Brawls, exclusion and hazing: Bannockburn P-12 tackles cyber-bullying head-on

Bannockburn P-12 students say cyber-bullying is fuelling schoolyard brawls, exclusion and more on-campus issues. Now they’re searching for solutions.

Principal George Porter with students Logan Bond and Isobel Grazules and Welfare teacher Jessica Wills taking part in PROJECT ROCKIT, a national anti-bullying and cyber safety education program at Bannockburn P-12 College. Picture: Brad Fleet

Brawls, exclusion and hazing – Bannockburn students say it’s normal on most school grounds and almost always starts online.

In just one year of high school, year 8 student Isobel Grazules has seen multiple brawls break out over something someone said online.

“Whoever’s on the oval usually crowds around to watch,” she said.

Isobel said it was scary, but no one knew what to do.

“Last time I looked away,” she said.

She said less violent, but also horrible, were the small friendship skirmishes that fuelled vicious back-and-forth TikTok “burn” videos.

Isobel said she had seen friendship groups fall apart online, and the drama always continued in-person.

Other times, she said, students created anonymous TikToks with mean “guess who’s”.

“They don’t say their names but we know who they’re talking about,” she said.

“Typical year 7 drama.”

The social media trend is on the “guess who” game, with “clues” for peers to guess who the slanderous post is about.

In February, a Geelong Advertiser investigation revealed Geelong students were using TikTok to perpetuate “distressing” cyber-bullying trends like that.

The investigation found at least 15 TikTok pages employing bullying practices, including shaming named students for smelling; listing students based on good looks; and discussing the relationship status of others.

The videos, which amassed hundreds of thousands of views, boosted calls for social media to introduce age limits.

At Bannockburn P-12, health and wellbeing officer Jessica Wills said she routinely dealt with school brawls and on-campus conflicts started on TikTok and Snapchat.

“It’s usually the aftermath of things that happened online,” she said. “It’s that blurry line now – what is home, what is school? The kids don’t have a separation.”

According to the eSafety Office, one in five young Australians report being excluded, threatened or abused online.

Complaints of serious cyber-bullying have also increased by 455 per cent since 2019.

Of the 2978 verified cyber-bullying complaints in 2024, up to 1385 reports related to children, aged 13 or younger.

Ms Wills said despite phones being banned at school, students checked their phones before and after school – so any cyber-bullying was brought immediately on to campus.

“It’s not as easy as just turning off your phone,” she said.

“We see a lot of the bystander problem where students see the bullying, they know it’s not right, but they don’t know how to call it out.

“They don’t want it to get worse, so they’d rather just be friends with the bully.”

Principal George Porter with students Logan Bond and Isobel Grazules and Welfare teacher Jessica Wills taking part in PROJECT ROCKIT, a national anti-bullying and cyber safety education program at Bannockburn P-12 College. Picture: Brad Fleet

She said schools were now trying to tackle one particular type of exclusion that was likened to hazing – where students were added to group chats online, just to be slandered in the chat then kicked out online and ignored in-person on school grounds.

“We try to work on strategies, removing yourself, not engaging, letting staff know,” she said.

“But a lot of students don’t want to talk to adults.”

Ms Wills said those kinds of issues were common at most schools in the region – but Bannockburn P-12 was just determined to be a school proactively looking for lasting solutions, rather than sweeping the issues under the rug.

Bannockburn P-12 year 8 student Logan Bond said he had seen first-hand students adding peers to a Snapchat friend group online, just to pick on them, call them names and then kick them out and isolate them at school.

He said it had happened three or four times in the past year in his year level alone.

“Name-calling, talking about someone’s weight, calling them ugly (in these groups) is common,” he said.

He said every time he had seen that behaviour, he had wanted to say something but didn’t know how.

“It continues online at home,” Logan said.

“Parents say, ‘Just walk away next time’, but it’s not that simple, they just keep coming after you.”

It follows reports that Geelong students are using TikTok to perpetuate “distressing” cyber-bullying trends, and the videos are being watched by hundreds of thousands of users.

In February, Logan and Isobel took part in Project Rockit, a national anti-bullying and cyber safety education program set up by sisters Rosie and Lucy Thomas that was rolled out at Bannockburn P-12 College.

Logan said he had learned strategies to stand up and help those he saw were being pickled on.

“(I learnt) there are other ways to deal with it as well, like crack a joke to stop the bullying, and drag the attention away from the bully, then help drag the person being bullied away from the bully,” he said.

“Or block the bully.”

Rosie Thomas said common forms of cyber-bullying were present at most schools in the region, not just Bannockburn P-12, but more schools were simply not addressing them.

“These are exactly the type of school leaders that we need, creating these important community hubs,” she said.

“Project Rockit is also importantly student-led, not projecting the fears of teachers and parents on to these children but listening to the students about issues they are facing.”

Australian Association of Psychologists policy co-ordinator Carly Dober has worked in numerous Victorian schools managing the aftermath of cyber bullying.

She said cyber-bullying was more common than most parents realised, especially when their own children were involved in the bullying.

“Teens are wired to seek support from each other, and concerningly Australia widely has a social acceptance culture,” she said.

“We see a lot of things like hazing, power and domination bullying, and the mental health impacts can’t be understated.

“The two ecosystems – school and online – don’t have a line between them.”

She said schools needed more support, as they were often under resourced.

Project Rockit head of school programs Dot Bertrand said the program was designed to give students practical tools to stand up to bullying in ways that were safe, impactful, and driven by empathy.

She said at Bannockburn P-12 – and across the region – cyber-bullying was driving significant substance abuse, gambling among students as young as 13 and mental health issues.

Ms Bertrand said that in a regional area such as Bannockburn, less access to support exacerbated that issue.

She said the program had heard from students that icing-out others in a form of hazing “banter” was a common form of cyber-bullying that continued on school grounds.

“It’s like an ongoing banter joke that’s been taken way too far,” she said.

“And (young students) spoke about how some of those boys no longer want to come to school.

“In Bannockburn in particular, when a young person does become disengaged with school, due to the lack of services in the area, they’re increasingly at risk of being disengaged with in the whole community and being severely isolated.

“Which we know increases their likelihood of severe mental health challenges.

“All fuelled by cyber-bullying.”

A TikTok spokesman said it had strict community guidelines that did not allow bullying or violent behaviour.

“This content is quickly and proactively removed from our platform,” he said.

“Each quarter in Australia we remove more than one million videos that breach our guidelines, with the majority of these picked up by our systems prior to any reports.”

The spokesman said TikTok also made it easy for people to report content, accounts, and comments in app and had dedicated channels for education departments to escalate violative content.

Snapchat did not respond to a request for comment.

However Lucy Thomas, one of Project Rockit’s co-founders, is a member of Snapchat’s global safety advisory board.

Originally published as Brawls, exclusion and hazing: Bannockburn P-12 tackles cyber-bullying head-on