I'm in my late 50s now and I think bullying has been an issue virtually forever - certainly it existed when I was in elementary school, but then I had three older brothers which helped provide a level of immunity.
People are bullied all through life in one form or another - bosses can bully, salespeople can bully, doctors can bully, etc. - so it's not something you can shelter people from and it's best to find ways to deal with it and learn from the experience.
I would note, however, that there was an article in one of our papers this morning about a study on children who've been bullied, which started over a decade ago, tracking them from ages 6 to some who are 26 now, and it indicated that children who were bullied are six times more likely to suffer from some type of addiction to alcohol, drugs, etc., are in lower wage jobs, suffer from depression, etc. and those who were bullies are often still very aggressive in their treatment of other people into adulthood. I just provide that for some background.
I don't have any answers - I think it's more in the news now simply because virtually everything is more in the news now, with the need to fill the 24/7 news beast.