The Brink: How did you conduct your research?

I’m an ethnographer, which means I spend a lot of time in social spaces until I kind of fade into the background. I spent two years in this high school, going everywhere students went. I observed classrooms, hallways, library spaces, parking lots, sporting events, and extracurricular activities during school, after school, on evenings and weekends.

I also interviewed 100 students—about one-fifth of the student body—and observed the social media activities of 75 of them. I interviewed 27 school officials, including teachers, administrators, nurses, and guidance counselors, and analyzed anti-bullying policies, bullying reports, PTA meeting minutes, and materials from bullying prevention programs. There were a lot of different data sources. Looking at teens’ lives online and in person simultaneously is like being on the receiving end of a fire hose. There’s just so much coming at you all at once.

The Brink: How has social media changed bullying—and how teens respond to it?

Adults are often looking for bullying that’s direct, targeted, and visible. That’s how most prevention policies define bullying. What I found was that by high school, teens had learned not to bully in those obvious ways. Instead, it became much more subtle. It was conversations happening online without tagging someone, subtweets, ghosting, spreading rumors, or inside jokes that everyone understood except the adults. When I asked teens about bullying, this was the kind of harm they described. Adults were looking for direct, targeted behavior, while teens were experiencing something much more subtle, systematic, and much harder to detect.

The students most likely to experience bullying were LGBTQ+ students, gender nonconforming students, students with disabilities, racially minoritized students, and students from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds. But what happened to them often wasn’t something adults recognized as bullying.

At the same time, teens understood that these conflicts were about inequality. They used social media to share information with one another about gender, sexuality, and race when adults refused to teach about those topics. They shared resources, stood up for one another, and created support systems that schools weren’t providing. As we see more restrictions on what educators can teach about diversity, social media is becoming one of the primary ways young people learn these things. That’s why it’s so vital. It’s important to protect youth access to it instead of simply blaming it for youth conflict.

The Brink: Can you share an example of social media helping students support one another?

One student posted a homophobic tweet late one evening. Overnight, it spread across multiple platforms, and by the next morning, most students knew about it. 

Hundreds of students responded by saying some version of, “You can’t say that.” They changed profile pictures to rainbow flags, posted messages supporting LGBTQ+ classmates, and shared educational resources. One student with two mothers explained different ways LGBTQ+ families exist. Another shared materials from a science lesson about sexual diversity in nature to educate classmates. Many students coordinated to wear rainbow colors at school the next day to show support.

There were many queer students who weren’t out publicly, and afterward, several told me they felt safer coming out because they realized how many classmates supported them. Watching what students called a “Twitter war,” I saw more useful information about sexual diversity shared between teens than I had ever seen in that school. It provided support and education that adults weren’t providing.

The Brink: Why do many anti-bullying initiatives fail?

We have really consistent national data over the past 15 years showing that bullying rates haven’t significantly declined, despite anti-bullying laws in all 50 states and widespread anti-bullying programming.

The problem isn’t just social media. It’s that these initiatives don’t address inequality—what bullying is actually about. The programs I observed were very good at telling students to be active bystanders, but they weren’t talking about the slut-shaming, racist, transphobic, or homophobic content that was often present in bullying practices, or the ways marginalized students were actually being targeted. Bullying online and in person aren’t separate issues—they’re part of the same continuum. You have to address what people are having conflict over, not just the medium they’re using.

The Brink: What advice would you give educators about social media and bullying?

It’s not about preventing one student from targeting another. It’s about addressing what bullying is about. That means giving students consistent, supportive information about gender, race, sexuality, class, disability, and other forms of inequality from an early age.

When I asked 100 teenagers what schools should do differently, the overwhelming response was, “Actually talk about it with us.” Students also told me their administrators often put the most socially popular students in charge of anti-bullying initiatives, which just replicates existing inequalities.

Adults also need to understand why some students don’t feel safe asking for help. If you’re being harassed because of your identity and don’t see adults who try to understand your experience, or acknowledge that your identity exists in their classrooms, you’re much less likely to come forward. The book is called The Tolerance Generation because tolerance isn’t the absence of hostility—it just makes hostility quiet.

The Brink: If readers could take one thing away from your book, what do you hope that is?

If it helps one kid in a school feel safer—but not just safer, feel loved, wanted, cared for—then it’s done its job. 

I watched the same institution make some students feel completely supported while making others feel totally alone. Adults often couldn’t see that difference. Teachers and administrators have so much on their plates—and I don’t blame them—but so many young people are falling through the cracks. I also hope adults recognize how brilliant and resourceful teenagers are. I watched them support each other, educate each other, and navigate incredibly difficult situations, both in person and online, because they had to. I want adults to value that—but I also want adults to recognize that teens shouldn’t have to carry that burden alone.

The Brink: What’s next for your research?

My next project looks at how school shooting threats affect young people’s social experiences. During my time in that high school, there were two separate school shooting threats on the student body. That led me to ask how these events—and even active shooter drills—shape students’ relationships and sense of community.

I’m working with Alex Streisand (CAS’25, SPH’26), a recent BU graduate. We’re interviewing young adults who experienced school shootings, school shooting threats, and active shooter drills while they were students. We know a lot about the causes and aftermath of school shootings, but we know much less about what these experiences mean for young people’s everyday social lives and relationships. That’s what we’re hoping to better understand.