The Anti-Bullying Alliance welcomes the government’s consultation and its focus on improving children’s wellbeing and safety online. Online bullying remains one of the most common and harmful forms of bullying experienced by children and young people, and it requires urgent action.
Read the government announcement here
Children can face serious adverse experiences online, including harassment, exclusion, the rapid spread of harmful content, and abuse through private messaging. Online bullying can follow children beyond the school gates, disrupt sleep, damage mental health, and escalate into face-to-face bullying.
Digital spaces can also provide significant benefits, including friendship, creativity, connection and access to supportive communities. Effective responses to online bullying must reduce harm without undermining children’s ability to benefit from positive online interaction.
While we recognise schools’ concerns about behaviour and distraction, the evidence does not support blanket bans on mobile phones in schools as a solution to online bullying. Blanket bans do not prevent bullying from happening outside school hours and risk avoiding the harder but more effective work of education, prevention and support.
We are also cautious about blanket bans on social media for under 16s. Current evidence does not demonstrate that such bans are effective at reducing online bullying, and there is a real risk that harm is displaced to less regulated spaces rather than reduced.
We support schools taking a balanced and evidence-based approach, combining clear boundaries around phone use during the school day with high quality anti-bullying education and support.
Crucially, responsibility must not sit with parents and educators alone. Progress in tackling online bullying has been too slow, and we urgently need social media companies to be held to account as the Online Safety Act is implemented. Platforms must be required to prevent bullying by design, including safer defaults, effective reporting and blocking tools, strong protections in private messaging, and an end to addictive features that amplify harm.
This consultation must lead quickly to meaningful change. Children experiencing online bullying cannot wait for incremental progress.
