Gillian Shaw: Vancouver is the cyberbullying capital of Canada
18 May
Vancouver is the cyberbullying
capital of Canada
according to the results of a survey released today by Norton Canada.
The statistics in the Norton study suggest that children and teens in Vancouver are more likely to be involved in online bullying than children in the other four major cities across Canada that were part of the survey.
Among parents
with children aged eight to 18, some 40 per cent of Vancouver
parents reported their child had been involved in online bullying, compared to
25 per cent of parents across Canada.
Toronto comes second to Vancouver, with 31 per cent of parents there
reporting that they have cyberbullying kids.
Close to three out of
four said their child was a victim, while 16 per cent said their child was the
bully. Eighteen per cent said their child witnessed a cyberbullying incident.
Photo by Chris Mikula, Ottawa Citizen
Among the Vancouver parents, 17 per cent said their children are
guilty of online bullying, putting Vancouver
only second to Calgary
at 22 per cent. Toronto was third at 15 per
cent, Montreal fourth at 11 per cent, followed
by Halifax at
eight per cent.
The majority of Vancouver parents ignore
the prohibition on many social media web sites that’s supposed to stop kids
under of 13 from joining. Some 55 per cent of parents here say they’re fine
with their kids joining such sites as long as they are supervised.
The survey found girls
are more likely to be bullied online than boys and social media channels are
the communications weapons of choice for cyberbullies. Social networks account
for 63 per cent of the online bullying, compared to 25 per cent for email and
19 per cent by phone.
“The connectivity and
immediacy of social networking sites has adults and children alike tethered to
the online world as a means of communicating,” said Lynn Hargrove, director of
consumer solutions for Norton Canada said in a release. “Words said online have
a different impact than words exchanged on a playground, because online
messages and posts have the potential to live on for an indefinite amount of
time.”
Tweens – those eight to
12 years of age – are somewhat more likely to be involved in online bullying.
While parents used to be
able to monitor their kids’ online activities by keeping their computers in the
kitchen, the family room or another spot where they could keep an eye on them,
the rise of mobile Internet access has lessened that control. Cyberbullying via
cell phones was the most common among kids aged 13 and 14.
More
than 50 per cent of the parents surveyed said they use online monitoring
software to keep tabs on their children’s Internet use and 42 per cent check
the browser history when their kids are surfing to see where they’ve been
online.
The
statistics came from an online survey with a random sample of 507 men and women in Calgary, Halifax, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, who have a
child between the ages of 8-18. The respondents are members of the Impulse Research
proprietary online panel and the survey was conducted last February. The survey
has a margin of error of +/-3 per cent
at the 95 per cent level of confidence.
