Cybersecurity education should start early and happen both at home and in schools, but it needs to go beyond the usual advice about strong passwords, antivirus software, or password manager. Those basics still matter, but they don’t fully prepare young people for the reality of how life online actually unfolds.
For many kids, the internet isn’t a clearly divided space of “safe” and “unsafe” behavior. It’s a constant stream of group chats, social feeds, and semi-anonymous platforms where jokes, teasing, and conflict blend together. In that environment, the same behavior can shift quickly from playful, to harmful, to genuine harassment. Without a shared understanding of where those lines are, kids may repeat what they see others doing or misread how their own words land, sometimes not realizing they’ve crossed into cyberbullying at all. Ultimately, it falls to parents to help kids recognize those boundaries and learn how to navigate them responsibly.
Kids May Not Know When They’re Bullying Someone
According to a global connected family study from McAfee, cyberbullying is rampant among children online. Nearly a quarter of respondents, some as young as ten, said they face racist attacks online. Also, in the United States, one in every five kids endures online sexual harassment.
Many of us were taught to view online interactions through the “stranger danger” lens of caution, but in these survey results, more than half of the respondents said they were cyberbullied by someone they knew. What’s more, in many instances, there is confusion over who is doing the bullying. Fewer than one in five children say they have cyberbullied someone, which doesn’t quite square with the amount of cyberbullying reported in the survey.
“Our phones are really our lives.”
The picture becomes clearer when you look at kids’ survey answers about online interactions. Over half of the respondents admitted to an activity constituting online harassment, such as name-calling, using racist slurs or imagery, making threats of physical harm, or making unwanted sexual remarks. Make no mistake: whether kids admit to harassing someone or not, the effects are the same.
“I think that cyberbullying is a very big problem,” said London Walker, a then-17-year-old student.
Earlier this year, I spoke with London and her mother, Claudia, about how to teach kids about cybersecurity. Claudia Walker is an educator, while London was wrapping up her senior year of high school.
“We see in the media or movies that being bullied in high school looks like being pushed into a locker, or being put in the trash can, and that’s definitely far from the truth.”
London cited anonymous chat apps as the source of a lot of school bullying, as teenagers can download the apps and use them to spread rumors, or use AI photo tools to create deepfake audio, images, and videos of classmates. She said that traditional social media accounts, on platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, or TikTok, are also cyberbullying hotbeds for the average teen.
(Credit: TikTok/PCMag)
I asked London if she ever considered going offline to avoid cyberbullying and the pressures of social media. The high school senior’s answer was honest and somewhat surprising to me, a millennial who uses a “dumb phone”:
“Our phones are really our lives,” stated London.
“We really grew up with technology, so of course, we use our phones on a daily basis. When you feel like you’re being kind of attacked, and people are saying crazy things because there’s no accountability, it can become very harmful.”
What Can Parents Do?
I’ve been using the internet nearly all my life, and I can tell you that most people still have not perfected their online tone. Jokes often come across negatively (or not as jokes at all) when you don’t have physical cues to accompany them or familiarity with the person you’re talking to. Anonymity also emboldens people online, leading to exchanges containing a little (or a lot) more heat than necessary.
“Parents must be more tech-savvy than their children”
It’s hard enough to keep your adult relatives from fighting one another over minor differences of opinion on your Facebook feed. Attempting to keep your kids from bullying people online while protecting them from others may seem like a tall order. Offering consistent guidance for online interactions is necessary for parenting today’s connected kids.
“Parents must be more tech-savvy than their children,” said Ross Ellis, the founder of Stomp Out Bullying. “Cyberbullying can be dangerous, so it’s not a one-and-done conversation. Parents must maintain open communications.”
Keep Up With Trends and Communicate
Parents also need to learn about specific online behavioral trends. For example, a wave of cyberbullying in the Minecraft community stems from kids using pre-made, affordable malware-as-a-service (MaaS) products to harass their peers online. Recently, McAfee’s research team released a report about the WeedHack malware campaign.
If you’re unfamiliar with WeedHack MaaS, here’s how it works: A kid installs a Minecraft mod or client on their computer that they downloaded from the internet, but the file is actually malware. The free version of WeedHack steals Minecraft session IDs, saved passwords and cookies, chat credentials, crypto wallets, files, screenshots of the victim’s screen, and system information. WeedHack’s premium version gives attackers live screen sharing access (with keyboard and mouse control), keylogging, live webcam access, command-line computer control, and file management permissions.
WeedHack is malware that is available via the open web. (Credit: McAfee/PCMag)
The McAfee team noted that while WeedHack can be used for stealing credentials, they observed kids using it for cyberbullying. McAfee researchers joined a now-defunct Telegram channel associated with WeedHack users. There, the team observed kids recording others through their webcams without consent and posting the videos in the channel, or using the tools to access victims’ IP addresses and sending threats.
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Kids usually come across this malware through very convincing yet fake YouTube videos that contain instructions for using Minecraft clients and mods, and through phishing websites that look like legit Minecraft mod sites. To avoid this malware, encourage your kids to download Minecraft clients and mods only from well-known, developer-endorsed modding communities like CurseForge.
How to Talk to Kids About Cyberbullying
Your children will probably spend every day of their lives interacting with people online. It’s up to you to ensure they start on the right path early. Use these tips to get your conversations about online civility and safety started and keep them going.
Talk With Your Kids About Their Online Lives
Just as you’d know the names of your kids’ IRL best friends, you should try to get to know who your kids interact with online. If you take time to talk to your kids about their relationships, both the good and bad parts, you’ll be better equipped to help them face their specific issues in these online spaces.
Encourage Your Kids to Keep Their Social Media Private
Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Threads, and TikTok all offer options for private posts and profiles to discourage dogpiling. Discord and Reddit offer greater built-in anonymity because they’re forum-based rather than microblogging platforms, but both also offer profile privacy options.
Help Kids Learn When to De-escalate and Walk Away
Laughing at someone else’s expense and name-calling are both types of bullying, but this behavior can be hard to identify as harassment among people in online friend groups. Talk to your kids about how they choose their acquaintances online and why they shouldn’t accept abuse from their “friends,” nor should they retaliate with more harassment. Teach them how to walk away from heated online situations.
Keep an Eye on Your Kids Online
You can use built-in parental controls such as Apple’s Screen Time app, Google’s Family controls, or Microsoft’s Family Safety software to see the content your child is consuming online and how long they’re spending in front of a screen. From there, you can limit their access to certain apps or websites if you think it’s necessary.
Adults Set the Example: Kids Learn Online Behavior by Watching Us
Kids may not have the empathy, maturity, or wisdom to understand that their words and actions affect the real humans they talk to online. That’s why our future generations need to know that the adults in their lives do not condone bullying.
If you’re an adult, maybe it’s time to look at some of the tweets you send, the memes you upload, the Reddit rants you write, and the comments you post on articles. You might think you’re “just blowing off steam” or fighting a political crusade, but if your social profiles are public, your kids are probably keeping an eye on you. And they are modeling their behavior accordingly.
About Our Expert
Kim Key
Senior Writer, Security
Experience
I review privacy tools like hardware security keys, password managers, private messaging apps, and ad-blocking software. I also report on online scams and offer advice to families and individuals about staying safe on the internet. Before joining PCMag, I wrote about tech and video games for CNN, Fanbyte, Mashable, The New York Times, and TechRadar. I also worked at CNN International, where I did field producing and reporting on sports that are popular with worldwide audiences.
In addition to the categories below, I exclusively cover ad blockers, authenticator apps, hardware security keys, and private messaging apps.
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