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Can good friends lessen bullying’s harm? Our study says maybe, especially for girls
As part of our Spotlight On series we are taking a closer look at the importance of relationships for teenage wellbeing.
We know that being a teenager is a time of big changes. Friendships become incredibly important, but it’s also when many mental health problems surface. Our research team wanted to understand how these things connect, especially if having good friends and feeling supported can lessen the harm of bullying.
To do this, we looked at data from more than 26,000 young people in Greater Manchester who have taken part in the #BeeWell programme. This study’s findings offer important insights for young people, schools, and anyone concerned about teenage wellbeing in the UK.
What did we do?
We wanted to explore the within-person relationships between three things in teenagers: bullying victimisation (being bullied), friendship and social support (how good their friendships are and if they feel supported by friends), and internalising symptoms (emotional distress like worry, sadness, or loneliness). We were especially interested in finding out if friendship can act as a buffer against bullying’s negative effects, and what role gender plays a role in these relationships.
To do this, we used a sophisticated statistical method called a random-intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM). Think of RI-CLPM as a way to track changes within each individual teenager over time, rather than just looking at how teenagers differ from each other in general. It helps us understand if, for one person, changes in bullying experiences lead to changes in their friendships or mental health, and vice versa. It separates out what’s stable about a person (like their general tendency to have good friendships) from what changes for them over time (like whether their experience of bullying increases in a particular year).
We used data from over 26,000 students in Greater Manchester, aged between 12 and 15 years old. We looked at their experiences with bullying victimisation, their friendships and social support, and any internalising symptoms they were experiencing, such as feelings of sadness, worry, or loneliness. We followed these students for three years to see how these factors changed and influenced each other over time. By using RI-CLPM, we could see how changes in bullying, friendships, and mental health were linked for individual students. This is crucial for understanding the unique ways different young people are affected by experiences of bullying victimisation and whether interventions like anti-bullying programs are likely to be effective for them.
What did we find?
We found an overall trend that held true for both boys and girls: in general teenagers in our study who experienced more bullying overall also tended to have more internalising symptoms and weaker friendships and social support networks. Similarly, those with more internalising symptoms also tended to have weaker friendships and social support. This shows a clear link between these three areas at a general level. Furthermore, when we looked at changes within each person over time, we saw that bullying experiences in one year had negative effects on their mental health and social relationships in the following year. On the flip side, stronger friendship and social support were connected to fewer internalising symptoms later on.
However, it’s really important to note that these connections weren’t identical for everyone. Key differences emerged between boys and girls. For girls, bullying victimisation had a direct negative impact on their friendships, leading to weaker friendship and social support over time. This direct link wasn’t found for boys. Also, while friendships were generally helpful for girls in reducing internalising symptoms, we didn’t see the same strong protective effect of friendships against internalising symptoms for boys. This suggests that what works to support girls might not be as effective for boys.
We also discovered a reciprocal relationship (where two things influence each other) between bullying victimisation and internalising symptoms, but only for boys. This creates a kind of negative cycle where bullying and emotional distress can feed into each other and worsen over time. On the other hand, for girls, we found a reciprocal relationship between their internalising symptoms and their friendships and social support. This highlights how deeply connected girls’ mental health is with the quality of their close peer relationships.
In short, while bullying is harmful for all teenagers, our study shows that the ways bullying, friendships, and mental health are connected are different for boys and girls. This means we need to consider gender when designing support for young people.
What does this mean?
Our study clearly shows that bullying victimisation strongly increases the risk of internalising symptoms, and negatively impacts friendship and social support for teenagers. These negative effects can create developmental cascades – like a chain reaction where one problem sets off others. For instance, bullying can worsen mental health, which then makes it harder to keep friends, which further worsens emotional struggles. Our findings highlight that acting early to prevent bullying is crucial to stop these harmful cascades, emphasising the critical need for comprehensive anti-bullying interventions in schools and communities.
Our research also demonstrates that these prevention efforts must consider gender, because there are different links between bullying, mental health, and friendships for boys and girls. Based on our findings, we suggest that supporting girls to build strong friendships and social support could be a particularly helpful way to reduce and address internalising symptoms like sadness and anxiety. Since we found that better friendships and support led to fewer internalising symptoms later for girls, interventions could focus on strengthening girls’ social connections and helping them build healthy relationships. This could involve school programmess that teach social skills, create safe spaces for girls to practice these skills, and help girls understand the benefits of strong friendships. Because bullying also hurts girls’ friendships, these kinds of social support interventions could be especially valuable for girls who are being bullied, potentially protecting them from some of the negative mental health impacts.
For boys, addressing internalising symptoms may be a key way to reduce the likelihood of future bullying victimisation. Since boys with more internalising symptoms were more likely to be bullied later, we suggest that schools consider early identification of these symptoms, perhaps through routine check-ins. This could allow for targeted support to be put in place to support young people who are experiencing internalising symptoms. We suggest that interventions focusing on helping boys manage feelings of sadness, anxiety, and loneliness could improve their mental health overall and reduce their chances of being bullied. It’s also important to tackle issues like toxic masculinity and social norms that can make it difficult for boys to express their emotions or ask for help. Through early identification and intervention, schools could help to interrupt the negative cycle where feeling emotionally distressed can increase vulnerability to bullying, which in turn could make internalising symptoms worse.
In conclusion, our study underscores the need for a broad approach that focuses on both the prevention of bullying and the promotion of mental wellbeing for all adolescents. However, our findings show that it’s crucial that these approaches are adapted and tailored for boys and girls, as mental health and peer relationships work differently for each. By understanding these gender differences, we can create more effective and fair support systems for all teenagers.
You can read more about our study here:
Cheng, Q., Mills-Webb, K., Marquez, J. et al. Longitudinal Relationships Across Bullying Victimization, Friendship and Social Support, and Internalizing Symptoms in Early-to-Middle Adolescence: A Developmental Cascades Investigation. J. Youth Adolescence (2025).
