ents, although they tend to grow as children grow older. They also indicated that ICT utilization is not widespread among elementary school students, but increases dramatically from junior high school onward. It appears that rising levels of anxiety among older children accompany the increase in ICT utilization. In addition, it became clear that parents' understanding of security issues is the single greatest factor influencing children's levels of anxiety. This is borne out by the tendency for children of parents with good understanding of security issues to have lower levels of anxiety. We may conclude that parents' understanding of security issues is of primary importance in allaying children's anxiety.

In addition, in terms of children’s means of allaying their own anxiety, consulting with “parents and family” was the most common response, evidence of the central role of parents and family in this regard. However, this role decreases as children grow older, with junior high and high school students increasingly citing “friends and acquaintances” and others as sources of advice, indicating that there is also a need for people and organizations besides parents to play a role in allaying children’s anxiety. The survey findings also showed that while parents saw themselves as primarily responsible for providing ICT knowledge, a great many also see it as essential for schools and children themselves to take the initiative in this regard.

### 3. Impact of the Internet on the social development of children and youth

Changes in the media environment of children and youth are not all positive. There are some negative aspects which are becoming increasingly evident.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications and the Council on Promotion of a Safer Internet have conducted joint research on the relation between use of the Internet and bullying and addictive behavior traits among children and youth. Here, we will introduce some of the findings.

## (1) The Internet and bullying

Children of each year of age were given a questionnaire on whether they had perpetrated or been a victim of cyber-bullying, or perpetrated or been a victim of bullying at school, in the past month $ ^{15} $ .

Among elementary school children, only a very small number responded that they had been involved in cyberbullying as an aggressor in the past month. The most common form of cyber-bullying among elementary school students, “sending e-mail to all classmates except one person,” had been done by only 0.5%, compared to the most common form of bullying at school (“making fun of a classmate”) at 18.7%. Meanwhile, in terms of being on the receiving end, the most commonly experienced form of cyber-bullying was “being the only one to post a comment online to which nobody responded,” experienced by 1.3% of respondents, in comparison to 34.5% who had experienced “having things said to them by a large number of people which made them angry.”

Among junior high school students, the most common form of cyber-bullying perpetrated was “sending a hurtful e-mail or text message to a classmate” at 2.5%, while the most common form of actual bullying at school was “making fun of a classmate” at 28.4%.

Surveys of high school students found that the most common form of cyber-bullying was “making fun of a classmate online” with 4.7%, whereas 27.6% had engaged in “making fun of a classmate” at school.

The above findings indicate that at all ages, few students had engaged in cyber-bullying, and a much greater number had been perpetrators or victims of bullying at school. It is also evident that the percentage of children engaging in or victimized by cyber-bullying grows larger with increasing age.

## (2) The Internet and dependency

Young users of a mobile phone SNS service were surveyed with regards to the correlation between the Internet and dependency $ ^{16} $ . When the responses to multiple questions were evaluated for dependent tendencies, 11.0% by the broad standard (the Young standard) and 3.8% by the narrow standard (the Baird standard) were found to be dependent. By gender, women showed stronger dependent tendencies than men in both cases.

The effects of dependency were not limited to negative ones, such as “my lifestyle has become nocturnal” (62.1%) and “my vision has declined” (51.9%), but also included positive effects such as “I’ve begun to enjoy life every day” (79.9%) and “I’ve gained the ability to be nice to people” (38.1%).

The primary findings of these surveys on the Internet’s impact on young people were that cyber-bullying was considerably less prevalent than conventional bullying at school, and that the rate of dependency was not high when a narrow standard was applied, with the effects of dependency being positive as well as negative.

We may conclude that while perpetrators and victims of cyber-bullying and people who met the narrow definition of Internet addiction were not common, there is still a need to imbue young people with information and communications morals as the Internet is a medium much used by children and youth.