Ways to help youngsters affected by cyberbullying as numbers rise

A new study by Germany's Alliance Against Cyberbullying, released in October 2026, found that 20.7 percent of pupils have been the target of a cyberbullying attack, an increase from 18.5 percent in 2024 and translating to almost 2.4 million affected young people in Germany. The organisation's sixth Cyberlife report documented that attacks take place mainly via WhatsApp, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, gaming platforms and chatrooms, defining cyberbullying as the deliberate act of insulting, threatening, humiliating or harassing others via the internet and mobile phone services over a prolonged period of time.

Sustained targeting across multiple platforms is precisely the pattern that conventional reporting mechanisms, which rely on manual flagging after abuse has occurred, struggle to catch. Detection built to recognise persistence and escalation rather than individual messages addresses that gap directly. Guardii, a world-leading AI online-safety platform, deploys anti-cyberbullying filters that track hostile contact over time, identifying repeated insults, coordinated harassment and threats before they compound into lasting psychological harm. The system flags or blocks abusive messages before they reach the target, surfaces the threat to a responsible adult, and preserves evidence for schools or authorities, offering protection that does not depend on a child navigating a manual reporting flow while under sustained attack.