Nicoleta Prutean / Feb 2026
Image: Shutterstock
When platforms are the bullies, Europe's next online safety fight is about power, not etiquette.
The European Commission is about to publish an EU action plan against cyberbullying, at a moment of rising concern about youth mental health and online harms. As that concern grows, parents are angry, schoolteachers are exhausted, and policymakers are flirting with a dramatic fix: ban social media for children entirely. Australia has led the way, and Brussels has just announced its panel of experts to explore EU-wide restrictions.
But first: who is the bully? Research defines cyberbullying as aggressive behaviour that is intentional, repeated over time, and involves a power imbalance that makes it hard for victims to defend themselves. That definition reveals something Brussels debates often miss. When you focus on the structure of the relationship rather than the content of individual posts, the bully isn't always another user. Sometimes it's the platform itself.
Power imbalance is structural
Platforms map users in such high resolution that recommender systems know them better than they know themselves. Every click, pause, and late-night session feeds algorithms optimised to predict and influence behaviour. Research shows TikTok can recommend suicide-related content within minutes of a user pausing on mental health videos. Unlike a physical bully, this psychological surveillance operates 24/7, with no safe space to escape to.
Repetition is by design
Infinite scrolling, autoplay, and variable reward schedules hijack attention and reward systems to maximise engagement. With every scroll, users are pulled deeper into rabbit holes. These algorithmic loops distort what users see as normal and real, making self-harm, eating disorders, and radicalisation appear far more common than they are. And when it comes to self-harm content, repeated exposure increases the risk of copycat behaviour among vulnerable users — the “Werther effect”.
Intentional aggression is the business model
Platforms don't wake up intending to harm a particular teenager. But when a platform is “free”, user attention and data are the product. In the past, Meta has been accused of identifying moments when teens felt “worthless" or "insecure” and targeting them with weight-loss and beauty ads. When harm is a predictable outcome of engagement optimisation, it’s hard to keep calling it incidental.
Generative AI next in the “enshittification” line (à la Doctorow)
The online environment is evolving fast. Generative AI is making system-to-user influence more intimate and user-to-user abuse easier to manufacture. Several teen suicide cases now in court involve chatbots designed to keep users talking, including vulnerable kids in crisis. OpenAI's recent mental-health safety upgrades and dedicated "ChatGPT Health" experience signal the industry knows this is no fringe edge case. But it’s now also bringing ads to ChatGPT’s free and low-subscription plans. Meanwhile, the Grok AI scandal shows how quickly platform-integrated AI can accelerate non-consensual sexual deepfake.
The obvious pushback: platforms merely reflect a complicated world. People are anxious, society is polarised, kids can be brutal, and algorithms mostly surface what users post or react to. There's truth in that. But these aren't passive mirrors — they're mirrors with knobs, tuned to maximise engagement. Platforms control what spreads and what gets suppressed, what goes viral and what gets shadow-banned. They can turn a rumor into mass reality and a vulnerable moment into an engagement loop.
The real bully
So who is the bully? Sometimes it's a schoolmate or stranger behind a screen. More often, it's the system that tilts the playing field. The Commission's action plan is an opportunity to stop treating online harm as a matter of etiquette solvable through reporting tools and quicker takedowns. Europe should protect minors urgently, including through serious debate on age thresholds, and through digital literacy and awareness that help families recognise risks early on. But the underlying vulnerability doesn't end at 15, 16, 18, or 29 and neither do the platform dynamics that exploit it.
If Europe wants real impact, it must confront the design and business incentives that fuel the attention economy—and now, increasingly, the attachment economy. That's the bully worth naming, and the only one powerful enough to change the game.
