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.
Photo: CNA
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.
TENSIONS: The Chinese aircraft and vessels were headed toward the western Pacific to take part in a joint air and sea military exercise, the Ministry of National Defense said A relatively large number of Chinese military aircraft and vessels were detected in Taiwan’s vicinity yesterday morning, apparently en route to a Chinese military exercise in the western Pacific, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. In a statement, the ministry said 36 Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft, including J-16 fighters and nuclear-capable H-6 bombers, crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait or an extension of it, and were detected in the southern and southeastern parts of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) from 5:20am to 9:30am yesterday. They were headed toward the western Pacific to take part in a
Honor guards are to stop performing changing of the guard ceremonies around a statue of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) to avoid “worshiping authoritarianism,” the Ministry of Culture said yesterday. The fate of the bronze statue has long been the subject of fierce and polarizing debate in Taiwan, which has transformed from an autocracy under Chiang into one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies. The changing of the guard each hour at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei is a major tourist attraction, but starting from 9am on Monday, the ceremony is to be moved outdoors to Democracy Boulevard, outside the eponymous blue-and-white memorial
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) supports peaceful unification with China, and President William Lai (賴清德) is “a bit naive” for being a “practical worker for Taiwanese independence,” former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said in an interview published yesterday. Asked about whether the KMT is on the same page as the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on the issue of Taiwanese independence or unification with China, Ma told the Malaysian Chinese-language newspaper Sin Chew Daily that they are not. While the KMT supports peaceful unification and is against unification by force, the DPP opposes unification as such and
CASES SLOWING: Although weekly COVID-19 cases are rising, the growth rate has been falling, from 90 percent to 30 percent, 14 percent and 6 percent, the CDC said COVID-19 hospitalizations last week rose 6 percent to 987, while deaths soared 55 percent to 99, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday, adding that the recent wave of infections would likely peak this week. People aged 65 or older accounted for 79 percent of the hospitalizations and 90 percent of the deaths, the majority of whom have or had underlying health conditions, CDC data showed. The youngest hospitalized case last week was a six-month-old, who was born preterm and was unvaccinated, CDC physician Lin Yung-ching (林詠青) said. The infant had a fever, coughing and a runny nose early this month, but