Violence in cyberspace: How is it measured in Mexico?

According to the National Survey on Availability and Use of Information Technologies in Households (ENDUTIH) 2020, the percentage of internet users aged 6 years or older increased in Mexico from 43.5% in 2013 to 72.0% in 2020, which opens up a range of opportunities, but also challenges. This has impacted on interpersonal relationships, where different types of violence have found room in cyberspace.

In this sense, cyberbullying as another form of violence, also requires the design of public policies based on evidence in order to reduce the impacts generated by this phenomenon, hereby the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) presents the Module on Cyberbullying (MOCIBA) 2020, as a statistical research effort of great relevance developed annually since 2015.

Therefore, through the MOCIBA it is possible to know the prevalence of cyberbullying among people aged 12 years and over, and of those who experienced a situation in the last 12 months, the type of cyberbullying experienced and its characterization, such as identity, gender and motivation of the harasser, frequency of harassment and consequences suffered by the victim.

Among its main findings, MOCIBA 2020 revealed that 21.0% of the population of aged 12 years and over, that is 16.1 million people faced cyberbullying, which 55.6% are between the ages of 12 and 29, while 55.9% were women.

The main situations of cyberbullying were being contacted through false identities (35.0%); the reception of offensive messages (34.6%); and sexual advances or proposals (26.7%), where the last one, was positioned as the main way of cyberbullying faced by women (35.9%).