Indian kids worst victims of cyberbullying, says study
January 18th, 2012 - 11:06 pm ICT by IANS
Mumbai, Jan 18 (IANS) Three out of 10 parents in India say their children have been victims of cyberbullying and a majority of them through social networking sites like Facebook, according to an online global poll released Wednesday.
The survey done by Ipsos - a global market research company - found that 45 percent of Indian parents believed a child in their community was being cyberbullied, while a majority (53 percent) parents are aware of the issue.
Cyberbullying is when a child or group of children — under the age of 18 — intentionally intimidate, offend, threaten or embarrass another child or group of kids specifically through the use of information technology, such as a website or chat room on internet, a cellular telephone or another mobile device.
The poll surveyed 18,000 adults in 24 countries, 6,500 of whom were parents. It showed the most widely reported vehicle for cyberbullying was social networking sites like Facebook, which 60 percent cited.
Globally, mobile devices and online chat rooms were a distant second and third, each around 40 percent.
In India, it is evenly split between social networking sites (55 percent) and online chat rooms (54 percent).
“The findings are quite surprising, which revealed that the frequency of cyberbullying in India was higher than that of western nations, including the US (15 percent), Britain (11 percent) and France (5 percent). Prior to this survey, there has been little evidence to suggest cyberbullying is a major issue in the country,” said Biswarup Banerjee, head - marketing communications, Ipsos in India.
“The key to this study is that it measures parental awareness of cyberbullying, not actual rates of the behaviour. While we can’t speculate on what actually happens, it is quite possible that the proportion of children actually being cyberbullied is, in fact, understated, since we are speaking with the parents, not the kids,” he said.
A strong majority (77 percent) of global citizens say cyberbullying is a fundamentally different type of bullying that needs special attention from parents and schools, in addition to existing efforts to address bullying in general.
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- 'More Indian teens using networking sites to communicate' - May 23, 2012
- Indians prefer banking over shopping on internet: Survey - Apr 04, 2012
- Indian parents wary of kids getting hooked online: Survey - Jun 22, 2011
- British parents use websites to abuse teachers - Jan 12, 2011
- How to handle cyber bullying, sexting - Aug 22, 2010
- New cell phone app identifies predatory adults posing as kids - Jan 25, 2011
- Mark Zuckerberg sued by Facebook investors - Jun 05, 2012
- There should be zero tolerance for digital bullying: Expert - Dec 30, 2010
- Virtual police in UK to patrol Facebook in hunt for cyber bullies - Feb 27, 2011
- New service gives parents control over kids' mobile use - May 21, 2012
- 'Concerned' UK dad develops world's first Facebook bully alert - Apr 08, 2011
- Cyberbullies and their victims face physical, mental health problems - Jul 06, 2010
- Urban Indian youths bored of social media: Survey - Jan 19, 2012
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