Almost one child in six is cyberbullied, finds WHO report
Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/France24_en
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 The schoolyard bully is increasingly becoming a cyber bully.
00:04 A new study from the World Health Organization finds online harassment among adolescents
00:10 is on the rise, magnified by the increase in their digital interactions.
00:15 About one in six adolescents say that they have been cyber bullied once or twice in the
00:22 last couple of months.
00:23 And here we can see that there's not much of a gender difference.
00:30 The study used data from 44 countries and regions across Europe, Central Asia and Canada.
00:36 Researchers surveyed more than a quarter million kids aged 11 to 15 years old.
00:42 For boys, cyber bullying peaked at age 11.
00:45 For girls, age 13.
00:48 And these kids now spend up to six hours a day online.
00:52 But researchers point to another cause as well, the COVID pandemic.
00:56 During COVID, they ended up spending even more time on their electronic devices as all
01:05 the schooling has happened there, all the interaction with friends has happened there.
01:11 Bullying inside schools has declined over the past decade as cyber bullying surged.
01:18 Social media companies such as Meta have beefed up child safety features recently in an effort
01:23 to limit harassment and exposure to harmful content.
01:27 But the WHO says there needs to be more education around the dangers of cyber bullying, as well
01:33 as an increased investment in peer violence monitoring.
01:36 [BLANK_AUDIO]