Almost 70 percent of young Hong Kong students reported feeling depressed and said “everything was wrong” in their lives in a recent study on cyberbullying.
A report on the study, released by City University Hong Kong (CityU) last Tuesday, showed a correlation between the time students spent online and depression. Out of the students who were surveyed, those who spent more time online were exposed to a higher chance of cyberbullying, and were more likely to be depressed or act aggressively towards others as a result.
The survey, commissioned by the Quality Education Fund, was led by Professor Dennis Wong, associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at CityU and interviewed 3,000 pupils aged 10 to 16 from April to June last year.
Around 64 percent of respondents said they felt worried or frustrated, while more than half felt “useless”.
According to the report, secondary school students said the most common form of cyberbullying they suffered was when people edited their photos to mock them, while primary school students said they had experienced “intense verbal bullying”.
Wong told the SCMP that unhappy students “struggle” in the face of bullying and warned that they may become bullies themselves. To combat the issue, Wong called for more government funds to be allocated to counselling services in schools.
The Social Welfare Department, in cooperation with 34 NGOs, has stationed social workers at 465 secondary day schools in the city. However, the policy since 2000 is that only one social worker is designated to each secondary school, which critics have slammed as “inadequate”.
Since 2015, Hong Kong has seen a spike in student suicides, with suicides among primary and secondary school students jumping from nine in 2014-2015 academic year to 19 in the 2015-2016 academic year. A special LegCo panel on preventing student suicides submitted a report earlier this year which suggested public schools put greater emphasis on non-academic achievements, introduce better mental health support, and promote different career “pathways”.
