Indonesia was the highest at 91 percent on the criteria of cyber bullying awareness, followed by Australia at 87 percent. The lowest awareness was noted in Saudi Arabia at 29 percent. Another interesting finding was that Italy was the lowest at 2 percent on the criteria of ‘Has a child in your household ever experienced cyber bullying?’ India tops this list followed by 20 percent in Brazil and 18 percent in Canada and Saudi Arabia. On the criteria of ‘Has a child in your community ever experienced cyber bullying?’ Indonesia was the highest at 53 percent and France at the lowest with 10 percent.

Biswarup Banerjee, Head Marketing Communications, Ipsos, India said “The findings are quite surprising, which revealed that the frequency of cyber bullying in India was higher than that of western nations, including the US (15 percent), Britain (11 percent) and France (5 percent). Prior to this survey, there has been little evidence to suggest cyber bullying is a major issue in the country.”

Keren Gottfried of Ispos described the survey as the first global study of its kind and a benchmark to where assessments of cyber bullying vary. She said that “The key to this study is that it measures parental awareness of cyber bullying, not actual rates of the behavior.” “While we can’t speculate on what actually happens, it is quite possible that the proportion of children actually being cyber bullied is in fact understated, since we are speaking with the parents, not the kids.”

The survey also suggests that a strong majority of 77 percent of global citizens find cyber bullying to be a fundamentally different type of bullying that needs special attention from parents and schools, in addition to existing efforts to address bullying in general.