids are being targeted by bullies.

High school bullies have always been around and always will be more than likely, but what could the future look like if these trends continue? Violence in schools seems to be spiking rather than hitting a plateau, which makes the above high school bullying statistics very scary.