A new study of child online safety in the U.S. ranks Michigan among the worst states in the country, behind only six others.
Researchers at Cloudwards, a leading source of cloud and privacy software reviews, examined data across four metrics – online safety crimes and threats, cyberbullying prevalence, state legislation, and mental health support – to determine The Best and Worst US States for Kids’ Online Safety in 2024.
“To create our ranking, we collected data on each state in four categories split into various factors. The data was normalized in a range of 0 to 1, and each factor was assigned weight points based on its overall significance to create a total score for the respective category,” according to the report, which gleaned data from the Internet Crime Complaint Center, Cyberbullying Research Center, CDC, National Conference of State Legislatures, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Psychology Today.
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“Each state’s performance as a whole across all categories determined its ranking on the list,” which ranked states from best to worst.
Overall, Michigan ranked 45th out of 50 states and the District of Columbia, ahead of only Wisconsin, Ohio, Alaska, New Hampshire, California, and Oregon.
The Great Lakes State ranked 41st for crime and threats, 33rd for cyberbullying, 34th for legislation, and 18th for mental health support.
Nationally, Utah was ranked the best state overall for child online safety, followed by Hawaii, New Jersey, North Dakota, Connecticut, Delaware, Louisiana, District of Columbia, Arkansas and Vermont.
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Joining Michigan and its followers in the 10 worst states is Arizona in 42nd, Texas in 43rd, and Wyoming in 44th.
“There’s a correlation between our data on internet safety for kids and the results of a 2022 report on state trends in child well-being by The Annie E. Casey Foundation,” according to the Cloudwards report. “The report named Utah, Vermont, New Jersey and Connecticut as being among the top states for overall child well-being.”
The most recent 2024 Kids Count Data Book from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which is based on 2022 data, shows Michigan slipped two spots from the year prior in the measure of child well-being, coming in 34th among states overall.
The overall ranking is based on 16 indicators that produced individual rankings in four areas – economic well-being, education, health, and family and community factors.
In education, Michigan ranked 41st, the worst among the four categories. Michigan data in every education measure was worse than the national average, and worse than when Gov. Gretchen Whitmer took office.
Michigan ranked 31st for economic well-being, 22nd for health, and 28th for family and community.
Monique Stanton, president of the Michigan League of Public Policy that partnered with the foundation on the report, blamed much of the problem on poverty and trauma.
“Here in Michigan, 18% of our state’s children are living in poverty, which is slightly above the national average, and nearly half of our state’s kids have gone through at least one adverse childhood experience,” she said in a statement cited by WILX. “These findings underscore the importance of strengthening Michigan families and mitigating childhood poverty through bold state policy decisions so that all of our kids have the solid foundations they need to be present and successful in their classrooms.”
Michigan’s poor showing for child online safety is tied in part to increasing reports of threats and violence in schools, which were up 31% between 2022 and 2023.
According to the 2023 Annual Report for Michigan’s nationally recognized OK2SAY program, the state received 9,686 tips spanning 30 categories involving student safety and mental health issues, including 1,769 that involved bullying, 1,482 dealing with suicide, 1,286 about drugs, 815 regarding sexual assault or exploitation, and 741 detailing threats to individuals.
“As we see increasing reports of suicide, bullying, drugs, assault, and self-harm, we must keep investing in mental supports for our kids,” Whitmer said in a statement on July 22.
Two days later, the governor signed into law a record $82.5 billion budget for fiscal year 2025 crafted entirely by a Democratic legislative majority that cut more than $300 million in school mental health and safety funding and held per-pupil funding flat for the first time since 2011.