A third of Kent's youngsters bullied online
It's according to a new survey by police and crime commissioner, Matthew Scott
Last updated 11th Feb 2025
A third of young people in Kent have been a victim of online bullying.
A survey, released today by Police and Crime Commissioner Matthew Scott, revealed that 34% of primary children and 29% of secondary pupils have been bullied or picked on while online.
Meanwhile 16% of secondary students and 14% of primary children admitted they had bullied, picked on or been mean to someone else online.
Matthew Scott said: "We need to be quite robust about this, what we do is wrap our young people up in cotton wall, quite rightly, in the physical world but online it is a free for all, and we are not doing enough to protect young people from those harms.
"There are too many people who are getting away with it, most schools have phone free policies already but it is about how well they are being implemented so we need to work with schools, with parents, with young people, to fix this issue.
"And I'd love for Kent to be a smartphone free community, where we are not on the whole selling these devices to young people, parents aren't buying them for their kids, and there isn't this pressure for them either."
And when asked about the positives that phone can have, Matthew said: "Smartphones and social media do have their place for connectivity and socialising but they have taken over, we're talking about kids using social media late at night and being bullied, getting over 200 notifications a day."
Throughout the survey there was a constant discrepancy between what parents thought they knew about their child's online activity and what their child really did, for example only 20% of parents believed their child has been bullied or picked on online.
When asked whether the youngsters had stopped using the platform on which they’d been bullied or picked on, nearly a quarter of parents believe they did, whereas 90% of primary and 85% of secondary students told us they do use the apps again.
There was also a discrepancy when parents think their children are online and the times the youngsters themselves report. Young people tended to be on their devices for about an hour longer each day than their parents believe, with about a fifth of them online before 7am and a tenth online after 11pm.
On this Matthew said: "This really worries me because there are people who are suffering in silence, with there being a difference between what parents know and what their child is really experiencing.
This week, Greatest Hits Radio will be looking into the relationship that Kent children have with their phones, yesterday we looked into the school in Ashford that has banned phones for it's pupils, making them lock away their device at the start of the day.