Around one-in-three young people across 30 countries, including Bangladesh, India and Myanmar, have said they were bullied online, while one-in-five reported they have skipped school because of it.
A new poll by the UN Children’s Fund (Unicef) and the UN Special Representative on Violence against Children released these key findings on Wednesday.
More than 170,000 young people between the age of 13 and 24 years participated in the poll through the youth engagement tool U-Report.
The participants are from Albania, Bangladesh, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ecuador, France, Gambia, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Jamaica, Kosovo, Liberia, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Moldova, Montenegro, Myanmar, Nigeria, Romania, Sierra Leone, Trinidad and Tobago, Ukraine, Vietnam and Zimbabwe.
Speaking out anonymously through U-Report, almost three-quarters of young people said social networks, including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter, are the most common place for online bullying.
Unicef Executive Director Henrietta Fore said: “Connected classrooms mean school no longer ends once a student leaves class, and, unfortunately, neither does schoolyard bullying.”
“Improving young people’s education experience means accounting for the environment they encounter online as well as offline,” she added.
Via instant messaging, young people were asked a series of questions about their experiences of online bullying and violence, including who they thought should be trying to end it, according to UN News.
End cyberbullying
About 32% of those polled believed the governments should end cyberbullying, 31% put the onus on young people themselves to stop the harassment and 29% cited internet companies as bearing the chief responsibility.
“One of the key messages that we can clearly see from their opinions is the need for children and young people involvement and partnering” said Najat Maalla M’jid, UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children.
“We are in this together and we must share the responsibility in partnership,” she added.
The poll results also challenge the notion that cyberbullying among classmates is something unique to wealthier schools.
For example, 34% of respondents in sub Saharan Africa said they had been victims of online bullying. And some 39% said they knew about private online groups inside the school community, where children share information about peers for the purpose of bullying.
As part of Unicef’s campaign to #ENDviolence in and around schools, children and young people from around the world drafted a Youth Manifesto in 2018, calling on Governments, teachers, parents and each other to help end violence and ensure students feel safe in and around school – including calling for protection online.
Fore said: “All over the world, young people in both high and low-income countries are telling us that they’re being bullied online, that it’s affecting their education, and that they want it to stop.
“As we mark the 30th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, we must ensure children’s rights are at the forefront of digital safety and protection policies.”
To help end online bullying and violence, Unicef has called for authorities to implement bullying and cyberbullying policies.
It also called for establishment of national helplines for children and young people, advance ethical standards and practices among social network providers.
Unicef called for collection of better, disaggregated evidence about children and young people’s online behaviour to inform policy and guidance; and teacher and parent training to address cyberbullying and bullying, particularly for vulnerable groups.