This week is Anti-Bullying Week, an annual UK event organised by the Anti-Bullying Alliance that aims to raise awareness of bullying of children and young people in schools and elsewhere, and to highlight ways of preventing and responding to it.
Bullying is an upsetting experience for children and young people, and can happen online as well as in the real world.
Our own research from 2022 showed that four in 10 children aged 8-17 have experienced bullying, either online or offline. And among these children, the bullying was more likely to happen on a device than face to face.
The most common way for children to be bullied via technology was through text or messaging apps, followed by social media and online games.
Ofcom is the regulator for online safety in the UK, and keeping children safe is a priority for us. The Online Safety Act, which gives us our powers in this area, includes rules that require online platforms to address the risk of bullying to their users.
Where the Online Safety Act will help
Under the Online Safety Act, services that are likely to be accessed by children have duties to protect them when they’re online.
When we designed the rules that online services must follow, we heard from over 27,000 children and 13,000 parents, alongside industry, civil society, charities and child safety experts. We also conducted workshops and interviews with children from across the UK to hear their views.
Online services must carry out risk assessments and use the right safety measures to keep children safe, including identifying the kinds of content that are harmful to children. This content, which includes material such as pornography, suicide and self-harm content, also includes bullying content.
If online services have content like this, they must protect children from it – as well as allowing them to report it quickly and easily if they come across it.
Services must also have robust moderation processes in place to take steps to protect children from bullying content when it's reported. They also need to have a complaints procedure and have a named person in place who is responsible for child safety.
Services must also give children more control over their online experience. This includes allowing them to indicate what content they don’t like, to accept or decline group chat invitations, and to block and mute accounts and disable comments on their own posts. This is particularly important when it comes to tackling bullying content.
There must also be supportive information available for children who report or post bullying content.
The processes that services must follow, and the specific measures they must have in place, depend on the levels of risk presented to children by that service and the content that is on it.
Together, these steps aim to make online spaces safer in general for children, including helping to protect them from bullying content.
You can find out more about how, as the online safety regulator, we are helping to keep children safe online.
Tips for parents and carers
The Anti-Bullying Alliance has compiled some tips for parents and carers to help children identify and deal with bullying:
- Create space for calm conversation - Find a quiet time to talk and listen without interrupting or judging.
- Ask open questions - Use phrases like ‘Can you tell me more about what’s been happening?’ rather than yes/no questions.
- Notice changes - Look out for signs such as avoiding school, mood swings, or missing belongings, which may suggest bullying.
- If they’re being bullied - Remind them it’s not their fault and that you’ll work together to make things better.
- If they’ve seen bullying - Talk about the importance of kindness and safely supporting others, like telling an adult or offering friendship.
- If they’ve been involved in bullying - Stay calm, help them understand how their behaviour affects others, and focus on helping them put things right.
- Work with the school - Contact your child’s school and share concerns early.
- Model empathy and respect - Show through your own actions how to treat others kindly, even when upset.