Canadian school shooting provides a painful lesson in cyberbullying

Can you imagine what this kind of quiet bullying harm does to kids? So many kids are walking around school right now … feeling just like I did and much worse. Last week, a mass school shooting in Canada killed nine people, when an 18-year-old turned a gun against family, a teacher and schoolmates in a rural British Columbia school library. A suspected factor of the alleged killer’s anger and social isolation among other corroborating factors? Cyberbullying.

There are still an abundance of traditional bullies unfortunately, physically intimidating and tripping kids in the halls. However, the highest rates of bullying that plague our youth today are much more covert. You see, modern youth bullying is quiet bullying and it comes mainly in two forms: cyberbullying and relational bullying.

Credit: Contributed

Credit: Contributed

First off, cyberbullying.

According to a 2025 survey done by the Cyberbullying Research Center, approximately 58% of the students reported that they experienced cyberbullying at some point in their lifetimes. The most commonly reported forms included: being excluded from a text or group chat (32.5%), mean or hurtful comments posted online (31.6%), being embarrassed or humiliated online (31.3%), and rumors spread online (29.2%).

Bullying can be defined as aggressive behavior or intentional “harm doing” by one person or a group, generally carried out repeatedly and over time and involving a power differential. There are different subtypes even among types; overt aggression might involve name-calling, pushing, or hitting, while relational aggression includes gossip, rumor spreading, social sabotage, exclusion, and other behaviors destructive to interpersonal relationships.

The Cyberbullying Research Center says it best:

“If both parties were equal (socially, physically, or otherwise), one might think that neither has the proverbial upper hand. With differential levels of power, though, bullying can occur. Many characteristics can give a bully perceived or actual power over a victim, including popularity, physical strength or stature, social competence, quick wit, extroversion, confidence, intelligence, age, sex, race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status. And even more relevant to (cyberbullying), technological proficiency can imbue a person with power over another. Youth who are able to skillfully navigate online environments or who know how to cover their virtual tracks have a leg up on a newbie who doesn’t fully understand how to set up their accounts properly, or how to identify the authors of hurtful content.”

Kids can’t just change their path to the cafeteria anymore to avoid bullying. Youth bullying occurs where youth are. And where are they? On technology. For tweens, games like Roblox or Minecraft, can be a place where cyberbullying occurs and for older kids, online places like YouTube, Snapchat, TikTok are places of occurrence. Even simple group chats via text messaging.

Now for the even trickier, and more elusive, relational bullying.

Kids don’t have to invite everyone in the class to the slumber party, be besties with every kid on the basketball team or never publicly identify anyone as their best friend for fear of offending someone. Natural closeness happens and some people click more than others through personalities, activities, culture, religion, etc. Anti-bullying campaigns can’t preach equal intimacy with everyone. This is where some schools and parents err.

The fine line of relational bullying is crossed when there is a pattern of hurtful behavior with malicious intent within a power differential. Malicious intent and the position of power is often difficult to identify in relational bullying. Falsely claiming to be bullied and spreading rumors attacking someone’s character is the social sabotage method of bullying. Research shows that girls who are overly concerned with popularity often engage in behaviors in which they try to increase their own social status by appearing victimized while vilifying others. The waters are clear as mud.

Adults mustn’t assume the loudest or most vocal narrative is the truth. Staff and faculty should get parents together and bring to light hidden behaviors, gossip, rumors that have been hurled. Educate kids how insecurity breeds social competition. Fear of retaliation is a major reason victims stay silent. Adults must speak to this fear.

It makes the days of just looking at hallway video surveillance footage to prove who punched who look like a cakewalk. Schools and parents can be somewhat confused as to how to proceed with fighting the battle against quiet bullying. Heads spinning, adults just tape up “No Bullying Zone” signs in the cafeteria.

So as adults, how do we handle these quiet bullies? According to the FSU Bullying Center there are a few tips:

For kids, this looks like leaving the group chat when someone attacks their reputation or another’s, refusing to listen to slanderous gossip, telling someone who is jabbing others with “funny” zingers to stop, flagging a post that is speaking ill of someone, reporting a user to the website, blocking the contact, showing an adult the note with a nasty picture of someone, and leaving or taking a break from the online the platform/app that is causing harm.

Since experiencing cyberbullying on the neighborhood social website, I left and haven’t looked back. I’ve enjoyed building friendships with neighbors the old-fashioned way. Kids can find newfound freedom from bullying, too. They have more power than they realize and we can teach them how to wield it if we work to learn the nuances of the environments they inhabit.

Beth Collums is an Atlanta-based writer. With a professional background in child and family therapy, she often writes about mental health, relationships and education.

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