Record Number of School Bullying Cases Includes Abusive Remarks and a Shocking Background Report

In Japan’s elementary, junior high, and high schools, the number of recognized bullying cases has reached an all-time high. According to national statistics for fiscal year 2022, the number of cases, including those from special needs schools, rose by 10.8% compared to the previous year, reaching 681,948 cases.

 

Over the years, Japanese schools have implemented various measures to prevent bullying. These include educational lessons on bullying, as well as coordinated efforts between teachers and parents to monitor and protect children—efforts that are far more extensive than those of decades ago.

 

Despite this, the number of recognized bullying cases continues to surge, even as the number of children decreases. The reason for this lies in the evolving nature of bullying itself.

 

Shinchosha recently published the book “Rupo Sumaho Ikuji ga Kodomo o Kowasu” (Report: Smartphone Parenting is Destroying Children). It is a non-fiction work that involved interviews with over 200 educators, revealing the impact modern society is having on children. Let’s explore modern-day bullying through insights from this book. 

In the past, bullying typically involved a large group of children targeting one or two specific individuals.

For example, a group of 5 to 10 delinquent kids might use violence against one child, forcing them to run errands for the group, or all the girls in a class might collectively ignore a single student.

Of course, this kind of bullying still exists today.

 

Typical ‘’Systemic Bullying’’

However, overt forms of bullying have decreased compared to the past, with more incidents now occurring covertly online. For example, direct violence has shifted to verbal abuse on social media, and exclusion in classrooms has changed to being removed from group chats on LINE.

A representative example of a new form of bullying is “status message bullying.” Today’s children are well aware that blatant verbal abuse will be recognized as bullying and receive strict intervention. Consequently, if a child falls during a sports day, they might deliberately post a status message on their SNS saying something like, “If I fall like a doll, I’ll be too embarrassed to go to school.” Although teachers and parents may not see it, classmates connected on SNS will understand the message and secretly enjoy the situation.

However, teachers interviewed for this book pointed out another form of bullying that has increased. A teacher from a junior high school in Tokyo explains:

“What is characteristic of our students is bullying that stems from communication breakdown. Due to the pandemic, children’s communication skills have remarkably declined in recent years. As a result, they struggle with interacting with friends and engaging in normal conversation, leading to an increase in senselessly hurting others.”

In this teacher’s class, a student named A reportedly felt sick and vomited during lunch. When other students saw this, they simultaneously began saying things like “Gross,” “Smelly,” and “Disgusting.” Hearing this, A felt they were being verbally abused by classmates and became unable to attend school.

The teacher says:

 

“If the surrounding students had good communication skills, they wouldn’t use such harsh words typical of elementary school children. However, those without such skills recklessly spew out the rude language that circulates online. When there is a minor disagreement, they might say things like ‘Get lost, scum,’ or if someone makes a small mistake, they might call them ‘Disgusting, trash.’ They cannot imagine how their words affect the other person.

 

The same goes for those on the receiving end. With poor communication skills, they cannot brush off such remarks and take them to heart. As a result, they get deeply hurt, unable to recover, and end up not being able to come to school. Nowadays, there are many cases of unnecessary bullying like this.”