Indian kids worse off than UK’s
At a time when parents are already nervy over the series of deaths of teenagers hooked on to the `Blue Whale’ challenge, a new study by Punjabi University, Patiala, has found that Indian school students actually face more online and offline bullying than those in some western countries.The findings, part of an upcoming publication titled “Bullying, cyber bullying and pupil well-being in schools: Comparing European, Australian and Indian Perspectives,” by Cambridge University Press, is being touted as India’s first multilateral social science research collaboration.
Dr Damanjit Sandhu, associate professor, department of psychology , Punjabi University , who was a part of the project, said bullying was found to be most prevalent among school children in India. Data was collected from 219 pupils in Amsterdam; 537 in Munich’ 815 in Annamalai; and 480 in Patiala. It was found that 77% of school children in India re ported being a victim of online or offline bullying compared to 50% in the UK and 65% in France. Bullying is not so prevalent in The Netherlands (11%) and Germany (16.5%), but is quite common in Australia and Thailand, with 1 in every 4 students in Australia and approximately 32% of school children in Thailand facing some kind of bullying.
Corporation study of 2012 that covered 25 different countries too had reported the third highest cyber bullying rate in India, with 53% of the participating children aged 8-17 saying they been subjected to online bullying. A survey undertaken by McAfee in 2014 had found that 50% of Indian youth had some experience with cyber bullying (either as victims or as witness) and 36% were cyber bullied. Balwinder Singh Sandhu, DSP with Punjab cyber cell, said most complainants are in their early 20s and Facebook related crimes pertaining to false accounts and blackmailing are the most common. ” Adolescents somehow are not approaching police with formal complaints. But we do plan to hold awareness campaigns in educational institutions to make sure that even the teenagers can ward off online bullying and other crimes. Right now the focus is on dealing with the Blue Whale menace,” he said.
Another Punjab police official said they get cases of youngsters blackmailing their former girlfriends by posting pictures on the social media and spurned lovers trying to spoiling the girl’s online image ith fake FB accounts.