The authorities should ban videos that show campus bullying, those attending a seminar yesterday in Shanghai's Jing'an District said.
"Videos of students being bullied by their schoolmates are easily accessible on the Internet. They are a kind of violent propaganda, which is infectious," said Yao Jianlong, director of the School of Criminal Justice at Shanghai University of Political Science and Law.
"I suggest the authorities ban these videos spreading on the Internet, so as to prevent underage youths from developing hostile attitudes and getting ideas about hurting people," Yao said.
In July, five students, three under the age of 18, were prosecuted for allegedly assaulting an underage girl, a former classmate of one of the suspects with whom she had been in a quarrel outside a Metro station in February. The incident was captured by passers-by. Mobile phone footage, which showed her being slapped and stripped of her clothes, was uploaded to the Internet, attracting thousands of viewers.
"Many teenagers, especially those in their rebellious phase, will imitate what they see in videos when they are involved in disputes," said Wu Yan, a section chief with Shanghai People's Procuratorate.
But luckily, campus violence isn't rampant in Shanghai, she added.
From 2015 to the first half of this year, Shanghai has seen 14 cases of violence taking place in or near schools.
The cases involved 37 people, mostly middle and vocational school students aged between 14 and 18. They include robbery, molestation, rape and intentional injury, but only represent about 0.03 percent of the total number of criminal cases in the city, Wu said.
