<Anchor> It
is a friendly economy time.
Today (28th), I will be with reporter Kwon Ae-ri.
For the past 3 years, so now it's just the corona period.
Did you hear that there were statistics that looked at the lives of children and adolescents in Korea during this period?
<Reporter>
Yes.
There is probably no more important issue than how happy your children are.
From economic environment, health, study to values, the National Statistical Development Institute divided all 60 national indicators into 60 national indicators and published a report that looked into every nook and cranny.
Many indicators are updated every three years because they are based on extensive research.
Now, there are aspects that can be naturally compared to before the corona crisis, which is just 3 years old.
The first change that many parents sympathize with over the past three years is that the rate of children becoming overly dependent on smartphones to worry about has started to increase rapidly.
You will see a graph on the screen, but there has been no major change in the use of smartphones for several years before Corona.
It's neither getting better nor getting worse, but after 2020 it starts to increase noticeably.
The same is true for children and adolescents over the age of 10 who self-reported that they are overly dependent on smartphones, or kindergarteners and lower elementary school students whose parents answered on their behalf.
In other age groups, at least last year, the rate of increase started to slow down a little, but the speed of kindergarten students does not slow down.
As you might have guessed, the biggest feature of the corona era is social disconnection.
In particular, the younger the child, the more unable to share child care with schools or institutions, and the parents who were in charge all day were unable to even manage their smartphones.
You've probably heard or heard the complaint that you have to hold your smartphone for a while to eat.
<Anchor>
I think many parents can relate to the last story.
But in the end, this happens because children can't go to school or kindergarten well because of the corona, and they don't play well with children, but this is the end of the disconnection.
Are there other unexpected consequences of this disconnect?
<Reporter>
Yes.
Because I couldn't get along with my peers, the damage from peer violence, such as school violence, decreased.
Instead, child abuse has increased in families.
Child abuse is identified by the number of reported cases.
If you look at it, you can see that the report slowed down in 2020 and then surged again as we went to 2021.
This is not because the actual abuse has slowed down in 2020, but in the early days of social disconnection, it is largely due to the fact that even the fact of abuse did not cross the wall of each family.
Then, as schools reopened little by little, the number of cases of finding and reporting abuse by teachers or those around them increased all at once.
It wasn't all bad.
The time children spend with their families has obviously increased during the corona period.
The time I spend eating meals with my family, especially with my father, has increased significantly.
It may be because of the increase in telecommuting, but the fact that the time spent with fathers on weekends has increased noticeably can be seen as a result of the decrease in outside activities due to corona, as well as the fathers' willingness to participate in childrearing.
Since the corona crisis, the number of runaway teenagers has also decreased slightly.
On the other hand, as I mentioned earlier, school violence has decreased.
However, non-face-to-face peer violence, bullied and harassed online, continued to increase even during the corona era.
It is an aspect that can be seen as temporarily slowing down due to the problem of the Corona 19 situation rather than improving the peer violence problem qualitatively.
<Anchor>
The things I thought would be the case for the past three years can be seen in numbers, so they definitely come closer to me.
Last but not least, this is some good news.
A trend toward fewer children suffering from poverty?
<Reporter>
That is definitely a trend that continues to steadily decline.
In our country, children suffering from poverty are gradually disappearing.
The relative poverty rate is lower than in France or Japan.
However, as children could not go to school during the corona time and could not eat meals, the rate of youth malnutrition increased noticeably.
Although the poverty rate is decreasing, it is also true that there are still many children who need to go to school to eat a proper meal.
And somehow, as the activity is reduced due to corona and the world is cut off, at least the yellow light has come on for children's health in general.
The prevalence of obesity in both male and female students increased dramatically.
In particular, in the case of male students, the momentum was clearly reduced in the early days of the corona, but as the corona situation was prolonged, it appeared to recover again.
In the end, overall, our children and teenagers are more satisfied with life after Corona.
Relatively speaking, even among OECD countries, children are not happy.
In fact, the fact that it is a society where children's happiness is falling has been revealed every time there was a similar investigation even before the corona.
This is a society-wide homework that our society needs to think about most in the long run.