The Silent Crisis of 2025 This Is What Bullying Looks Like Now

A disappearing name in a group chat.

A message was screen-captured and sent to twenty people before the original sender knew they’d been exiled.

The weaponisation of AI against children by other children, deepfake nudes created not for public humiliation, but for control. 

Bullying has changed.

It is coordinated, sustained psychological harm, silent, collective, and built on the very tools we’ve handed them. The new bullying isn’t loud. It doesn’t need to be. Kids now have the tools to erase others without consequence. 

Fake “vibe” language gets used to silence others under the guise of wellness. Deepfake generators create nude images of classmates who are too confident, too visible, too inconvenient. These aren’t isolated cases. They are patterns. And they’re becoming predictable to those of us paying real attention. 

Children keep folders of content on their phones like war chests. Screenshots, edits, and nudified images stored and ready to use. Not for laughs. For leverage. For punishment. For revenge, when someone steps out of line. It’s surveillance culture in miniature. Learned. Replicated. Localised. 

Everyone is behind. Policy. Schools. Tech platforms. Parents. Because cruelty now masquerades as empowerment. 

Kids say, “I’m just protecting my peace” while ghosting a peer into psychological isolation. They say, “I don’t owe anyone access to me”, as they eject someone from every group chat. They call it “curating energy” when it’s actually planned exclusion. And because they’re using language borrowed from adult influencers and wannabe therapists online, the harm is easily misread as maturity. But it isn’t. It’s mimicry without comprehension. It’s the vocabulary of boundaries used in the service of bullying. 

And we let it happen because there’s no bruising. Because there’s no screaming. Because there’s no policy language for what a child looks like when they’ve been digitally erased. But those of us who sit with these kids, the counsellors, the psychologists, the educators, who haven’t yet gone numb, see it every day. 

The damage doesn’t stop at school gates. It walks into workplaces. It impacts performance. It warps how kids form adult relationships. It seeds a culture of digital cruelty that matures into corporate indifference. 

Anti-bullying frameworks, policies, laws and education are dated. They were written for a different internet. The truth? Most schools and businesses are doing their best to adapt to the new normal. But “best” doesn’t mean “equipped.” They are dealing with an entirely new emotional ecosystem, one that changes faster than traditional PD can keep up with.  

Schools are often navigating bullying with policies written by people who don’t understand how this has evolved......and schools are all too often the publishers of the very photos that are weaponised.

Schools should not be expected to double as cyber forensics experts just to protect a child’s well-being. But that’s exactly where we’re heading if schools don’t bring in help that’s current, credible, and grounded in the real digital lives of students. The most dangerous myth we still tell about bullying is that it builds resilience. It doesn’t. It forces adaptation.

Kids don’t toughen up. They shut down. They perform. They shape-shift to survive. And in a world that demands constant digital presence, those survival tactics don’t stay temporary. They become their identity. A student excluded online doesn’t just feel left out they question whether they matter. A teen whose image is deepfaked doesn’t just feel exposed they learn to hide. By the time they graduate, the silence has calcified.

What begins as harm in Year 9 becomes silence in the staff meeting. That’s the long arc of unaddressed bullying. And we are watching it play out in real time.

One-off cyber safety education sessions are almost completely obsolete. They don't work anymore. And yet, some schools still cling to them — a box-ticking ritual dressed up as action.

Somewhere along the line, real conversations about bullying got lost. Drowned out by the noise of digital chaos. Swallowed by the scramble to cover every emerging risk — predators, privacy, platforms — until the slow, personal cruelty playing out between students was forgotten.

We’re now seeing a divide. Some schools are done pretending. They’ve recognised that digital harm isn’t just about safety, it’s about identity, belonging, and what happens when kids are allowed to erase each other without consequence. These schools ask us for help. They’re rewriting policy. They’re not waiting for the next crisis.

Others? Still running ten-year-old cyberbullying talks. Still treating the symptoms while the culture underneath rots. Still assuming parents of students don’t notice how thin the protection really is.

We don’t work with schools because they’ve failed. We work with the ones ready to face what they’ve outgrown.

Social erasure. Deepfake abuse. Algorithmic exclusion. This is bullying now. And it doesn’t wait for staff training days or squeeze into a 45-minute assembly.

The harm is constantly evolving. And if you’re not evolving with it, you’re not protecting students. You’re leaving them to figure it out alone, in silence. And that is what is what is most dangerous about this moment.......quietness.

We have a generation learning that harm is something you should be able to handle alone. That if you can’t cope, you’re the problem. And when enough children internalise that? You don’t just get broken hearts.

You get broken systems.

If your school, your organisation, your government isn’t already taking this seriously you are already behind. Not because of ignorance, but because of pace.

The question now isn’t “Should we act?” It’s: “What’s the cost if we don’t?”

And if that answer makes you uncomfortable good. That’s how change begins.

If you're ready to stop reacting and start leading, we’re here to help. We work with schools, businesses, and governments to rewrite the way bullying, digital safety, and wellbeing are understood and dealt with. Policy. Training. Strategy. Real solutions, not lip service. Because waiting until it’s too late is no longer an option.

Contact us here