Prevent cyberbullying

Have age-appropriate conversations

No matter your child’s age, you can talk about cyberbullying. Doing this will help them:

• Recognise bullying behaviours
• Know when and how to report those behaviours
• Have positive online experiences

Explore our conversation guides to learn more

All children can enjoy the benefits of getting online with the right support. In fact, children with vulnerabilities report more positive impacts from going online than children without vulnerabilities. So, if bullying happens online, taking away their access can have additional negative impacts.

If your child has a disability or other vulnerability, it’s important to offer them the right support. In most cases, this support won’t look too different from that which is given to children without vulnerabilities. However, they might more guidance and check-ins.

Explore ways to support children with learning difficulties as they take ownership of their online safety.

Parental controls can help prevent cyberbullying

Around 1 in 10 children experience cyberbullying from people they don’t know. This number increases to nearly 2 in 5 for children with vulnerabilities, according to our research.

Compared to other harms, this number is quite low. However, the impact of cyberbullying is much higher when compared with other online harms. In fact, 55% of children who have experienced cyberbullying from strangers say it has a high impact.

As such, setting parental controls is a good way to prevent cyberbullying, especially from strangers. You can limit who can contact your child, how your child can communicate and what sites or apps they can access.

Explore our range of step-by-step parental controls guides.

Stay on top of cyberbullying

It’s important to fully understand the issues you want to protect your child from. Therefore, learning what you can about cyberbullying can help prevent it. Not only will you know what to watch out for, but your child will too. And that means they will know when it’s time to come to you for help.

Learn about cyberbullying.

Before having a conversation about online safety, it’s important to establish what your child wants to do online. Do they want to connect with friends through social media or just play games? Are they going to use the internet to research their homework. Have an honest conversation about what they want and decide what you’re happy with them exploring.

Agreeing actions can be a really helpful way to prepare your child for going online. Whether it’s how they can report cyberbullying they might witness or what you’d like them to do if they experience it directly, it means that your child will be more prepared. Remind them they can always check in with you if they’ve forgotten what actions you’d like them to take.

We’ve created several tools to help spark conversations and build confidence around cyberbullying issues. The Online Together Project’s interactive age-appropriate quizzes offer young people and parents the opportunity to test their understanding of different online topics. You can also explore Digital Matters, a selection of free online safety lessons.

We’ve got some advice on using privacy settings on the most popular social apps to protect your child from interacting with strangers. There are also a range of new apps and software that block, filter and monitor online behaviour, which can help you see who your child is interacting with.

Use their nickname and a profile picture of their pet or favourite band, rather than themselves, and encourage them to only be friends with people they know in real life. Avoid sharing personal information like school, age and place they live.