Psychologist warns bullying is a societal problem, not just a childhood issue

Belén Colomina sits in her psychology practice in Valencia, listening to the same stories she has heard with increasing frequency over the past two decades: anxiety, depression, and bullying—each year arriving in younger children. The pattern is unmistakable. The psychologist, who has spent more than twenty years working with vulnerable youth and has authored four books on mental health, sees the data reflected in her appointment book. According to the World Health Organization, between ten and twenty percent of adolescents experience mental health problems, and half of all psychiatric illnesses begin before age fourteen. The numbers are climbing, and the age of onset is dropping.

Colomina identifies three dominant issues in her practice today. Anxiety tops the list, followed by depressive symptoms, and increasingly, cases of bullying—appearing now in progressively younger age groups. What troubles her most is not simply the prevalence of these problems, but the silence surrounding a critical developmental stage. Vast amounts of guidance exist for childhood and parenting, she observes, yet adolescence and preadolescence remain poorly understood. This is the period when young people undergo simultaneous physical, psychological, and relational transformations. For many, these changes create an internal map that becomes either functional or deeply chaotic—a foundation of loneliness and frustration that shapes everything that follows. Parents and educators often mistake the adolescent's apparent independence for actual self-sufficiency. The opposite is true. This is precisely when young people need the most accompaniment, love, and respect, even as they seem to push everyone away.

Bullying, in Colomina's definition, is any repeated behavior over time that carries intent to harm and includes one or more forms of abuse—verbal, psychological, physical, or social. The manifestations are varied: insults, physical aggression, disrespect, coercion, intimidation, cruelty, name-calling, social exclusion, and deliberate character assassination designed to turn others against the target. Cyberbullying introduces a particularly invasive dimension. Unlike traditional schoolyard harassment, digital abuse penetrates the home, the bedroom, the one place that should feel safe. It arrives at any hour, on any device, erasing the boundary between public and private life. The damage extends beyond the immediate victim. Bullying creates a third category of participant: the bystanders and spectators. Some remain silent out of fear they will become targets themselves. Others join the aggressor as a defensive strategy, a way of ensuring their own safety by participating in the violence. When these patterns become normalized, when adults fail to intervene, the psychological, emotional, and relational development of all involved suffers irreversible harm.

The role of social media compounds the problem. The average adolescent spends three hours daily on social platforms, though Colomina regularly sees patients spending eight to nine hours. This early-stage addiction affects brain development, emotional awareness, relationships, self-esteem, attention, and concentration. Anxiety increases. Impulsivity rises. Tolerance for frustration and boredom erodes. Social media invites constant comparison—the curated images, the idealized bodies, the seemingly perfect lives. A young person in the midst of physical and psychological growth cannot help but measure themselves against these illusions. The pressure to remain perpetually connected creates its own anxiety: the fear of missing something, the compulsion to broadcast one's life, the sense that disconnection means exclusion. The phone becomes not a tool but a necessity, a source of validation and a vector for harm.

Addressing this crisis requires more than awareness. Colomina advocates for prevention programs beginning in childhood, for schools to employ more psychologists and social workers, for stronger legislation and actual enforcement of reporting mechanisms. Society must cultivate a culture of empathy and respect across all youth environments—physical and digital alike. Digital literacy must be taught as seriously as any academic subject. But the fundamental shift must be in how we understand the problem itself. Bullying is not a childhood issue to be managed by schools alone. It is a societal problem, one that implicates families, educators, technology companies, lawmakers, and every adult who witnesses harm and chooses silence. Until that understanding takes hold, the numbers will continue to climb, and the age of onset will continue to fall.