Cybercrime Awareness Among Higher Secondary Students: A Comparative Study Based on Gender and Educational Stream in Kathmandu District, Nepal

In the present era, the fast growth of internet access and digital connectivity has widened, in a significant way, both the opportunities and the risks that exist within cyberspace, and because of this, cybercrime has become one of the most serious threats that young people are facing nowadays. Adolescents, being among the most active users of internet, are exposed increasingly to dangers such as phishing, identity theft, credit card fraud, cyberbullying, website spoofing and attacks based on IoT, but their ability to recognise and respond towards these threats is still not well understood, more so in developing countries like Nepal. The present study tries to assess the level of cybercrime awareness among the higher secondary (Grade 11–12) students of Kathmandu District, and also examines whether this awareness is different according to gender and educational stream (technical versus non-technical).

For this purpose, a descriptive cross-sectional survey was carried out with a purposively selected sample of 165 students, out of which 105 belonged to technical/computer science streams and 60 to non-technical streams, and the sample consisted of 75 male and 90 female students who were drawn from five different higher secondary schools. The data was collected by means of a structured and validated questionnaire, which was adapted from the Cyber Crime Awareness Scale (CCAS-RS), and it covered six dimensions of cybercrime, namely phishing, cyberbullying, credit card fraud, website spoofing, IoT hacking and identity theft. Descriptive statistics were used to profile the awareness under each dimension, while the Pearson chi-square test was applied for examining the associations between the demographic variables and the overall categories of awareness.

The results showed an overall profile of awareness which is encouraging, with the majority of the students falling under the category of “high” or “above average” awareness, and none of them under “low.” Awareness regarding cyberbullying was found to be highest (nearly 99%), whereas the behaviours related to avoidance of credit card fraud were comparatively the weakest (nearly 49–52%). The chi-square analysis showed that a statistically significant association exists between educational stream and level of awareness (χ² = 9.81, df = 3, p = 0.020), with the students of the technical stream being more strongly represented under the high awareness category. However, no significant association could be found in the case of gender (χ² = 2.12, df = 3, p = 0.547). On the basis of these findings, the study recommends that structured cybersecurity education should be integrated into the higher secondary curriculum across all the streams, supported by school-based campaigns as well as teacher training initiatives.