Stalking is far more common than most people realize. About 1 in 4 women (22.5%) and nearly 1 in 10 men (9.7%) in the United States will experience stalking at some point in their lifetime, according to the CDC’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey. In any given year, roughly 5.5% of women and 3% of men are actively being stalked. That translates to millions of Americans dealing with persistent, unwanted pursuit right now.
Lifetime and Annual Rates
The lifetime numbers are striking because they reveal how widespread the experience is across a population. A 22.5% lifetime rate for women means that in a room of 20 women, statistically four or five have been stalked. For men, the 9.7% rate means roughly one in ten. These figures come from nationally representative surveys where respondents are asked about specific behaviors (repeated unwanted contact, surveillance, threats) rather than whether they label what happened as “stalking.” That distinction matters because many people experience stalking behaviors without ever using the word.
The 12-month prevalence, which captures ongoing or recent cases, shows that stalking isn’t just something that happened in the past for most victims. With 5.5% of women and 3% of men reporting stalking within the last year alone, the problem is active and continuous across the country.
Who Gets Stalked
Women are stalked at roughly twice the rate of men across every measure. Young adults, particularly those of college age, face elevated risk. Dating app users appear especially vulnerable to cyberstalking specifically: one study of dating app users found a cyberstalking victimization rate of nearly 65%, defined as receiving repeated unwanted messages.
The relationship between victim and stalker is one of the most important and misunderstood aspects of the crime. Stalking is not primarily committed by strangers lurking in the shadows. The majority of stalkers are people the victim already knows, often a former romantic partner. In cyberstalking cases, ex-intimate partners account for about 75% of perpetrators, compared to 47% in offline stalking cases. This pattern holds across gender lines: both men and women are most likely to be stalked by someone they were once in a relationship with.
How Technology Has Changed Stalking
Most stalking cases today involve a mix of both online and offline behaviors. A stalker might show up at someone’s workplace and also monitor their social media, send repeated texts, or track their location through GPS. The most common digital methods include unwanted and repeated contact through email, social media, or text messages. More invasive tactics include accessing a victim’s accounts without permission, tracking GPS location, impersonating the victim online, or contacting the victim’s friends and family.
Social media platforms have created new avenues for persistent contact. About 32% of cyberstalking victims in one study reported experiencing unwanted repeated contact or threats specifically on Snapchat. The ease of creating new accounts, monitoring someone’s posts, and reaching them through multiple platforms makes digital stalking difficult to escape even when a victim blocks the perpetrator.
Why Most Cases Go Unreported
Less than a third of stalking victims, just 29%, reported the crime to police in 2019. Even in earlier surveys where reporting rates were somewhat higher (37% of male and 41% of female victimizations), the majority of cases still never reached law enforcement.
The reasons victims don’t report paint a picture of how stalking is minimized, both by victims themselves and by the systems meant to protect them. The two most common reasons are believing the incident was “not important enough to report” (27.2%) and considering it a “private or personal matter” (26.7%). About 11% said it wasn’t clear a crime had occurred. Another 11% believed the police wouldn’t take it seriously or wouldn’t be effective. Nearly 6% didn’t report because they were afraid of retaliation from the stalker.
Smaller but telling percentages reveal other barriers: 4% believed police wouldn’t believe them or would blame them, 7% wanted to protect the perpetrator (often an ex-spouse or ex-partner), and 3.3% felt ashamed or embarrassed. Less than 1% reported that the perpetrator was a police officer, but that figure still represents real people with essentially nowhere to turn within the traditional system.
What Legally Counts as Stalking
All 50 states and the federal government have laws against stalking, though definitions vary. Under federal law, stalking involves a pattern of conduct directed at a specific person that places them in reasonable fear of death or serious bodily injury to themselves, a family member, a spouse, or even a pet. The law also covers conduct that causes or would reasonably be expected to cause substantial emotional distress. This applies both to physical stalking (following, showing up, surveillance) and to cyberstalking through email, social media, or any electronic communication.
The key legal elements are intent and a “course of conduct,” meaning a pattern rather than a single incident. A one-time unwanted text isn’t stalking. Dozens of texts after being told to stop, combined with showing up uninvited, likely is. State laws set their own thresholds, with some requiring the victim to feel fear of physical harm and others recognizing emotional distress as sufficient.
The Gap Between Prevalence and Perception
The numbers tell a consistent story: stalking is one of the most common forms of interpersonal violence in the United States, yet it remains one of the least reported and least recognized. The massive gap between the millions of people experiencing stalking behaviors each year and the fraction who report to police reflects a cultural tendency to downplay persistent unwanted contact, especially when it comes from someone the victim once trusted. Nearly a quarter of victims who don’t report describe the behavior as “not important enough,” which suggests that many people enduring repeated surveillance, unwanted contact, or threats don’t fully recognize the seriousness of what’s happening to them.
That disconnect is especially relevant in the digital age. When stalking behaviors happen through a phone screen, they can feel less threatening than someone physically following you. But the research is clear that most cases now blend online and offline tactics, and cyberstalking by an ex-partner is the single most common pattern. The prevalence numbers suggest that stalking touches a significant portion of the population, far more than the criminal justice system’s caseload would ever indicate.