ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Injury Prevention and Control
This article is part of the Research TopicNavigating Child Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion: Strategies, Evidence, and Sustainable TransformationsView all 4 articles
The Rising Trend of Emotional Bullying in an Eastern Chinese City: A Five-Year Epidemiological Study Among School-Aged Children (2020-2024)
Provisionally accepted
- Jinan Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, Jinan, China
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Objective: To investigate the epidemiological characteristics and temporal trends of school bullying, with a particular emphasis on emotional forms, among students in Jinan, China, from 2020 to 2024. Methods: Data were collected from the Jinan Student Common Diseases and Health Influencing Factors Surveillance. A total of 84,289 participants were included through a stratified random cluster sampling design. The study assessed the prevalence and subtypes of school bullying, encompassing both physical and emotional bullying, and analyzed trends over five years. Results: The overall prevalence of school bullying significantly increased from 10.5% in 2020 to 14.6% in 2024 (P < 0.001). Notably, emotional bullying (14.4%) was markedly more prevalent than physical bullying (1.9%) in 2024. Significant disparities by sex were observed, with males reporting higher rates of total (16.4% vs. 12.7%), physical (2.4% vs. 1.4%), and emotional bullying (16.1% vs. 12.5%) compared to females (P < 0.001). While no significant urban-rural differences were found for total or emotional bullying, physical bullying was more common in urban areas (2.1% vs. 1.7%, P = 0.028). Primary schools exhibited the highest prevalence of total (17.4%) and physical bullying (2.8%). An analysis of emotional bullying subtypes revealed significant increases in teasing (from 9.4% to 13.3%), extortion (from 1.2% to 1.5%), and social exclusion (from 3.0% to 5.8%) from 2020 to 2024 (P < 0.001). Conclusions: School bullying, particularly emotional bullying, has risen significantly among students in Jinan. This increasing trend, especially in emotional bullying among younger students, underscores a critical public health issue that necessitates targeted intervention strategies. These findings provide valuable insights for developing evidence-based anti-bullying policies in Jinan and similar urban settings in China.
Keywords: school bullying, physical bullying, emotional bullying, Child, Epidemiology, trend analysis, China
Received: 29 Sep 2025; Accepted: 28 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yang, Li, Yan and Li. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Liu Yang, yangliu_1987@163.com
Jianzhuo Li, peach713@163.com
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