Parents' guide · the evidence

How common is online bullying, really? The numbers parents should know

Most parents feel the worry before they see a single number. This guide gives you the numbers — from the WHO, Ofcom, Childline, the NSPCC, UNICEF-linked research and national surveys — so the worry has a shape. It also says plainly what an app can do about it and what it cannot.

First: if something is happening tonight

If anything you have seen makes you worried about your child's safety right now — threats, talk of self-harm, or your instinct simply says so — do not read on tonight. Call 999 in an emergency. Children can talk to Childline free on 0800 1111 at any hour. Adults can call the NSPCC on 0808 800 5000. Anyone struggling with thoughts of suicide can call the Samaritans on 116 123, and under-35s can reach Papyrus HOPELINE247 on 0800 068 4141. If your child is being bullied on a messaging app, there is a calm step-by-step plan in what to do tonight if your child is bullied on WhatsApp.

Why the numbers matter

Bullying has always existed. What changed is the phone. A generation ago, bullying stopped at the school gate. Now it follows a child home in their pocket, into their bedroom, and into the hours after midnight. The figures below are not there to frighten you. They are there so you know two things that most parents only learn the hard way: how ordinary this is, and how often children keep it to themselves.

Every number here links to its source. Dates matter: a 2022 survey describes 2022. Where a figure is old, we say so.

1. How many children have a phone

The first phone now arrives at primary-school age. In the UK, Ofcom's 2025 research found that 56% of ten-year-olds and 83% of eleven-year-olds own a smartphone, and 99% of eight- to seventeen-year-olds are online. In Saudi Arabia, children receive their first connected device at about seven, among the youngest in the world. Across Europe, eleven is the typical first-phone age.

One more figure shapes everything that follows: which phone. Outside the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia and Scandinavia, seven to nine of every ten children carry an Android. In India and Pakistan it is nearly all of them. In the UK it is roughly half and half. This matters because Android and iPhone allow very different kinds of protection — more on that at the end.

2. How common is bullying and harassment online

The most careful measurement in Europe is the World Health Organization's school survey of 44 countries. Its 2024 report found that one in six children aged 11 to 15 had been cyberbullied — and, unlike bullying at school, the online kind is rising: from 12% to 15% of boys and from 13% to 16% of girls between 2018 and 2022.

Notice where the numbers are worst: exactly where phones arrive youngest and cost least. That is not a coincidence. A cheap phone in a seven-year-old's hand, with no adult nearby, is the situation these surveys are describing.

3. The part parents do not see: how many children never tell

This is the number that changes how you parent. In survey after survey, the child who is harassed, groomed or bullied online tells a friend, tells a chatbot, or tells nobody. The parent is usually the last to know.

Childline hears this every day. Many of the children who call say the same sentence: "You're the first person I've told." Not their parents. Not a teacher. A stranger on a helpline, at night, after weeks of carrying it alone.

4. What is happening inside: mental health and self-harm

Bullying and harassment do not stay online. The World Health Organization estimates that one in seven children aged 10 to 19 lives with a mental disorder, and that suicide is the fourth leading cause of death at ages 15 to 19 — the third for girls. In the UK, the picture has moved fast: the share of 17- to 19-year-olds with a probable mental disorder rose from 10% in 2017 to 23% in 2023.

Put sections 3 and 4 side by side and you have the whole problem in one sentence: a great many children are struggling, and most of them are not saying so.

5. What these numbers mean for you as a parent

Not panic. Not surveillance of every word. Four ordinary habits, each backed by what the research above actually shows.

Talk before anything happens, not after. The children who stayed silent said they were embarrassed or feared being judged. The single strongest protection is a child who already knows, from calm conversations at the kitchen table, that telling you will never end in punishment or a confiscated phone. Say it out loud, early, and more than once.

Keep the phone out of the bedroom at night. Cyberbullying's power is that it never stops. A phone that charges in the kitchen from 9 pm gives a child eight hours a day when nothing can reach them. There is a full guide to doing this without a nightly war in phones at bedtime.

Set the rules for group chats on day one. Most school bullying now happens in group chats, in front of an audience. Agree the rules before the first chat is joined — see group chat rules for secondary school.

Know what to do the night it happens. Keep the evidence, block, report, tell the school, and do not take the phone away. The whole order of steps is in my child is being bullied on WhatsApp.

6. Where an app honestly helps — and where it cannot

We make Safeinest, so read this section with that in mind. It is also the most important section, because half the parental-control industry sells a promise the phone cannot keep.

On an Android phone, an app can read the words a child types and receives — in WhatsApp, Snapchat, Instagram, games, anywhere — and warn a parent when those words look like bullying, threats, grooming, or a child talking about hurting themselves. This is the child in section 3 who types it to a friend or a chatbot but never says it out loud. The words on the phone are the only trace, and Android lets a safety app see them. Safeinest's message safety does exactly this. Today it understands English; other languages are being added, and we say "English for now" in the app rather than pretend otherwise.

On an iPhone, no app can read a child's messages. Apple does not allow it — not for us, not for anyone, whatever a competitor's advert implies. What an iPhone does allow is everything around the messages: where your child is, whether they arrived at school, a safe-zone alert when they leave, a family chat that is never blocked, an SOS button, and screen-time limits set from your own phone. Safeinest gives you all of that on iPhone. It does not give you the words, because nothing can.

And on any phone, an app cannot read a child's mind. A child who hurts silently and types nothing is invisible to every app ever made. That is why the four habits in section 5 come first, and the app second. We built Safeinest after a family learned about their son's suicidal message from the police at the door rather than from anyone who had seen it. The app exists so that a parent is not the last to know. It will never be the whole answer, and we will not tell you it is.

If you want to see what the app does on each kind of phone, the features page lists it honestly, and the setup guide walks through every step on Android and iPhone.

The numbers in one place

• Phones: 56% of UK 10-year-olds and 83% of 11-year-olds own a smartphone (Ofcom 2025). First devices at about 7 in Saudi Arabia. 1.36 billion children aged 5–14 worldwide.
• Bullying: 1 in 6 children aged 11–15 cyberbullied across 44 countries, and rising (WHO 2024). 46% of US teens (Pew 2022). 85% in India (McAfee 2022).
• Silence: 2 in 5 never told anyone the worst thing that happened online. 1 in 5 with an online sexual interaction told no one (Thorn). Of groomed children who told anyone, only 19% told their mother.
• Mental health: 1 in 7 10–19-year-olds has a mental disorder (WHO). 23% of UK 17–19s in 2023, up from 10%. 1 in 4 UK 17-year-olds has self-harmed (UCL). About 52 Childline sessions a day about suicidal thoughts.

Every figure above is linked to its source in the tables. If a number changes, so will this page — the date at the top tells you when it was last checked.