Bullying makes schools feel unsafe and erodes teenagers’ well-being, global study finds

Analysis of 135,348 15-year-olds across 15 education systems links bullying with poorer emotional well-being, weaker school belonging and lower perceptions of safety.

A large international study has found that teenagers who report being bullied are more likely to feel unsafe at school and to have poorer emotional well-being, reinforcing concerns that bullying affects more than just day-to-day comfort in the classroom. Published in Frontiers in Public Health, the research drew on responses from 135,348 15-year-olds across 15 education systems that took part in the 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment, giving the analysis unusual scale and breadth.

Millicent Azikiwe, who led the study, and her co-authors examined how bullying victimisation, perceived school safety, school belonging, teacher support and emotional well-being fit together. Using survey-adjusted statistical methods designed for PISA’s complex sampling structure, the researchers found that more frequent bullying was associated with lower well-being and a weaker sense of safety at school. Students who felt safer, more connected and more supported by teachers tended to report better emotional health.

The findings fit with a wider body of international evidence suggesting that bullying is a persistent public health issue rather than a narrow disciplinary problem. A separate study in the Journal of Adolescent Health, based on data from 191,228 students in 29 countries, found that bullying victimisation among adolescents aged 12 to 15 changed over time in different directions depending on the country, underscoring how uneven the problem remains across education systems. Earlier comparative work in the International Journal of Adolescent Medicine and Health also showed that bullying is common in many parts of the world, drawing on large surveys of schoolchildren in 66 countries and regions.

The Frontiers study adds an important layer by linking bullying to the broader school environment. The researchers found that teacher support was positively related to school belonging, while perceived safety also strengthened students’ sense that they fit in. That matters because the study suggests bullying can do harm in two ways: directly, by affecting emotional well-being, and indirectly, by making school feel less secure and less welcoming. The authors argued that this means schools should treat anti-bullying work as part of a wider effort to protect adolescents’ mental health.

There were also signs that the impact of bullying may differ by gender in some respects. The link between bullying and school belonging was stronger for girls than for boys, suggesting that peer victimisation may more sharply disrupt girls’ sense of connection to school. But the direct association between bullying and emotional well-being did not vary significantly by gender, indicating that both boys and girls appear vulnerable to its emotional effects. That pattern is broadly consistent with earlier research showing that school relationships, teacher support and the wider social climate all shape how adolescents fare emotionally, not just in one country but across many educational systems.

The study does have limits. Because the data were collected at one point in time, it cannot prove that bullying causes lower well-being, only that the two are linked. It is also based on students’ perceptions rather than independently verified incidents, which means some responses may reflect how safe or supported teenagers feel rather than objective measures of what happened. Even so, the scale of the dataset and the consistency of the associations give the findings weight. For parents, educators and policy makers, the message is clear: reducing bullying is important, but so is building schools where students feel safe, connected and supported.