What Is It?
Online hate includes content targeting individuals or groups based on race, religion, gender, sexuality, or disability. Harmful content includes graphic violence, pro-eating-disorder material, self-harm encouragement, and extremist ideology. Harassment is targeted, repeated digital abuse.
What the Data Shows in New South Wales
The eSafety Commissioner's research documents that harmful content is widely encountered online by Australian children, including racist, violent, and hateful material. Children from marginalised communities encounter identity-based hate at higher rates. The same platforms where friendships form are also spaces where hate consistently thrives.
How It Affects Learning & Development
Repeated exposure to dehumanising content normalises aggression and prejudice. For targeted children, online hate functions like bullying — creating shame, hypervigilance, and identity-threat stress. Pro-self-harm communities can escalate vulnerable young people toward crisis. Algorithmic amplification means exposure is not accidental or random.
Key Impact Areas
Racialised hate undermines cultural identity, sense of belonging, and school engagement.
Extremist content can fill emotional voids in disconnected or bullied teenagers.
Chronic exposure to hate and violence content correlates with anxiety and depression.
Online harassment erodes trust in both digital and real-world social environments.
Groups Most at Risk
Who attends school in New South Wales?
3,196 schools · 1,257,719 students
These indicators highlight student groups that research shows are at higher risk of wellbeing challenges and may require additional support. Averages are across all schools in New South Wales.
of students in schools fall in the lowest quarter of socio-educational advantage nationally
average proportion of Indigenous students across schools — a group with documented higher wellbeing needs
of students have a language background other than English (LBOTE) — requiring culturally aware wellbeing approaches
Source: ACARA National School Profile, data as at March 2025. ICSEA ranges from ~500 to ~1300; national average is 1000. Equity figures are school-level averages, not student-weighted.
How schools in New South Wales can respond to online hate, harassment & harmful content
Schools across New South Wales face online hate, harassment & harmful content as a documented wellbeing challenge, yet it often remains invisible until it becomes a crisis. When student wellbeing is measured systematically, patterns become visible weeks before they escalate — giving educators, counsellors, and families the chance to act.
The difference between reactive crisis response and proactive prevention is timely, localised data. That window is where prevention lives.