School students across the nation are operating about 38,000 unofficial Internet bulletin boards, and at least 20 per cent of them contain insults and abusive language directed at other children, the Education, Science and Technology Ministry said Friday.

A ministry survey of 39 prefectures revealed there are 38,000 of these so-called gakko ura sites, informal bulletin boards that have sparked growing concerns they might be inciting bullying and abusive behavior among students.

Some of the bulletin boards carried messages such as “You’re so annoying” and “Drop dead.”

The ministry announced the findings of its survey at a forum held in Tokyo on Friday to promote the safe use of the Internet, whose attendees included officials from around the nation in charge of the administration of juvenile affairs.

Gakko ura sites are run by children and students, and have no connection to official school web sites. According to the ministry, bullying and other problems associated with the bulletin boards began in 2006. In one case that autumn, a third-year male middle school student in Sendai stopped going to school after abusive messages about him were posted on such a bulletin board.

Two students who posted the messages were sent to a family court.

Alarm bells rang even louder after a male third-year student at a Kobe high school jumped to his death in July after insulting messages and naked photos of him were posted on an online bulletin board.

The National Web Counseling Council, an organization that handles complaints about Internet-related problems, received 374 inquiries and requests for assistance about these unofficial bulletin boards in the past year.

As calls to do something about the problem mounted, the ministry in January entrusted several nonprofit organizations and private research companies to conduct a fact-finding survey to find out how many bulletin boards are online.