How common are experiences of seeing online hate among children in Australia?

¹ _{Under the legislation, which came into effect on 10 December 2025, age-restricted social media platforms must take reasonable steps to prevent Australian children under 16 from creating or holding accounts.}

² _{Part of a nationally representative survey of 3,454 children aged 10 to 17 years living in Australia between December 2024 and February 2025.}

³ _{For more information about the methodology of the research, see the methodology report.}

⁴ _{Q: Have you ever seen anyone say or post offensive or threatening things online, to or about people, because they were hateful of …? Important: Don’t include things you have seen in TV shows or movies, like on Netflix or Disney+. You can include things that were said or posted as ‘just a joke’.}

⁵ _{Prevalence of experiences of seeing online hate was assessed in a recontact survey (n=2,302).}

⁶ _{The smaller sample size for trans and gender-diverse children should be considered when interpreting these findings (n=58).}

⁷ _{Sexually diverse’ includes participants who identified their sexual orientation as 'gay or lesbian’, ‘bisexual’, ‘queer’, ‘asexual’, ‘pansexual’ or that they are ‘still working it out’. Sexuality was asked only of children aged 13–17.}

⁸ _{Arrows denote statistically significant differences between sub-groups. The proportion of children aged 13 to 15 and 16 to 17 who had seen online hate in the past 12 months didn’t differ significantly.}

⁹ _{A subset of children who had seen online hate (n=781) were asked further questions about their most recent or impactful experience of this.}

¹⁰ _{Q: Think only about the last time you saw someone say or post offensive or threatening things to or about others online because they were hateful of [RECENT EXPERIENCE]. Which platform did you see it on?}

¹¹ _{Platforms reported by <5% of children combined as ‘Another online platform’.}