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| Photo by Chad Madden on Unsplash |
“It is just the internet. Log off.
It is a sentence many adolescents hear the moment they finally admit that something online is hurting them.
Sometimes it comes from parents who grew up without a phone in their pocket and cannot imagine a screen causing real pain. Sometimes it comes from teachers who see a comment thread as noise, not as a threat that follows a student into every class. Real harm, in their minds, leaves a mark you can see, and a phone screen does not look like a fist.
So, many young people learn to become convincing actors.
They post, laugh in group chats, show up to class, and answer “I am fine” almost automatically. Behind those ordinary routines, some are rereading the same cruel comment for the tenth time, avoiding an app they used to love, or lying awake replaying a screenshot they cannot unsee.
Their suffering is rarely visible.
That is the hidden burden of cyberbullying.
A 2025 study of 200 junior secondary students across three secondary schools in Buea Municipality, Cameroon, led by Dr. Obenebob Ayukosok and Dr. Etta Roland Daru and published in the International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science, found a statistically significant negative effect of online harassment on students' mental health. The study examined different forms of cyberbullying, including harassment, impersonation, outing, and doxing.
The finding matters because it places the conversation closer to home. Cyberbullying is not only something that happens in distant headlines or on platforms used by people elsewhere. Young people in African schools are experiencing it too, sometimes while sitting in the same classrooms where adults assume they are safe.
Take the student who deletes a post within minutes, but not before someone has already taken a screenshot. Or the classmate added to a group chat built entirely around mocking her, unable to leave without everyone noticing. Some of these incidents look nothing like a crisis from the outside; a student logs off one platform only to find the same rumor waiting for her somewhere else the next morning, and life goes on as if nothing happened.
These are not always dramatic incidents that attract immediate attention. Sometimes they look like ordinary scrolling, ordinary silence, or an ordinary teenager saying, “I am fine.”
Yet when the exhaustion starts to show, the people around them often reach for dismissal before understanding.
“They are just words.”
“Stop checking your phone, then.”
“Kids today are too sensitive.
“It is not like they are actually being hurt.”
These statements rarely come from a lack of empathy. Most come from people who care but do not yet understand how a comment section can carry the same weight a crowded hallway once did.
The problem is that dismissal can teach adolescents to hide what is happening rather than report it.
This is how silence becomes normal.
Many adolescents hesitate to speak because they fear losing their phone, their main link to their friends, or being told that they are overreacting. Others may worry that reporting the person responsible will only make the harassment worse.
The Cameroon study offers a troubling example of that silence. Among students who had experienced online impersonation, 65 percent said they had not reported it to a teacher, parent or online platform.
A young person's presence online should never be mistaken for the absence of suffering.
One of the most damaging misconceptions about cyberbullying is that it always looks dramatic, an obvious pile-on that anyone would recognize instantly. In reality, it can hide behind ordinary online activity. A student can keep liking friends' posts while quietly rereading a cruel comment about herself. Someone can appear completely unaffected online and still be struggling privately.
Part of what makes this harm so persistent is that it can be difficult to escape.
A person hiding behind a screen name may say things they would never say face-to-face. A humiliating post can also be copied, screenshotted, and shared beyond the original audience. For the person being targeted, that loss of control can make it difficult to feel that the incident is truly over.
The mental-health consequences can be serious.
Research by Dr. Sameer Hinduja and Dr. Justin Patchin at the Cyberbullying Research Center has found an association between cyberbullying and suicidal ideation among adolescents. Their 2019 study, published in the Journal of School Violence, found that students who experienced cyberbullying alone were about 1.6 times more likely to report suicidal ideation than students who had not experienced bullying or cyberbullying. The researchers also found that students exposed to both school bullying and cyberbullying faced substantially higher risks.
These findings do not mean that cyberbullying alone causes suicidal behaviour. They do, however, show why persistent online harassment should never be dismissed as ‘just words.’
The Cameroon study also documented other consequences of online harassment. Forty-five percent of the students surveyed said their academic performance had been affected by online harassment, while three-quarters reported at least some emotional impact.
Perhaps the more uncomfortable question is not whether adolescents are being hurt online. It is why so many of us still do not take that hurt seriously.
It is tempting to think this is only a platform problem, solvable with better reporting tools and stricter moderation. Those changes matter. They are not enough on their own.
A teenager who has already been humiliated, isolated, or frightened online may need more than a button that says, Report.
The response has to involve the people around them too.
For parents:
Create a way for your child to report what is happening online without immediately losing phone access. Fear of punishment can become another reason to stay silent.
Ask specific questions about the apps, group chats and people involved, rather than simply asking whether everything is fine.
Save evidence together, including screenshots, usernames and timestamps, before blocking or deleting where appropriate.
For schools:
Create a clear and confidential reporting system that students know about and trust.
Train teachers and counselors to recognize quieter signs of online harassment, including sudden changes in behaviour, withdrawal from friends, declining grades or reluctance to attend school.
Make mental-health support available to students who report persistent harassment, rather than treating the issue only as a disciplinary matter.
For platforms:
Respond to reports within a set, published window rather than leaving users waiting indefinitely, and confirm what action, if any, was taken.
Make blocking and reporting reachable in one or two taps from the offending content itself, not buried in a separate settings menu.
Escalate cases where multiple accounts target the same person, rather than reviewing each report in isolation.
For young people:
Preserve evidence before blocking or deleting harmful content.
Tell one trusted adult when online harassment becomes persistent or threatening.
Remember that staying silent to avoid losing your phone does not make the harassment disappear.
This is where the issue connects directly to Sustainable Development Goal 3: Good Health and Well-being.
SDG 3, particularly Target 3.4, calls for the promotion of mental health and well-being. Cyberbullying may happen through a screen, but its effects do not necessarily stay there. When online harassment contributes to anxiety, isolation, sleep disruption, emotional distress, or other threats to well-being, addressing it becomes part of protecting young people's health.
That means the response cannot stop at telling adolescents to log off.
We need adults who are willing to listen before judging. We need schools where reporting harassment does not create another source of fear. We need platforms that respond when young people ask for help. And we need conversations about digital safety that recognize that what happens online can have very real consequences offline.
Sometimes, the first step towards healing is not a new app setting or another warning about screen time. Sometimes, it is simply knowing that someone is willing to listen.
At Shades of Us, we believe storytelling can illuminate realities that statistics alone cannot. By creating space for honest conversations about what adolescents experience online, we can challenge the silence that allows digital harm to remain hidden.
Achieving SDG 3 requires more than policies, reporting tools, and awareness campaigns. It also requires adults who stay close enough to notice when a young person's silence stops being ordinary and starts becoming a warning.
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