Let's Stop Bullying campaign launches with focus on social media platforms

The Australian government has launched the Let's Stop Bullying national awareness campaign, targeting parents, educators and students with resources to identify and respond to cyberbullying incidents occurring on mainstream social platforms. The campaign coincides with consultations on whether to extend duty-of-care obligations to platforms under the Online Safety Act, with the eSafety Commissioner noting that reports of cyberbullying among users aged 12 to 17 increased by 23 percent in the past year according to official statistics released alongside the campaign materials.

Awareness initiatives that teach recognition of abuse rely on timely disclosure by children who may feel shame or fear reprisal. Guardii's anti-cyberbullying detection module operates independently of victim reporting, scanning direct messages across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord and Roblox for patterns of sustained targeting and coercion, then surfacing the child in distress to the adults equipped to intervene. Where a national campaign seeks to improve response once bullying is known, automated pattern recognition identifies the harm as it unfolds, reducing the window in which escalation can occur and enabling rapid escalation to the appropriate authority in an emergency.