Ok lil background first: I have been playing the game for a fair while but concentrated on missions and negelected the pvp/npc side (and research to a point), so I recently reset to try again.

Not gonna use any names.

Im lvl 6, do a badge hack on a lvl 7 for 5 whole research points. That gets me alerted and farmed for the rest of the day disables/hacks/raids the works, by lvl 24s,56s,81s... from 1 simple badge hack.

My question is, Is this normal? If so then i'll probably go back to ignoring pvp for the most part.

Its generally not customary to alert for a single hack, but each legion/player has their own rules. At the super-low levels, nobody really knows what they're doing yet so don't get too frustrated with this. My recommendation would be to up your research, get some decent tech and build yourself a sturdy little ship while you do missions. Hit any rare or uncommon NPC's along the way just for the drops you get from them. Wait till around 35-40 then dip your toe into the bloodbath called PvP.

Don't lose heart, PVP is the best fun you can ever get from this game, IMO.

I wouldn't say skip PVP till you get to higher levels. Just be careful about who you attack