Content Warning: This article touches on the topics of mental health issues, suicide, and cyberbullying, which may be triggering for some readers.
The Northern Territory cattle station where Kate and Tick Everett raised their daughters, Meg and Dolly, is hundreds of kilometres from Katherine and doesn’t get mobile phone coverage. Kate recalls one trip into town, years ago, during which Meg and Dolly were talking about “streaks” on Snapchat. “It was: How many days in a row you had daily communication with a certain friend?” Kate says. She had no idea what it meant. Her girls explained: “We gave so-and-so a password to this account so they can keep our streaks alive ‘cos we knew we wouldn’t have phone service or wi-fi when we got home.”
Kate shakes her head. “All of that is so wrong, and it definitely re-wires their little brains.”
Since 2018, Kate and Tick have come to understand more than they ever wanted about social media and how phones are used and misused by young people. As this new threat seeped into their lives in 2017, they did not grasp how damaging the unfettered exposure to the online world could be.
One day stands out in Kate’s memory. “I remember getting into phone service and hearing her phone ping with the iPhone message sound and seeing her visibly shudder,” she says of her younger daughter, Dolly. “That was probably a very pivotal moment where we knew we were … how bad it was.
“We probably kidded ourselves [that] they were functioning well … That was only a few months before she died.”
Who are the Everett family?
The Everett family became a global news story when Kate and Tick went public with what happened next. Schoolyard conflict, amplified by a mobile phone that allowed the bullies to follow Dolly, 14, into her home, became too much for the teenager, who loved to ride horses and draw. On her last day on earth, she made potato salad, coleslaw and steak for the family, then she took her own life. Kate lay beside the body of her youngest, waiting for emergency services, sinking into the very deepest grief.
“It was kind of a little too late by the time we’d –” Kate breaks off.
“Put the pieces of the puzzle together,” Tick finishes.
As Kate and Tick planned their daughter’s funeral, sitting under a tree where Dolly liked to read, they swore to channel their grief into preventing any family from having to face what they were suffering through. Dolly had left a pencil sketch of a gymnast, and the phrase, “Speak Even if your Voice Shakes”. It became the motto for their foundation, Dolly’s Dream.
In the seven years since that night, they have achieved much, and they count among their supporters young people who may not still be with us if it wasn’t for Dolly’s Dream. Their hotline, parents’ hub, Beacon cyber safety app and classroom education programs have made a dent, but digital bullying remains a critical issue for Australians. Phones can turn schoolyard conflict into a 24-hour, no-escape campaign of harassment.
The government has moved to impose an age limit on social media accounts, but skirmishes have already broken out over how it will be policed and applied. Critics say it won’t work. Young people who spoke with The Weekly fear it will cut teens off from crucial community and support networks, particularly if they live in regional areas.
In her agency’s Behind the Screen Transparency Report, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant writes that the mission to give young people access to online opportunities, while keeping them safe, is “one of the most pressing regulatory and societal challenges of our time”.
Eighty per cent of children aged eight to 12 surveyed used at least one social media platform in 2024, despite policies prohibiting users under 13, the report says. The most popular service used by children under 13 was YouTube, the service is currently pardoned from the ban in the government’s draft rules.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has conceded the ban “won’t solve all the problems” but says the government had to respond to changing technology. The ban is supported by all states and territories.
This challenge is set against another crisis in our schools, which are still recovering from the disruption of the COVID lockdowns. The Australian Education Union’s 2024 State of Our Schools survey found that more than two-thirds of educators have observed a decline or significant decline in student wellbeing and engagement in the past 18 months. Nine out of 10 teachers reported a decline, or significant decline, in teacher wellbeing and morale.
The parents The Weekly spoke with felt schools lacked the procedures to effectively respond to bullying, though they do not shy away from the reality that the challenge needs a whole-of-community response.
“I guess what people really need to understand is how much that device, whether you think you have it covered or not, impacts your child’s life,” says Kate. “For us, we never shy away from, ‘Do we think we should have known more as parents?’ Absolutely, and it was kind of a slow creep. I look at social media now and what kids have access to, and I think: My God, I didn’t even know half of that existed.”
You’re not alone
Eighteen-year-old Logan arrives for her interview with The Weekly in a denim shirt and cowboy boots. She is articulate and friendly, but she had to leave school at 17 to escape crippling harassment. As in Dolly’s case, her bullying started in the schoolyard and then crossed into the online realm. Her parents, Matt and Allison, say it was a difficult decision to pull her out of school, but they felt they had no choice.
“There’s a very, very fine line that parents tread between building resilience in your child or it turning into something more serious, like Dolly Everett’s parents are going through,” Allison says. “You go through a lot of emotions. It’s unfair. You carry a lot of guilt. You wanted them to get an education.”
“We had some very dark conversations, Logan and ourselves,” Matt says. “It got to a stage where the only thing that mattered was Logan’s mental health.”
For Logan, Dolly’s Dream was a beacon during the worst period, reminding her she was not alone. She is telling her story because she wants to remind other victims that “there is a life outside of bullying and it does get better”. She wants to be part of the push to change things.
“I’m a horse rider, so that would be my break,” she says. “I’d have my phone in my pocket, listening to music, and then I’d hear a ‘ding’ on my phone, and I’d go: ‘Oh, who is it?’ Then it would be a horrible message.”
She’d block the offending account, and then see a new account try to contact her within 10 minutes.
“I remember trying to do a sports activity that was actually outside of school and someone had videoed it and sent it to people in our area, kind of making fun of how I was doing sport. That’s the thing with phones. As soon as you turn your back, they could be videoing you … and spread it around without you even knowing.
“A lot of the social media avenues they use to get to you allow them to be harsher… and to make things a lot more constant too. Whereas … if social media wasn’t a thing, and they were doing these things in person, I think it would be a lot more noticeable to people. It allows them to be a lot more sneaky and a lot more cunning.”
Social Media apps aren’t necessary to harm and harass. Logan’s face crumples as the memories rush back. “Everybody knew it was happening but nobody was really game to stand up and say: We need to do something about it; we need to change it,” she says.
Her family was frustrated with the school’s response. “Our experience with the schools was – they didn’t want the stigma of a bullying school attached to their name, so they tried to pretend it wasn’t happening,” Allison says.
The Kids Helpline reports that one in five young people in Australia experience social exclusion or threats of abuse online. The federal government’s bullyingnoway.gov.au website is full of state-by-state resources and policies, but Matt and Allison say the capacity for harm is something parents of teens, as well as policy-makers and educators, are still coming to grips with.
“Our generation fell asleep at the wheel,” Matt says twice during the conversation. The landscape of adolescence has changed. “In my era, we had breaks. We’d go home from school, and you’d have until 9 o’clock the next morning until you had to see that person. If it’s 24-7 that you’re told you’re shit, that’s what you start to think.”
Cyberbullied out of town
Abbie Kelly, 15, has strawberry blonde hair and loves to dress in bright colours. For her, social media was a lifeline that kept her afloat during a bombardment of hate-filled abuse from her fellow students. But it could also be a medium for that harassment, which still hasn’t completely stopped, despite her moving 1300km away, and she still hasn’t recovered.
“I’m going to call out bad behaviour and I don’t regret that decision, but sometimes I wonder how much less damaged I would be as a person if I didn’t do that,” Abbie says.
She traces the bullying back to her first year of high school in Broken Hill. She asked her principal if the school would fly the Pride flag on The International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Intersex-phobia and Transphobia to send a signal of acceptance to other kids. The school said yes, and she was pulling up the flag, with the principal by her side, when “this group of six or seven Year 10 boys – a lot bigger than me – started swearing and yelling at me,” she says.
The principal told them to rack off, but Abbie had become a target. “I felt terrified walking down the halls at school because now people knew me as the gay girl,” she says. Kids would jeer and laugh at her. “It was every single day … I’d try and report every incident that happened, but by the end of it, I just felt so sick of nobody doing anything about it.
“I look back and my heart breaks for that 12-year-old girl who had to walk around feeling so unsafe. When these people who were bullying me face-to-face turned to social media to make my life more of a living hell, it was … I can’t even feel safe in my own home. Even when I’m not at school, it’s haunting me everywhere I go.”
That same year, in 2022, Abbie created The Rainbow Shoelace Project. She shared beads in the Pride flag colours for people to wear on their shoelaces as a sign of solidarity with the LGBTQI+ community. The project attracted accolades and media attention, but the praise was not universal.
Death threats were hissed into her phone late at night. She received strings of anonymous phone calls from blocked numbers. People circulated nasty rumours online.
“I just feel like it will never stop and that is the most lonely feeling in the world,” Abbie says. But she adds quickly that her experience online hasn’t been entirely negative. “This is where I’m so grateful because I get to go on social media and go into the DMs or go into the comments and have all these beautiful people comment things like, I’m their superhero, and that they wish there was someone like me when they were younger.”
Abbie had been raised to understand that there were all kinds of love in the world. Even so, she was nervous to come out as bisexual to her mother, Sophie. When she did, her mum was understanding but felt helpless when she tried to find external support.
“We got into a situation where [The Department of] Education were saying, ‘We can’t do anything, our hands are tied. You need to go to the police,’” Sophie explains. “We’d go to the police and they’re like, ‘We don’t know what you’re talking about. This is happening on school grounds.’ So, the police wouldn’t do anything. The Education Department wouldn’t do anything.”
Abbie is grateful for the teachers who looked out for her and made her feel cared for, but they were unable to stop the abuse. Things got so bad that she and Sophie made the decision to leave Broken Hill.
“By the end of Year Eight, I literally could not go to school anymore. My mental health declined so severely that I just couldn’t even get out of bed,” Abbie says. “Honestly, this is something I’ve been thinking about recently and it actually really scares me, but if I was still in Broken Hill, I don’t think I’d be alive right now.”
After her move, the children who bullied Abbie in Broken Hill got hold of her number. They left obscene messages and death threats. Abbie had the foresight to record some of the phone calls. She reported them to the police, and one student has been charged. Her advocacy has cost her dearly, yet she feels it is important to share her experience.
“I am very concerned that the [social media] ban will make kids from remote towns and members of the LGBTQIA+ community … become very isolated,” she explains. “In my case, I would not be where I am right now if I did not have social media.”
Abbie has been included in the 2025 Attitude 101 list of LGBTQIA+ Trailblazers. She is publishing a book and counts Dannii Minogue among her fans, but the harassment has robbed her of a lot of the joy she should be feeling.
How can we help stop cyberbullying?
When we talk about cyberbullying, we automatically think of social media platforms, but texts, messaging apps and other platforms also play insidious roles. Tick mentions gaming platforms, where boys and young men can be vulnerable.
“Technology keeps progressing faster than we can develop answers and programs,” Kate adds.
Logan mentions her fears around AI being used to bully. Last year, a male student from Victoria was arrested over the creation of 50 deepfakes of female students, who were depicted in explicit and graphic images.
Julie Inman Grant addressed the Senate on a popular open-source AI ‘nudifying’ app, which claims to “nudify any girl with the power of AI. Just choose a body type and get a result in a few seconds.”
“There is compelling and concerning data that explicit deepfakes have increased on the internet by as much as 550 per cent year on year since 2019,” she told the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, adding that “it is difficult to conceive of a purpose for these apps outside of the nefarious.”
In the coming months, the office of the eSafety Commissioner will work with the government to implement and enforce the social media minimum age legislation. It will also continue supporting parents to play active roles in their children’s online lives.
“Nothing can replace those vital conversations that help parents stay informed, set boundaries and help when something goes wrong,” Julie says. She believes that building digital literacy and resilience in young people is key.
Beyond phone and computer screens, the Everetts would like to see national wellbeing standards for all schools, be they public, private or religious. And they want educators to be supported to provide the protection kids need. “The government’s got to do more for the teachers,” Tick says.
“We need buy-in from every single person: Parents, carers, teachers,” Kate adds.
“It’s frustrating,” she continues, reflecting on the vastness and ever-changing nature of the challenge. “I guess, at the same time, it’s one more reason to get up and keep fighting the fight and not give up.”
To find out more, or find help, contact: Dolly’s Dream support line for parents and young people on 0488 881 033 or visit dollysdream.org.au; Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800; Lifeline 13 11 14.
Friday, May 9, is Do It For Dolly Day. Go blue to end bullying. Every dollar raised helps Dolly’s Dream deliver anti-bullying programs and support services for young people, families, and schools across Australia. Find out more on the website.
This article originally appeared in the May 2025 issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly. Subscribe so you never miss an issue.
