[The Power = Reporter Yoo Yeon-soo] Recently, as the age group using smart devices is getting younger, the number of victims of ‘cyber school violence’ is increasing in elementary, middle, and high schools, and cyber school violence accounts for more than 30% of all types of school violence.
Cyber school violence, as stipulated in the ‘School Violence Prevention and Countermeasures Act’, refers to acts in which students use information and communication devices such as the Internet and mobile phones to continuously and repeatedly psychologically attack specific students or spread personal information or false information related to specific students.
With the development of information and communication media, not only simple assaults or face-to-face assaults in the past, but also acts such as verbal abuse and sending insulting photos through SNS such as KakaoTalk, Facebook, and Instagram have been comprehensively defined as types of school violence.
Cyber school violence, which mainly occurs on SNS or KakaoTalk chat rooms, does not cause physical harm, but it causes severe mental pain, so it can cause continuous stress to the victim and cause greater mental shock and trauma than simple physical assault.
Incidents of school violence are recorded in students' life records or even subject to police investigation. In particular, cyber school violence may result in criminal or juvenile protection measures depending on the specific case, such as insult, defamation under the ‘Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection, etc.’, and obscenity using communication media under the ‘Special Act on the Punishment of Sexual Violence Crimes, etc.’.
In addition, cyber school bullying may result in a high level of action being taken by the School Violence Committee because even if the bullying is not done directly, if the student is in a group chat room and watches over or sympathizes with the incident, it is considered to be bullying the victim. Therefore, if you are in a group chat room, you should avoid joining in when your friend's words and actions are inappropriate to avoid being singled out as an aggressor.
Attorney Hyun Byeong-hee of Daeryun Law Firm advised, “If you are a victim of cyber school violence, you should seek legal assistance from a school violence lawyer from the beginning of the case, and take action to resolve the case by considering everything from the school violence committee to lawsuits.”
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