(ANSA) - ROME, FEB 2 - Italian child bullying victims rose from 44% to 54% of minors between 2020 and 2021, parents group MOIGE and the Piepoli polling institute said in a report out Thursday.
    Cyberbullying was up from 23% in 2020 to 31% of minors in 2021, the survey said.
    Episodes of bullying rose 10% and cyberbullying 8% during the COVID lockdowns, said the report.
    Boys are more affected than girls with 57% of male minors bullied in the real world and 32% in the virtual world, against 50% and 29% for females, said the report.
    Verbal abuse was involved in 42% of cases but physical violence was also frequent, at 26%, and psychological violence also at 26%.
    Some 22% of minors are connected to electronic devices for more than five hours a day, with 63% on the Web without any supervision against 59% in 2021.
    The most popular social media are YouTube, Instagram and Tik Tok, where 68% of kids say they are very or quite active, said the report titled "Between Digital and Cyber Risk: Risks and Opportunities from the Web".
    Some 21% of kids said they accessed adult content "always or often", while another 21% said they did so only rarely. (ANSA).