More adults face cyber-harassment than before: survey

Cyber-harassment gettyimagesbank

By Park Ji-won

More adults faced cyberbullying last year, with three out of 10 being either a perpetrator or a victim of online violence.

According to a recent survey by the Korea Communications Commission, a state-run media regulatory body, 65.8 percent of adults experienced online violence in 2020 ― either by attacking someone or being attacked by someone ― up 11.1 percentage points from the previous year. This the third consecutive annual increase is an increase since 2018 when the figure was 43.1 percent.

The survey was conducted on 7,458 people, including teenagers and adults, from Oct. 6 to Nov. 13. Online violence includes verbal abuse, defamation, stalking, sexual abuse, personal information theft, ostracization, blackmail and coercion.

Additionally 92.4 percent of adults who experienced online violence as a victim became an abuser. When asked why they abused others, 30.8 percent said to get back at the initial abuser, while 42 percent said they felt they were “doing something right.”

However, fewer teenagers experienced online violence. The survey showed that 22.8 percent of teenagers had such experiences, down 4.2 percentage points over the same period.

Meanwhile, 32.7 percent of all respondents said that they experienced online violence in 2020, down 0.8 percentage point from 2019.

By type of online violence, 43.7 percent of adults said they experienced verbal abuse, followed by stalking (42.3 percent), sexual violence (35.1 percent), defamation (33.1 percent), and personal information theft (27.4 percent).

About 29 percent of adults said that they had witnessed sex crimes online, while 5.7 percent of teenagers had. Around 16 percent of teenagers said digital sex crimes were not a problem, compared with 9 percent of adults who gave the same response.