Fueled by the spread of smartphones, a type of cyberbullying is on the rise in which children post disparaging messages about their classmates on social networking sites and online bulletin boards.
Experts are calling for the improvement of school education on how to interact with social media.
"I'm still worried. People might say things about me again," murmured a 17-year-old boy in his third year of high school in Kawaguchi, Saitama Prefecture.
The boy was bullied in his middle school days and still suffers mentally from the experience. Old memories come back to him, sometimes causing him to hyperventilate. In January last year, he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
The bullying was triggered by the free chat app Line. The boy joined a soccer club immediately after entering junior high school in the spring of 2015, but was not a part of a LINE group to which many club members belonged.
When his homeroom teacher scolded the club members, they resented him, claiming he had "snitched." He was ignored in the club, and was once punched in the face for no reason.
-- School's reaction
His mother consulted with the school, but the situation did not improve. The boy cut his wrist in the fall of his second year of junior high school. The injury was not serious, but he refused to go to school after that.
The boy managed to return to school in his third year, but the bullying continued. He found "Die" and "[You're] obnoxious" written on the back of his school shoes.
The school held a parents' meeting to discuss bullying in October 2017, but failed to clarify whether bullying had actually occurred in the boy's case. Then his real name was exposed on online bulletin boards and he began to be criticized.
"Isn't [he] the worst?" "[His] parents are overprotective monsters." Two months later, the number of abusive posts had swelled to about 3,000.
"I saw him riding a bicycle." Posts that seemed to be tracking his behavior were put up, making the boy too afraid to go out. When he graduated junior high school, there was a post saying, "[He'll be] bullied his entire life."
-- Lawsuits and settlement
His mother decided to identify the posters and consulted lawyers, feeling "if there is no place [for my son] to feel safe, he'll go crazy." She demanded that the administrator of the bulletin board disclose the posters' IP addresses.
In June 2018, she filed a lawsuit against three internet service providers seeking disclosure of the personal information of the posters of four abusive comments. In December the same year, the Tokyo District Court ordered the service providers to disclose the information, saying, "When the fact that you have been bullied spreads in an unlimited manner, it is likely to lead to prejudice and slander."
Ultimately three people -- two classmates and the father of another classmate -- were found to have posted the comments. She and her son made progress toward a solution with one of the two students.
In May last year, the bullied boy filed a lawsuit against the remaining two, seeking a total of about 1.6 million yen in damages. After that, he reached a settlement.
"A trial takes a long time, but I thought identifying the perpetrators would help prevent other cyberbullying," the mother said.
According to the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry, in the 2018 school year, there was a record high of 16,334 cases of "slander and harassment via computers and mobile phones" among bullying in general recognized by elementary, junior high and high schools nationwide.
The figure is 3.6 times the 4,527 identified in the 2008 school year.
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