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Exploring the relationship between cyberbullying and unnatural child death: an ecological study of twenty-four European countries

BACKGROUND: Internet risk has been recognised as a child safety problem, but evidence is insufficient to conclude that a child’s online risk exposure can lead to physical harm. This study aims to explore the ecological relationship between Internet risk exposure and unnatural child death. METHODS: M...

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Autores principales: Fu, King-wa, Chan, Chung-hong, Ip, Patrick
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4146448/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25079144
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2431-14-195
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author Fu, King-wa
Chan, Chung-hong
Ip, Patrick
author_facet Fu, King-wa
Chan, Chung-hong
Ip, Patrick
author_sort Fu, King-wa
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Internet risk has been recognised as a child safety problem, but evidence is insufficient to conclude that a child’s online risk exposure can lead to physical harm. This study aims to explore the ecological relationship between Internet risk exposure and unnatural child death. METHODS: Multiple secondary data sources were used: online exposure to content about self-harm, cyberbullying, and Internet addiction data (EU Kids Online survey, 2010); and mortality data (European Detailed Mortality Database, 2010 or the latest year if not available) of 24 European countries. Correlations were found using quasi-Poisson regression. Countries’ prevalence rates of psychiatric problems (European Social Survey Round 3 and 6, 2006 and 2012) were used to test for possible spuriousness. RESULTS: This study finds that countries with higher rates of cyberbullying were more likely to have a higher incidence of unnatural child death. A 1 percent rise in the prevalence of cyberbullying translated into a 28% increase in risk of unnatural child death (95% CI: 2%-57%). No evidence was found to substantiate confounding effect of the national prevalence of depressive symptoms or traditional bullying. CONCLUSIONS: Explanations are given for the findings. We conclude that intervention programs designed to serve as precautionary measures for risk minimisation should be considered.
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spelling pubmed-41464482014-08-28 Exploring the relationship between cyberbullying and unnatural child death: an ecological study of twenty-four European countries Fu, King-wa Chan, Chung-hong Ip, Patrick BMC Pediatr Research Article BACKGROUND: Internet risk has been recognised as a child safety problem, but evidence is insufficient to conclude that a child’s online risk exposure can lead to physical harm. This study aims to explore the ecological relationship between Internet risk exposure and unnatural child death. METHODS: Multiple secondary data sources were used: online exposure to content about self-harm, cyberbullying, and Internet addiction data (EU Kids Online survey, 2010); and mortality data (European Detailed Mortality Database, 2010 or the latest year if not available) of 24 European countries. Correlations were found using quasi-Poisson regression. Countries’ prevalence rates of psychiatric problems (European Social Survey Round 3 and 6, 2006 and 2012) were used to test for possible spuriousness. RESULTS: This study finds that countries with higher rates of cyberbullying were more likely to have a higher incidence of unnatural child death. A 1 percent rise in the prevalence of cyberbullying translated into a 28% increase in risk of unnatural child death (95% CI: 2%-57%). No evidence was found to substantiate confounding effect of the national prevalence of depressive symptoms or traditional bullying. CONCLUSIONS: Explanations are given for the findings. We conclude that intervention programs designed to serve as precautionary measures for risk minimisation should be considered. BioMed Central 2014-07-30 /pmc/articles/PMC4146448/ /pubmed/25079144 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2431-14-195 Text en Copyright © 2014 Fu et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Fu, King-wa
Chan, Chung-hong
Ip, Patrick
Exploring the relationship between cyberbullying and unnatural child death: an ecological study of twenty-four European countries
title Exploring the relationship between cyberbullying and unnatural child death: an ecological study of twenty-four European countries
title_full Exploring the relationship between cyberbullying and unnatural child death: an ecological study of twenty-four European countries
title_fullStr Exploring the relationship between cyberbullying and unnatural child death: an ecological study of twenty-four European countries
title_full_unstemmed Exploring the relationship between cyberbullying and unnatural child death: an ecological study of twenty-four European countries
title_short Exploring the relationship between cyberbullying and unnatural child death: an ecological study of twenty-four European countries
title_sort exploring the relationship between cyberbullying and unnatural child death: an ecological study of twenty-four european countries
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4146448/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25079144
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2431-14-195
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