In an article by the press agency Europa
Press
published on June 28 2012, which refers to a study performed by Microsoft among youths in the age range 8 to 17, it
is stated that 37% of Spanish youths suffer on-line bullying
through the Internet. This looks like a high figure, but it may depend on how bullying
is defined.
Reading the article, it appears that 17 per
cent of the polled declares having been addressed in an
unfriendly way, 13 per cent have been targets
of mockery and 19 per cent have felt
insulted. Also, 24% of the youth confess that they bully other
people.
Neither in the Europa Press article, nor in the
summary of the Microsoft study, is there a definition of unfriendly
behavior and the other forms of bullying. It appears that the
youths who answered the poll just considered it thus.
My impression, until more data is available, is that
the figures in the poll by Microsoft may be exaggerated, perhaps because the
young people do not know very well what bullying is. In our everyday debates using the
Internet, frequently our opponents refute us (and we may be inclined to consider
their behavior unfriendly); or
they answer us with irony (mockery?).
Sometimes we consider ourselves insulted, although maybe that wasn't the
intention of our conversational partner.
It would be interesting to know how many of the polled
mistook those behaviors as bullying. Perhaps the results of the poll would be
compatible with the following headline: Many youth are
excessively sensible to criticism. Anyway, whenever a
statistical study is performed, what is being measured and the definition of
terms should be specified carefully.The same post in Spanish
Thematic Thread on Statistics: Previous Next
Manuel Alfonseca
No comments:
Post a Comment