‘I thought I was protecting my daughter online. This was the day I was proven wrong.'

The first time Ellen* discovered her daughter *Kayla was being bullied online, she told her to "stand up to them, fight back". Ellen didn't know it at the time, but the advice was like putting a Band-Aid on a bullet wound.

It wasn't Ellen's fault, of course. Her knowledge of bullying came from a time before social media, when taunts were contained within school gates and didn't bleed into households at all hours of the night, lighting up phone screens and offering no reprieve.

Quickly her understanding of bullying shifted as she witnessed Kayla experience it from her own room — a place that should have been a safe haven for the teenager.

"It was very different to the type of bullying that my age would be used to, because we got a break from it," said Ellen, a headspace National Advisor.

"You got to go home, or you got to move away from that space, whereas cyberbullying you don't get to do that. You can go to bed, you can sleep for a few hours and then you wake up in the morning and it's just an avalanche of stuff that's happened, there's just no escape."

Kayla was subject to thousands of comments in real time as a moderator in various online streams.

"They tend to make a lot of friends in and around those groups," explained Ellen. "If something goes wrong for somebody, then it can turn quite quickly. As it did for her."

Watch: Unpacking Australia's social media ban for under 16s. Post continues after video.

Teenager Luke*, however, was made all too aware of the realities of cyberbullying when he himself became a victim of it.

"It was an extension of the bullying that would happen in school," Luke told Mamamia. "It wouldn't stop at the bell. It was pretty much a tool for the bullies to continue getting a reaction out of me."

According to occupational therapist Caroline Thain, "online and in-person bullying often co-occur".

"For many young people, these experiences aren't separate — they're part of a continued pattern that can follow them across different spaces, both physical and digital," said Thain, headspace National's Manager of Clinical Advice.

Whether in person or at home, Luke simply couldn't escape the noise and experienced a more gradual type of taunting through text messages.

"I didn't see it as bullying at the start," he said. "I just saw it as maybe they're just having a bit of fun and messing around. I tried to find every reason to label it as anything but bullying because I still couldn't believe that it was bullying. I couldn't accept it."

But when Luke tried to find other people in the same boat as him, he came up short. And he felt more alone than ever.

"I felt siloed… it severely impacted my mental health. It pretty much brought me down to rock bottom."

Cyberbullying can have a "detrimental effect on a young person's sense of belonging, self-worth, and overall wellbeing," explained Thain. "Over time, it can contribute to deteriorating mental health, especially if they feel isolated."

As Luke hid the reality from the adults in his life, he felt more and more alone.

"I really didn't want anyone to know," said the teenager, who is also a headspace National Advisor.

Eventually, however, his hand was forced after a concerned teacher contacted the teenager's parents.

Similarly, Ellen "noticed little changes" in Kayla's behaviour that alerted her to something going on with her daughter.

"Often the warning signs are subtle, but meaningful," said Thain. "Changes in their daily routine, like disrupted sleep, avoiding school, or withdrawing from activities they usually enjoy. Even if your young person seems closer to their friends and sets more boundaries in conversations with you, it's still important to stay curious."

For Ellen, she felt "fortunate enough" that she and Kayla had a strong enough relationship to have an open conversation.

While Luke also felt close to his parents, telling them about his own situation felt like the "complete opposite of relief".

"I was like, 'I don't know how to explain this to them. I don't know how I'm going to have that conversation'. It was very tense," he said. "I knew as soon as the conversation started, there was no going back."

When Luke finally opened up, his parents were in more disbelief than the teenager could have imagined.

"I was in shock at how much they couldn't believe what happened because I was suffering from it for so long that it almost became a norm… I'd become numb to the bullying."

Although Luke's mum and dad were supportive, it was by no means a straightforward conversation.

As the teenager recounted specific instances of bullying, he noticed that some of the phrases and comments were "foreign to [his] parents".

"Some parents didn't grow up with the internet as a constant presence, so they might not fully understand how online interactions can affect young people. That generational gap can make it harder for young people to open up," explained Thain.

This was certainly the case for Luke.

"That was one of the big reasons I was afraid of even just showing them, or showing a teacher, what my phone messages would look like, because it would be so hard to place that in context to them. I didn't even want to explain it to them," he shared.

For those who aren't digitally literate, things like memes, slang, inside jokes, subtweets, and reposts are a whole different language. And it's a vocabulary that's growing by the minute.

"Trends, slang, and platforms shift daily," said Thain. "That makes it harder to identify what does and doesn't constitute bullying. The digital space has made bullying more complex and often covert."

Over the years, Luke has observed this growing disconnect between digital natives and older generations.

"I think now when we look at cyberbullying there's so much of a language barrier between the parents or teachers trying to assess the situation, versus the language that's understood within Gen Z slang, emojis, and inside jokes between the bullies and the victims."

It's a language barrier that Ellen experienced first-hand when Kayla told her she had been "doxxed" (meaning someone had leaked her personal identifiable information online without her consent).

"I was like, 'What are you talking about? This doesn't make any sense to me'," Ellen recalled of the conversation she had with her daughter. "I had to really try and understand what that meant in her language and then make it an adult language that I understood."

Once Ellen realised that all of their family's information had been made public – their phone numbers, home address, everything – she acknowledged that her initial advice of "fight back" wasn't going to work.

"The moment she said to me, 'Mum, I don't feel safe'. Things changed," Ellen said. "If she couldn't feel safe in her own home, what is that going to do to her own mental health? [The cyberbullying] affected her wanting to go out and socialise. It affected her wanting to connect with people on the internet. It affected friendships because she couldn't grasp who to trust."

Ellen wasted no time changing Kayla's name on social media and all of their personal information. But beyond that, things were out of her control.

"When it gets too big, where do you go? What do you do? How do you get around it?" she asked.

On a national scale, some steps have been made against cyberbullying. But the process is slow.

In 2021, Australia introduced the Online Safety Act, giving regulators the power to investigate and remove severe online abuse. Earlier this year, an independent review recommended strengthening these laws further, including a digital duty of care and tougher penalties for platforms that fail to act. The government has committed to introducing a digital duty of care, but there is still no timeline for when further protections will be implemented.

Australia's under-16 social media ban is also set to take effect in December 2025. This law, passed as the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024, shifts the responsibility to tech companies, which must take "reasonable steps" to prevent under-16s from accessing their platforms or face fines of up to A$50 million.

And yet, even with evolving legislation, Thain says cyberbullying is "unlikely to disappear entirely". So, it's important for all generations to be digitally literate.

"The best place to start is by knowing what platforms your young people are using. If you don't know, ask," said the occupational therapist. "If you want to better understand what they're saying, the language of the internet is searchable—use tools like Urban Dictionary or even just Google."

As a parent with first-hand experience, Ellen encourages everyone, of all generations, to embrace the language of the digital age so we can all identify and respond appropriately to cyberbullying.

"Just because we did it differently doesn't mean that we can't learn a new language," she said. "It's not anything about our age, this is just a different world, and you're going to need to learn a different language. You can't just turn off the screen and walk away."

If you or someone you know is experiencing cyberbullying, support is available. You can reach out to headspace for confidential advice and help.

*Names have been changed for privacy reasons.

Feature Image: Getty (Stock image for illustrative purposes only).