Nearly half of the nation’s students say that they have been involved in cases of cyberbullying — nearly twice the rate in 2016, a Child Welfare League Foundation survey released yesterday showed.
The Ministry of Education in July amended the Regulations Governing the Prevention and Control of Bullying on Campuses (校園霸凌防制準則) to include online harassment, the foundation said, adding that the move indicates that cyberbullying has become a common phenomenon on school campuses.
In a survey on cyberbullying among students, the foundation found that 10.7 percent of respondents said that they had engaged in the cyberbullying and 18.1 percent said they had been victims thereof, while 18.2 percent said they had both bullied and been bullied.
However, a majority of students (53 percent) said that they had never been involved, the foundation said.
A total of 59.2 percent of respondents said that they were worried about being bullied or attacked on the Internet, it said.
A similar survey four years ago showed that just 22.2 percent of students reported having been involved in cyberbullying, foundation chief executive officer Pai Li-fang (白麗芳) told reporters in Taipei.
This year’s survey found that 21.3 percent of students said that “cyberbullying is just a part of growing up.”
Among the respondents who said they had been victims of cyberbullying, the most common form reported was “being attacked, mocked or bullied while playing smartphone or computer games,” at 94.4 percent, the survey showed.
This was followed by 61 percent who said that their private information was “shared publicly by others without their consent,” and 49.9 percent who said that they “received malicious, hostile or offensive private messages,” it showed.
The most common impact cyberbullying had on students was “feeling depressed” (31.2 percent).
Twenty-four percent of students said they felt “anxious or nervous about interpersonal interactions,” and 12.4 percent said they had sleeping problems due to cyberbullying, the survey showed.
About 10 percent of students said they stopped using social media after being bullied online, 7.9 percent said that they engaged in self-harm and 7.6 percent said they had suicidal thoughts, it showed.
The survey showed that 62.8 percent of students said that they would try to solve bullying issues on their own, and 62.7 percent said they would discuss them with a classmate or friend.
About 28 percent of students said they would tell their parents, 13.6 percent said they would discuss the issue with an “Internet friend,” and 13.5 percent said they would tell a teacher, it showed.
The survey, which was conducted from from June 11 to July 9, collected 1,589 valid responses from junior, senior and vocational high-school students, the foundation said.
It had a confidence level of 95 percent, and a margin of error of 2.46 percentage points, it added.
