The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is urging education systems to include online violence in school safety plans, citing cyberbullying that has affected roughly one in 10 learners worldwide.
In a technical paper released Oct. 26, UNESCO called for stronger safeguards, staff preparation, digital safety education and ways for students to report abuse. It says technology companies, online platforms and digital regulators also have a role in protecting learners. UNESCO presented its proposals at a Nov. 5 dialogue on violence and bullying in schools.
The agency separately estimates that one in three learners worldwide is bullied at school each month. That broader measure includes forms of bullying beyond cyberbullying.
UNESCO also identifies abuse involving artificial intelligence among the online threats facing learners. In research covering 11 countries, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), ECPAT International and INTERPOL estimated that at least 1.2 million children ages 12 to 17 had their images altered into sexually explicit deepfakes during the year before they were surveyed. The estimate concerns manipulated sexual images; it is not a global measure of cyberbullying.
A World Health Organization (WHO) survey offers a separate measure of cyberbullying among adolescents. Across 44 countries and regions in Europe, Central Asia and Canada in 2021-22, 16% of respondents ages 11, 13 and 15 reported being cyberbullied at least once or twice in the preceding couple of months. The rates were 15% for boys and 16% for girls.
The WHO survey covers a defined region and recall period, while UNESCO’s one-in-10 estimate is worldwide. The available WHO survey rounds, from 2018 and 2022, do not establish a longer-term trend or show that AI contributed to the change between them.
UNESCO’s General Conference has a discussion scheduled for Jan. 29, 2027, on whether to advance a recommendation about young people and digital environments in an age shaped by AI.
