Eighty-five per cent of youths in Bangladesh consider online bullying a severe problem, a survey carried out in four separate countries by Telenor Group, controlling company of Grameenphone said.
With the ongoing digitalisation in Bangladesh, this is a concern that requires greater attention and awareness, they said.
Twenty-nine per cent of Bangladesh youths said they were bullied before the pandemic, while 18 per cent said they experienced more online bullying since the onset of Covid-19.
Telenor, in association with Plan International, ran a survey in August and September 2021 among youth with Covid-19 as the backdrop on how internet use and online bullying trends have changed across four countries, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Pakistan and Thailand.
In Bangladesh, 8% of youths have experienced online bullying at least once a week or more since the pandemic. The three most common platforms where youths experienced online bullying were social media, messaging apps, and online gaming and video game streaming platforms.
To stop the bullying online, respondents in the four countries said that they took several measures to safeguard themselves, which included ignoring the bully, which resulted in the person stopping, changing security settings online so the person could not contact them, and speaking to a parent or guardian about the problem.
Yasir Azman, CEO of Grameenphone, reiterated Grameenphone's focus to address the issues outlined by the Telenor survey. "We've been working hard to drive awareness and keep our future generations safe online in collaboration with Telenor and partners such as UNICEF to address these risks.