In a year of many firsts, child psychology experts are warning of a potential new phenomenon that could threaten Ontario's students this year: pandemic bullying.

Children and teenagers have ridiculed one another for power or attention or to vent anger since long before the first case of COVID-19 was recorded, but could the stressors and pressures of a pandemic make children more vulnerable to bullying and displaced aggression? Debra Pepler believes it could.

Pepler is a research professor of psychology at York University, a senior executive member of the LaMarsh Centre for Child and Youth Research and co-founder of PREVNet, a national research hub that brings together researchers and national organizations to study and address youth relationship problems including bullying. She worries that rising rates of youth mental illness since the onset of the pandemic could lead to more bullying in schools and online.

“There’s so many things going on that I think we need to take into account,” she said. “And one of them is that in surveys emerging in Canada, there is an increased rate of mental health problems among youth. It’s a stressful time.”

Pepler said adolescents who have missed out on socializing with peers over the summer, are experiencing stress at home, and are suffering from anxiety, depression or substance abuse, could be at risk of either bullying or being bullied. 

“When you’re separated and distant from your peers, you lack the attention from your peers, so you try to think of ways of getting attention,” Pepler said. “In both face-to-face and cyber bullying there’s almost always a group present, an audience present. So it’s one way to be seen and to feel a sense of control and power in a world that seems to have spun out of control.”

She said youth who are depressed, withdrawn and vulnerable can just as easily become targets for bullying, “especially if they’re posting on social media, saying things like ‘I’m alone, I’m having a terrible time,’ and people may be more likely to disparage them.”

Debra Pepler is a research professor of psychology at York University, a senior executive member of the LaMarsh Centre for Child and Youth Research and co-founder of PREVNet, a national research hub that brings together researchers and national organizations to study and address youth relationship problems including bullying. - Debra Pepler photo

For younger children, attending school during the pandemic could present different challenges, particularly around cohorting, Pepler said. She explained that if tensions flare within constrained groupings of students, those targeted by aggression could find it hard to remove themselves from the situation or the aggressor.

“I think for children in elementary school, the issues become that … they’re most likely to be in a cohort of 15 or so and restrained to a certain area,” Pepler said. “When they’re constrained in this place, they may be, in fact, stuck in physical proximity to the children who are bullying them.”

Tracy Vaillancourt is the Canada research chair in school-based mental health and violence prevention at the University of Ottawa, where she also teaches in the faculty of education and the school of psychology. 

She predicts hybrid school-home teaching models and smaller class sizes could actually reduce the prevalence of bullying in schools, since “there’s fewer kids, there’s less boredom, less idle time, everything is so concentrated and they’re so on task because they’ve got to come in and get their work done in less time.”

However, she warned the pandemic could still pose new opportunities for bullying in school and online.

“It’s certainly possible,” she said, speculating that just as kids are sometimes bullied for their clothes, they could be bullied for their masks, the way they wear them or their compliance or non-compliance with COVID-19 public health guidelines.

While the prospect of their children being victimized at school can be scary for parents, Vaillancourt said there are telltale signs to watch for in children who are being bullied, and proven ways to improve the situation.

Parents should look for changes in children’s demeanour, such as increasing sadness or anxiety as well as changes in behaviour — including an aversion to going to school. Pepler encourages parents to ask their kids about the highs and lows of each school day, and focus on building positive relationships with their kids.

“I think the most important thing is to stay connected with children and youth, to communicate to them that you’re concerned with them and you care for them,” she said.

“Both at the home and in school we need to focus on building positive relationships.”

Like Pepler, Vaillancourt said open, honest communication between students and their parents or teachers is vital to address bullying. Students who find themselves targeted should be prepared to confide in trusted adults.

“Kids should definitely tell a trusted adult at their school and they never do it because they think the adult is going to screw it up,” she said. “When you tell an adult at school who is trained to deal with it, the bullying almost always stops immediately.”