Bullying, Trust in Parents, and Digital Resilience

Illustration of parents talking with a child about online safety to prevent bullying. — *Parents and teachers are central to preventing bullying and cyberbullying in and around schools.*

The VII Global StopCyberbullying Telesummit

In October 2025, the VII Global StopCyberbullying Telesummit hosted two special sessions led by Parents International experts who are currently working on the DRONE, PARTICIPATE, and EFFEct projects. On 7 October, Luca Janka Laszlo presented new research on “Bullying by Teachers”. One week later, on 14 October, Eszter Salamon spoke about “Perpetrator and Protector Roles of Parents and Teachers”. These sessions highlighted a reality that is too often ignored: adults aren’t only one of the first line of protection against bullying: in some cases, they are perpetrators themselves, and their example has a direct correlation to the adoption of bullying behaviour in children.

This is a crucial distinction for DRONE, an Erasmus+ project that trains teachers and school leaders to promote digital literacy and combat disinformation among vulnerable adolescents. Cyberbullying, hate and harassment do not exist in a vacuum; they are shaped by school culture, parenting practices and wider social norms. The telesummit discussions showed how research from PARTICIPATE, DRONE and EFFEct can be used to change those norms in practice.

What bullying by teachers looks like – and why it matters

Luca’s presentation started from a simple but uncomfortable observation: most anti-bullying programmes treat adults only as “protective factors”. They focus on peer-to-peer bullying and may refer to abuse at home, but rarely ask whether teachers or parents themselves bully children.

To address this gap, Luca adopted a broader definition of bullying as a damaging social process driven by power imbalances and social or institutional norms. Bullying involves unwanted behaviour that causes physical, social or emotional harm. It is often repeated over time, but this repetition – and the idea of clear, conscious intent – is not always straightforward in the case of cyberbullying or adult behaviour.

Within this framework, teacher bullying includes emotional violence, humiliation, deliberate ignoring of a child, verbal aggression, unfair treatment of property, physical aggression and, increasingly, online attacks. International research shows that this is a scattered but growing field: studies use very different concepts and measures, rely heavily on cross-sectional surveys and convenience samples, and report prevalence rates that range from below 1 per cent to almost 90 per cent depending on how questions are asked. This does not mean that teacher bullying is “everywhere”, but it does confirm that it is real, harmful and still poorly understood.

Luca presented data from surveys with almost 800 students in 25 schools across the Netherlands and Hungary. Children were asked about five domains:

victimisation by peers
victimisation by teachers
victimisation by parents
students’ own bullying of peers
help-seeking

Across both countries, a substantial share of students reported at least occasional experiences of teacher behaviours such as misnaming, verbal aggression, ignoring a pupil who needed help, or other actions that felt humiliating or unfair. Some also reported physical aggression and teacher cyberbullying.

A scoping review of the literature suggests a worrying pattern: where teacher or other adult bullying is present, children are more likely to become (cyber)bullies themselves. Bandura’s social cognitive theory reminds us why this might happen. Children learn by observing adults; if adults use power to humiliate or intimidate, that behaviour can be normalised and repeated in peer relationships.

Parents and teachers: protectors, perpetrators, guides

Eszter Salamon’s session looked at parents and teachers from both angles: as potential perpetrators and as the most important protectors. Using recent PARTICIPATE data from Hungary and the Netherlands, she showed that cyberbullying is still mainly carried out by peers, but that a minority of students also report experiences of online bullying by parents or teachers.

Survey data from Hungary and the Netherlands show that bullying by adults is far from rare. Family bullying is reported as much more common in the Netherlands than in Hungary: 67.1 per cent of Dutch students, compared with 14.1 per cent of Hungarian students, say they have experienced it more than once or twice. Teacher bullying is widespread in both countries and reported as more prevalent in the Netherlands, with 70.1 per cent of students, compared with 54.2 per cent in Hungary, saying they have been bullied by a teacher more than once or twice.

When something goes wrong, whom do children trust? Here the findings are very clear. In the interviews, all participants said they would seek help from parents; some in Hungary expected their parents to involve teachers, but none placed primary trust in teachers. In an emergency, trust in parents was 100 per cent, in friends about 70 per cent, and in teachers effectively zero.

Additional data from the LIVITY Future Report, presented in the session, confirm the central role of parents. Around 63 per cent of young people who seek help about bullying turn to their parents, with even higher rates among 13–15-year-olds. Older teenagers are less likely to ask for parental help but still do so more than they turn to any school-based adult.

This pattern is repeated in the area of digital education. Many participants feel confident about using digital tools and checking information, and say they are supported by their parents but are doubtful about their teachers’ competence. When asked where they learn about healthy online habits, young people most often name parents (about one third), followed by friends. Only a small minority mention teachers as the main source of guidance on changing passwords, logging out of shared devices, sharing information responsibly or assessing the trustworthiness of online content.

For DRONE, PARTICIPATE and EFFEct, this has two important implications. First, parents must be recognised as key actors in cyberbullying prevention and digital literacy. Second, teachers and school leaders need support, both to avoid harmful practices and to become trusted adults in the digital lives of children.

From research to tools: what schools and families can use now

Both telesummit sessions also showcased very practical tools that already exist. Parents International has developed a suite of resources on bullying and cyberbullying prevention, many of them building on work from the SAILS project and now connected to DRONE and PARTICIPATE.

For parents, these include:

clear explanations of bullying and cyberbullying, including warning signs
guidance on helpful reactions – listening without judgement, validating the child’s experience, reinforcing the message “you are not to blame”
step-by-step advice on documenting incidents, reporting to school and supporting emotional recovery, whether the child is a victim or a perpetrator
practical tools such as checklists, action plans, family conversation starters and resilience roadmaps.

Resilience-building tools help families recognise digital stress, model healthy coping strategies and create habits that support balance. The underlying message is simple: prevention is not only about controlling devices, but about building trust, emotional awareness and supportive networks around the child.

For schools, training offers are emerging that address teacher bullying directly and link it to broader questions of school culture, leadership and data use – areas where EFFEct’s work on evidence-based education policy and DRONE’s focus on digital resilience provide a strong foundation.

How DRONE, PARTICIPATE and EFFEct move forward together

DRONE places these insights within a wider agenda: equipping teachers, school leaders, parents and students to recognise disinformation, understand artificial intelligence and navigate the online world critically, especially in vulnerable groups of adolescents. PARTICIPATE contributes cutting-edge research on the role of parents and other adults in cyberbullying, ensuring that interventions do not overlook those who hold the most power in children’s lives. EFFEct, finally, helps translate these findings into sound educational policy and practice by promoting rigorous, impact-driven research on what actually works in classrooms and schools.

The telesummit sessions made one conclusion unavoidable: children watch closely how adults use power, online and offline. When adults model respect, fairness and critical thinking, bullying and disinformation lose much of their force. When adults misuse power, even occasionally, the damage can last for years.

Through DRONE, PARTICIPATE, EFFEct and related initiatives, our goal is to ensure that parents, teachers and school leaders are equipped not only to prevent bullying and cyberbullying, but also to become the trusted guides that young people so clearly need in the digital age.