Change in Factors Affecting Cyberbullying of Korean Elementary School Students during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The importance of social networking and the online environment as core factors in building relationships has grown as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which limited in-person activities. As classes transitioned to online platforms, there was an influx of elementary school students into the cyberspace, increasing the risk of exposure to cyberbullying. This study analyzed the factors influencing the experience of cyberbullying among Korean elementary school students around 2020, when the spread of COVID-19 began in earnest, and thus suggests directions for cyberbullying prevention measures for the post-COVID-19 era. This comparative study used binary logistic regression to analyze data from the "Cyber Violence Survey" conducted by the Korea Communications Commission in 2019 and 2020. The analysis confirmed that interactions between parents and children, cyberbullying control by schools, and recognition of cyberbullying as a problem had statistically significant influences on cyberbullying experience only in 2020 (i.e., when the pandemic began). Overall, this study emphasizes the importance of raising awareness about cyberbullying among elementary school students and taking preventive action through a home-school system to address cyberbullying in the post-COVID-19 era.

Comparison of Cyberbullying before and after the COVID-19 Pandemic in Korea.

Because of the implementation of social distancing measures following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, face-to-face interaction has plummeted, which has resulted in the prolific use of social networking services (SNS) and increased activity in the cyberspace environment. This is especially true for teenagers and young adults with the shift to online classes in the education sector, which has increased the chances of being exposed to cyberbullying. This study attempts to determine a strategy for counteracting cyberbullying in the post-COVID-19 era by identifying the factors that have contributed toward greater aggression by adolescents in South Korea in 2020 when the spread of COVID-19 was at its height. To achieve this, we employed the Cyberbullying Circumstance Analysis dataset from the Korea Communications Commission for the time frame of between 2019 and 2020, with 4779 and 4958 participants, respectively. The causes and effects that led to cyberbullying were investigated using binary logistic regression analysis. By reviewing the research data targeted towards Korean adolescents, our analysis found that the average age of those who engage in cyberbullying decreased in 2020 compared to 2019. In addition, cyberbullying awareness at school and the school's capability of controlling it influenced the number of cyberbullies from a statistical grounding, which could be found only in the 2020 dataset. An approach to establishing policies in schools to contain preemptive measures and increase cyberbullying awareness has been proposed to prevent such mishaps in the post-COVID-19 era.