Why Teens Ask “Would I Get Bullied For This?” On Reddit, And What Parents Should Know
I was grabbing my dead phone charger off the kitchen counter last Saturday morning, and my 14-year-old son Jax didn’t even look up from his own phone, hunched over the couch with a half-eaten pop-tart next to him. When I asked if he wanted extra syrup on his waffles, he flinched so hard his pop-tart slid onto the floor. That’s when I caught a glimpse of his screen: he was on the r/teenadvice subreddit, typing out a post that stopped me cold. “Would I get bullied for cutting my hair really short at my new school? Be honest.”
I’d known Jax was anxious about our move this summer, starting ninth grade at a new school where he only knew his cousin. But I didn’t realize this question had become a habit for him. Over the next hour, he admitted he’d posted at least a dozen of these over the past two months: Would I get bullied for dying the tip of my hair blue? Would I get bullied for joining the robotics club that only two other freshmen signed up for? Would I get bullied for bringing homemade lunch instead of the school cafeteria food?
At first I didn’t think much of it. Kids talk to strangers online all the time, right? But the more I saw the pattern, the more issues I had with this whole trope of asking strangers online if you’ll get bullied for any small, personal choice. It’s not that the subreddit is bad, or that kids don’t have real reason to worry about bullying. Bullying is real, and it sucks, and most adults are terrible at talking about it honestly. When Jax told me he didn’t ask me or his cousin first, he said “You guys just say ‘no one cares’ and that’s it. That doesn’t help when I’m lying awake thinking about it.” He’s not wrong. Most of us brush off teen anxiety instead of meeting it where it is, so it makes total sense kids turn to people they think get it.
But here’s the problem I’ve seen: almost every response to these posts is rooted in the responder’s own experience, not the kid asking. A kid who got bullied for wearing dyed hair at his big urban high school will comment “Yeah, you definitely will, don’t do it.” A kid who had a great experience will say “No one will care.” Neither of them know Jax’s 800-person rural high school where half the kids have dyed hair and play multiple sports. Their answers tell you more about their high school than they do about yours.
Worse, asking “Would I get bullied for X?” frames any choice you want to make as something that’s inherently worthy of being bullied. Before you even hit post, you’re already assuming your thing is weird enough to get picked on. It turns every small, personal decision – something that should be about what you want – into a constant risk assessment for harm. Jax wanted short hair because his long hair got tangled and sweaty during soccer practice, and he’d been looking at pictures of Leo Messi’s haircut for months. But he’d put off cutting it for two weeks just because he couldn’t get a clear answer from Reddit.
I didn’t take his phone away, or tell him he was being silly. I knew that would just make him stop talking to me about it. Instead, I pulled a chair next to him on the couch and worked through it step by step, concrete stuff that didn’t feel like a lecture. First, I had him sort all the existing comments into two groups: people who went to his specific high school, and everyone else. There were zero people in the first group. I pointed that out: “A kid who goes to a 3,000-student school in Texas has no clue what goes on here. Their bad experience doesn’t apply to you.” That landed, because he could see it right in front of him.
Next, I had him list every person he actually interacts with on a normal school day, once school starts. Not people walking down the hall, just people he talks to or sits near. He counted: his cousin, the soccer kid he met at orientation, the robotics kid he texted with over the summer, three of his soccer teammates, two teachers, that’s it. 10 people total. I asked him, “Do any of these 10 people care that your hair is short?” He shook his head. I said, “Then what does it matter what any of the other 790 people think? You’re not going to talk to them anyway. Most of them won’t remember your hair by Wednesday.”
Then, the last thing I had him do was rephrase the question. Instead of “Will I get bullied for this?” ask “What’s the worst that could actually happen if I do this?” For the short hair, he thought for a minute and said “Someone makes a dumb joke once. I ignore it, and I still get the haircut I want that doesn’t get sweaty.” That was it. The risk wasn’t zero, but it was manageable, and the thing he wanted outweighed the risk.
He cut his hair that weekend. Three people told him it looked cool, no one said anything bad. Last week, he made a fanny pack in summer camp and was thinking about posting “Would I get bullied for bringing this to school?” But instead he just asked himself that rephrased question, stuffed it in his backpack, and brought it. One kid made a dumb joke, Jax joked back that it holds more snacks than their backpack, and that was the end of it.
I don’t pretend this is a fix for all teen anxiety, or that we’ll never have another post pop up on his screen. Last night I saw him scrolling a thread about getting bullied for liking anime, and he closed the app quick when he saw me. I didn’t push him about it. I just mentioned that if he wants to talk through whatever he’s worrying about, we can sort it out the same way we did the haircut.
Kids have good reason to not trust adults to answer this question honestly. Too many of us brush off their fears instead of helping them work through them. But I’d rather they work through the risk with me, who knows them and their life, than get a dozen anecdotes from strangers who don’t. It’s not about banning Reddit or telling them not to worry. It’s about helping them pull back and see that most of the time, their want for something matters more than the chance a random stranger says someone might be mean. That’s the lesson we’re still working on, one small decision at a time.
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