Why Kids Ask ‘Will I Get Bullied For This?’ On Social Media And What Caregivers Can Do
Last Tuesday, I was folding laundry on the couch while my 13-year-old Lila ate buttered popcorn next to me, scrolling through her drafts. A crumb fell down the front of her hoodie, she brushed it off onto my clean sweatpants, and turned her phone toward me. The draft was a 15-second reel: her sourdough starter bubbling in a glass jar, set to that viral audio people use for their first born kids. She’d been talking about this starter for two weeks, feeding it every morning before school, testing it with pancakes last weekend. “It took me forever to edit the timing right,” she said, then bit the inside of her cheek. “But… do you think I’ll get bullied for this if I post it?”
I’ve heard this question at least once a week for the past six months. Before this it was her tap recital clip, before that the colored pencil drawing she did of our old beagle that passed away. A lot of her friends don’t just ask their parents this, either—they post it as a poll to their Instagram stories: “Should I post this? Will I get bullied for it?” I saw a 7th grader do this back in April when I was volunteering in the middle school library, waiting with her after school for her mom to pick her up. She got 74 yes votes and only 3 no, and she still deleted the draft ten minutes later, closed her phone, and went back to reading her graphic novel like nothing had happened.
For the first few times Lila asked, I gave the answer all of us default to: “Oh, who cares what anyone thinks? If you like it, you should post it. No one’s going to bully you over that.” She’d just nod, lock her phone, and that draft would sit there forever, collecting digital dust. I thought she was just being overly sensitive, or looking for reassurance I was already giving her. That changed when I talked to her school counselor at our last parent-teacher conference, when I brought up how she holds back from sharing anything she makes these days.
She said that 9 times out of 10, this question isn’t actually about a real threat of ongoing bullying. Most kids aren’t worried they’re going to get harassed in the hallway or get a flood of cruel DMs. They’re worried about the small, sharp thing: one offhand comment from a kid in their math class, a screenshot sent to a group chat that gets a few laughing emojis, being the topic of lunch room small talk for a day that’s not nice. It’s not that they’re being dramatic—it’s that they’re still learning how to handle that kind of discomfort, and they don’t want to put something they care about right in the line of fire. And posting the poll to their stories? That’s not attention seeking, that’s just their way of asking for a little backup before they take a risk.
That conversation shifted everything for me. I stopped giving the “who cares what people think” speech first. Now, the first thing I do is agree that the fear makes sense. I say, “Yeah, having someone make fun of something you care about sucks. That would feel really bad.” Just that, no fix, no pushing. Nine times out of ten, Lila just nods and keeps talking, instead of shutting down.
Then, instead of telling her she should post it or shouldn’t post it, we talk about small changes she can make to make it feel safer. Those changes take 30 seconds, most of the time. For the sourdough reel, she didn’t want random 8th graders she doesn’t know seeing it, so she set it to her close friends list instead of public. She turned off comments, because she said she didn’t want to scroll through random replies anyway. She cropped out the little doodle of her name she’d drawn on the side of the jar, because that was the part that made her feel most exposed.
She posted it that night. Three of her friends that also bake commented, one asked for her starter recipe, and that was it. She kept checking it for an hour, then put her phone down and watched an episode of our show with me, and was grinning the whole time. It wasn’t a big viral moment, it was just a small thing that mattered to her, and she got to share it on her terms.
If your kid posts one of these “will I get bullied for this?” polls to their story, you don’t have to comment something long or fancy. Just leaving a specific line like “I loved your last baking post, this looks cool” means a lot more than just tapping a like or a generic “yes post it”. It’s the small, specific backup that lets them know someone has their back if things do go wrong.
Last week, Lila had a drawing of a cat she did for art class that she really liked. She asked the same question, and after we talked through it, she said she still didn’t want to put it up. That’s fine. I don’t push her. The point isn’t to get her to post everything, it’s to let her decide how much risk she wants to take, instead of either forcing her to put herself out there or letting the fear stop her before she even tries.
I see a lot of parents online complaining about these posts, saying kids are too soft these days, or they’re just looking for validation they should give themselves. But I get it now. When I was 13, I wrote poetry in a notebook I kept hidden under my mattress, because I was scared my sister would find it and make fun of it. That was my version of the draft that never gets posted. Kids just have a different place to put their drafts now, and a different way to ask for help before they share.
We still have this conversation once a week. Some posts go up, some don’t. Lila still gets that nervous little look on her face when she turns her phone toward me. But it’s not a big, heavy question anymore. It’s just part of her figuring things out, one 15-second reel at a time.
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