Distress rates from school bullying higher than COVID times, with children as young as 10 facing online and in-person abuse
School bullying has reached devastating new peaks in Australia, with figures showing rising rates of children as young as 10 expressing serious emotional distress following online and in-person abuse.
Crisis counselling service Kids Helpline is sounding the alarm, with its data showing a rising proportion of calls from children aged 10 to 14 who are experiencing bullying and having thoughts of suicide.
While health data indicates these thoughts very rarely translate into actions, Kids Helpline chief executive Tracy Adams said they were a key measure of mental health.
"[What] we are really seeing over the last five years is significant growth in the level of distress and it's actually higher levels of distress among our younger children," she said.
"The nature is now online and offline. So young people are still being physically assaulted, they're still being verbally abused. They're also being isolated and we're seeing that play out in the online environment as well."
It coincides with the latest release of data from the landmark Australian Child Maltreatment study that shows more than one in four (28.7 per cent) adults reported being bullied at school, and these rates were not improving for each new generation.
The new data is backed by figures from the office of the eSafety Commissioner, which show school-age cyberbullying complaints surged 456 per cent in the past five years — from 536 to 2,978 — and in 2024 nearly half of reports involved children under the age of 13.
The office said it was increasingly dealing with deepfakes involving pornographic depictions of classmates or teachers that it must refer to the Australian Federal Police (AFP).
The AFP's Centre to Counter Child Exploitation reported a 27.7 per cent rise in reports from the commissioner relating to child image-based abuse, sextortion and cyberbullying in the two years to 2024 from adults and minors.
Charlie Ford was just 10 years old when she was first bullied through school messaging apps.
By the time she was 13, it had escalated to threats of physical violence, exclusion at school, and gossip being spread over social media videos.
At one point, her mother, Serena Ford, said she overheard school friends telling her daughter on a video chat to self-harm.
When she spoke to the girls, it was met with verbal abuse.
Over time, Charlie said her mental health declined significantly, and she would try to escape the car on the drive to school.
"I didn't really want to go to school because of all the threats," she said.
"I'd be hearing things from people and that would just make me break down in tears."
Serena said it was devastating to watch the spark go out of her once bright little girl.
"I had nights where I had to sleep with her because she was just so upset," she said.
But after reaching out for help, Charlie got support, and the 16-year-old is now enrolled in distance education.
In February, the federal government launched an Anti-Bullying Rapid Review, with findings due to be handed down later this year just as the social media ban for under 16s comes into effect.
Co-chair Dr Charlotte Keating said they had received more than 1,600 responses from schools, teachers, parents and young people from around the country.
"We've been tasked with putting together potential models for what a consistent national standard could look like to respond to bullying in schools," she said.
Serena Ford said each time Charlie moved schools, the institutions' investigations were slow and protracted, and their responses ineffective.
"They just kept putting it on Charlie as in, 'she is the problem; she needs to be more resilient'."
At one point the family were threatened with breaking the law for not sending Charlie to school but were given no help to find her an alternative place.
Serena said schools failed to acknowledge the overlap between schools, friendships and technology.
"They told me that 'it's happening outside of school, so it's not their problem'."
Ms Adams said their figures indicated Australia was not getting its anti-bullying policies right.
In 2024, Kids Helpline received more than 3,500 calls and online contacts about bullying alone.
The proportion that involved a child experiencing bullying and having thoughts of suicide was higher than at the peak of COVID lockdowns, which was a "critical mental health concern".
"When we see levels of distress to the nature that Kids Helpline is getting, we see tragic consequences," she said.
The latest release of data from the Australian Child Maltreatment study also raised questions about the country's responses to school bullying.
The study of 8,500 Australians found despite at least two decades of extensive anti-bullying policies in schools, there was "no meaningful change" in the number of people experiencing bullying in their childhood over the past five decades.
Lead author Dr Hannah Thomas, from the University of Queensland, said childhood bullying had been linked to higher rates of depression and other mental illness.
"Those mental health harms happen not only just during childhood, but they tend to follow people into adulthood as well," she said.
The study did find the duration of the bullying was shorter among the most recent generation of 16 to 24-year-olds.
Dr Thomas said this suggested some anti-bullying policies "might be working".
The Australian Child Maltreatment Study found the main reason people were bullied was because of their height or weight, followed by race or ethnicity, disability, sexuality and gender identity.
Kids Helpline said reports to their counsellors suggested bullying happened both in-person and online and could range from physical assault to the use of anonymous online comments.
New technologies were compounding the problem, according to the experts.
The eSafety Commissioner's office said cyberbullying reports included sending hurtful messages, sharing embarrassing photos, spreading gossip, exclusion from chats and catfishing.
"We're not teaching young people to deal with differences with kindness," Ms Adams said.
"We see adults behaving poorly online. So we have to ask ourselves, as adults, are we role modelling?"
Ms Adams said amid the troubling figures Kids Helpline was hopeful about a rise in young people seeking help.
"We've got to continue to promote the strategies that young people have available," she said.
Charlie and Serena said they were speaking out because they wanted young people to have more education about how to interact and more support for parents to get their children help.
"I really want to make a change because nobody deserves to be treated the way I was treated," Charlie said.
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