Reader warning: This article mentions suicide.
Lee (not her real name) gave each of her three kids a phone when they started high school, with their safety while on public transport in mind, but things with her youngest child quickly went pear-shaped.
"It was like putting a bomb in his hands," she told ABC podcast Parental As Anything: Teens.
Her son made an error of using some inappropriate language on a messaging app.
That message was then shared.
"[It] got sent to someone else and then ... to someone else, and suddenly we had this [feed] of vile messages coming in, calling him everything under the sun," Lee recalls.
Lee's son was receiving hundreds of aggressive messages each day, including suggestions that he kill himself and threats to himself and his family. He was then doxxed (had his phone number shared online) and stalked and even after changing his number, the bullies still found him.
Ultimately her son's school and the police got involved but Lee says the damage was done. "He was struggling big time — he was having panic attacks at night, and he was not sleeping."
What is cyberbullying and how to know if it is happening to your child?
While what happened to Lee's son is extreme, one in five Australian children are cyberbullied, and there was a 40 per cent jump in cyberbullying reports to the eSafety Commissioner from 2022 to 2023.
A major 2021 Australian review found that bullying — including cyberbullying — was associated with double the risk of suicide in later life.
Cyberbullying is more common among females and can take the form of messaging, sharing photos or videos, memes. Or it can be subtler, like being left out of a group chat.
Young people can be cyberbullied on social media apps, but also on gaming platforms and emails and unlike old-fashioned school bullying, it continues in the safety of their homes.
Dr Charlotte Keating is a clinical psychologist, an advisory board member for anti-bullying organisation Dolly's Dream, and board director for the anti-child violence charity Alannah & Madeline Foundation.
Dr Keating says signs that your child is being cyberbullied include them becoming more secretive, engrossed or anxious around their devices, spending more time in their room, being more irritable, reactive or sensitive than usual, socialising less and drops in grades.
What to do if your child is being cyberbullied
If you are noticing signs that your child could be experiencing cyberbullying, Dr Keating says not to wait to talk to them about it but beware of taking certain actions that might feel intuitive.
She explains that taking your child's phone away may send a message that the bullying is their fault and socially isolate them further.
"[Instead ask them] is it time to take a break from social media? Do we need to be a bit more collaborative with how we're using the phone?"
She also cautions against reaching out to the parents of the bullies.
"Just because you have good intentions, doesn't mean that it will be met on the other side with the openness and a desire to problem solve. And in fact, it can often make the situation much worse."
Instead, Dr Keating suggests contacting the school — as an objective third party — to try to resolve the issue. If the bullying is as extreme as what Lee's child went through, after making sure your child is safe, the police are the next port of call.
Encourage your child to screenshot the abuse and block the bully. You can ask the social media platform to remove the content and report the abuse to the eSafety commissioner.
Building support into kids' lives
Whether bullying is happening or not, Dr Keating says it's important for your child to have extracurricular activities and opportunities to make new friendships and have a sense of belonging outside of school.
Dr Deirdre Gartland leads the Resilience and Mental Health research program at Murdoch Children's Research Institute.
She says facets of life that have been proven to have a protective effect in terms of coping with traumatic events such as bullying include:
- Fostering a positive sense of self-identity
- Maintaining a good connection to family and friends
- Maintaining a strong connection to culture
- Ensuring teens are enjoying hobbies or activities outside of school hours
- Family guidance
- Ensuring there's a positive engagement with the school and the teachers there
- Fostering a sense of optimism for the future; and
- Helping teens build the capacity to identify and regulate their emotions
Dr Gartland says it's important parents maintain a connection with their children even when it may feel like the children don't want it. She suggests spending time doing the things they enjoy.
"The more time you spend with them and have those incidental conversations, the more you get a sense of what that child's well-being is over time."
For Lee's son, whose story we shared at the start of the article, the bullying finally calmed down after he changed schools. Years have passed, but he recently tried to take his own life, not for the first time.
Managing and monitoring phone and social media usage
Lee says if she had her life over she would not have given her son a phone or allowed him onto social media until he was 16.
Dr Keating says the right time to give your child a phone will differ for different families, and from one child to the next. She adds that phones should come with boundaries and an expectation that parents will regularly monitor the content and interactions they are used for.
And in terms of when to allow access to social media, Dr Keating says it's important to ask yourself: "Does your child tend to manage their emotions fairly well or are they quite reactive?
"Do they know about privacy and information that's safe and not safe to share?"
She recommends getting your child to complete an online course, to help equip them with skills including emotional regulation, discerning risk and responding to others with empathy, before getting a social media app.
When you decide to allow your child access, she suggests choosing one social media platform, that you have used yourself or have researched, and using it together for a time, guiding your child through different situations.
"The best you can do is to have as much knowledge as possible about what [your children] are doing online, who they're connecting with, who their influences are," she says.
"Have broad conversations … so that you can be a safe harbour for them to talk about all the good things, as well as some of the challenging things."
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