What should I do if my child is bullied or sees harmful content online?

A parent may discover online harm through a tearful disclosure, a school call, a screenshot from another family or a sudden change in the child's behaviour. The first response can affect whether the child continues to share information.

You do not need to solve the whole incident in the first conversation. You do need to establish immediate safety, preserve what matters and stop the clearest route of harm.

Ask four questions first

Keep your voice and language steady. Ask:

1. Is anyone in immediate danger? Has there been a threat, an arranged meeting, a known location, self-harm, violence or somebody nearby?
2. Can the person still contact the child? Through which account, game, group, number or school connection?
3. What happened? Let the child describe it in their own order before requesting detail.
4. What is the child most afraid will happen next? Images spreading, friends finding out, retaliation, losing the device, school tomorrow or an adult being angry may be their immediate fear.

Say plainly:

“I am glad you told me. You are not responsible for somebody else's harmful action. We will work out the next step together.”

Do not promise that nobody else will be told. You may need help from the school, police, social care or another safeguarding service. Explain who and why before sharing when it is safe to do so.

Distinguish content, contact and conduct

The reporting route depends on what occurred.

Content is material the child encountered: violence, pornography, self-harm, suicide, hate, dangerous challenges, misinformation or a frightening image.

Contact is another person's interaction with the child: harassment, threats, sexual messages, coercion, grooming, impersonation or pressure to move into private communication.

Conduct is what people did in the space: excluding a child from a group, sharing their information, posting a humiliating edit, circulating a rumour, organising a pile-on or using the child's account to harm someone.

An incident may contain all three. “Something bad happened on social media” is not enough information to choose a route, but the child should not have to learn official categories before receiving help.

Stop exposure without destroying the record

If immediate danger does not require you to leave or call 999, preserve a small evidence set before blocking or deleting:

• account names and profile links;
• date and approximate time;
• the service, group or game;
• URLs where available;
• screenshots of key messages, posts or reports; and
• a short note of what happened before and after.

GOV.UK advises keeping dates, times and messages when reporting cyberbullying.¹

Do not ask the child to keep replying so you can “catch” the person. Do not repeatedly replay a disturbing video. Do not forward sexual images to yourself, school staff or other parents as evidence. Preserve the surrounding message, username and link where possible, then use the specialist reporting route.

If the material is actively affecting the child, close the feed, mute notifications, leave the group or move away from the screen. Blocking may need to wait until the essential evidence is secured, but safety takes priority over a perfect record.

Use the service's block and report tools

Report the message, post, account, image or video through the service. Choose the most accurate reason. Save the report reference or confirmation if one appears, then block or restrict the contact.

The UK Government's reporting hub links to current reporting instructions for common services and states that services likely to be used by children must provide a route for reporting harmful content.²

Check connected routes. The person may also be on a second account, shared game, messaging service or school group. Change compromised passwords, sign out other sessions and enable stronger account security if access was taken over.

Do not assume a platform report replaces a safeguarding or police report. It asks the service to act on content or an account; it is not the correct destination for every offence or child-protection concern.

Tell the school when school life is involved

Contact the school when pupils are involved, the incident began or continues through a school community, or it affects attendance, safety or learning. Send a clear timeline and copies of the limited evidence, not a chain of speculation.

Ask:

• who will lead the response;
• what immediate protection will be in place;
• how online and in-person contact will be managed;
• what the child should do if approached;
• when the school will update you; and
• how missed learning or anxiety will be supported.

Government guidance says bullying should usually be reported to the school first when pupils are involved, while a crime should be reported to police.¹ Online bullying can follow a child home, but that does not make its effect on school life irrelevant.

Do not organise a confrontation through the class group or circulate screenshots to identify an anonymous account. That can widen the audience and expose the child again.

Match specialist routes to the incident

Sexual communication, grooming or exploitation

CEOP receives reports about online child sexual abuse and the way someone has been communicating sexually or exploitatively with a child. CEOP states that it does not handle ordinary bullying, fake accounts or hacking.³ Use the route for its actual purpose.

A sexual image or video of someone under 18

Childline and the Internet Watch Foundation operate Report Remove for a person under 18 to report a sexual image or video of themselves online and seek removal.⁴ The service has limits, including around encrypted networks and material held only on a person's device, so read its current instructions.

Do not blame a child who created or shared an image. The responsibility for coercion, abuse, threats or non-consensual sharing lies with the person doing harm.

Suspected child abuse

Report suspected child abuse to the local children's social care team or police. The government's reporting hub provides the local-council route.²

Threats, stalking or another possible crime

Report immediate danger to 999. For a non-emergency possible crime, use the police's current non-emergency route. Bring the timeline and report references.

Bullying without sexual abuse

Use the platform and school routes where applicable. Childline can support a young person who wants to talk. CEOP specifically redirects bullying concerns rather than accepting them as sexual-abuse reports.³

Respond to harmful content, not only harmful people

A child may not have been targeted. They may have seen self-harm material, graphic violence, pornography, hateful content or a frightening recommendation sequence.

Ask what they saw, whether it appeared once or repeatedly, whether they searched for it and what it made them think or want to do. Do not use the question as an accusation. A recommendation may have appeared without a deliberate search; a child may also have returned because they were frightened, curious or trying to understand.

Report the content and change the route that keeps returning to it: unfollow an account, clear a recommendation signal where the service allows, mute terms, disable autoplay, reset a feed or pause the app. Supervise use while you establish whether the content is still appearing.

If the material concerns self-harm or suicide, ask directly whether the child is thinking of harming themselves or ending their life. Asking does not plant the idea. Seek urgent mental-health help if they may act, cannot stay safe or you are unsure how to protect them. Call 999 in immediate danger.

Keep the child's safe connections where possible

Taking the phone may stop one route immediately, but it can also remove the friend the child needs, the evidence, school access and the easiest way to ask for help. Restrict the person, group, feature or account creating the harm where that is safe enough.

Sometimes a temporary device pause is necessary while accounts are secured or immediate contact is interrupted. Explain the job and route back:

“The phone stays with me while we change the password and block these accounts. Your call with Sam can happen on my phone at seven. We will review access after the report is made.”

This keeps protection from becoming punishment for disclosure.

Follow up after the visible incident

The child may seem relieved once the post disappears and struggle later. Check again the next day and within a week. Look at:

• sleep and appetite;
• fear of school or particular places;
• repeated checking or avoidance;
• shame, anger or self-blame;
• new accounts or renewed contact;
• low mood, self-harm or suicidal thinking; and
• whether friends are supportive or continuing the harm elsewhere.

Agree who the child can approach at school and at home. Restore ordinary routines without demanding that they “move on”. If distress persists, ask the GP or relevant mental-health team for help and share the timeline.

If your child harmed someone else

Safety still comes first for the child who was targeted. Stop your child's access to the harmful route, preserve evidence and tell the relevant adults. Do not force an immediate apology directly to the other child; contact may cause further harm or interfere with the response.

Find out whether your child understood the impact, was joining a group, acting under pressure, retaliating or using an account they did not control. Explanation does not remove responsibility. It tells you what supervision, repair and teaching are needed before access resumes.

The government's online-bullying guidance includes support routes for parents whose child has bullied another person as well as for the child being targeted.⁵

Online harm can expand quickly, but the parent's first task remains manageable: make the child safe, listen without blame, preserve what matters and send the incident to the route designed to act on it.

Footnotes

1. GOV.UK advises reporting school-related bullying to the school, possible crime to police, and retaining dates, times and messages for cyberbullying reports. ↩ ↩²

2. The UK Government Kids Online Safety reporting hub advises staying calm, understanding what happened, using platform routes and escalating immediate danger, child abuse and sexual exploitation through the appropriate services. ↩ ↩²

3. CEOP accepts reports about online child sexual abuse and grooming; it states that ordinary bullying, fake accounts and hacking require other routes. ↩ ↩²

4. Report Remove enables an under-18 to report a sexual image or video of themselves online to the Internet Watch Foundation, with Childline support and service-specific limits. ↩

5. The campaign's online-bullying guidance describes bullying across social media, messaging, games and livestreaming, and advises blocking, reporting and involving school when pupils are involved. ↩