The Carousel would like to thank Rosie Thomas OAM, PROJECT ROCKIT, for sharing this story on bullying, and the inspiring work being carried out by her organisation. Our favourite quote from Rosie is “Bullying can spread. But so can courage.”
By Rosie Thomas OAM, co-founder PROJECT ROCKIT
Bullying doesn’t always end when school does.
After 20 years building PROJECT ROCKIT, I’ve met adults in their 20s – many of whom were drawn to work with us because of their own lived experience of bullying – as well as people in their 70s and even 80s who can still vividly and tearfully remember exactly what someone said or did to them in the schoolyard. That’s because bullying is not just a fleeting moment or a school ‘rite of passage’ for young people to just ‘get over’. Bullying can become the story you carry about yourself.
Childhood bullying is linked to anxiety, depression, self-harm, suicidal ideation, poorer physical health, early school leaving and even criminal offending later in life. It doesn’t just hurt in the moment – we know it can change the trajectory of a person’s life.
While power, exclusion, hierarchy and humiliation aren’t new, technology has simply evolved the ways in which the people perpetrating this harm can reach us.
When I was growing up, bullying pretty much hit pause when the final bell rang. Today’s young people don’t always get that luxury. Bullying follows them home through social media, group chats and online culture. It can be screenshot, shared and amplified in seconds.
Complaints of serious cyberbullying involving children under 14 have more than tripled since 2019. On top of that, young people are navigating image-based abuse, anonymous accounts, online hate and the constant pressure of being visible – not to mention global conflict, the climate crisis and a 24-hour news cycle, all playing out in real time on the device in the palm of their hand.
What concerns me most isn’t just the bullying we can see. It’s the young person who slowly starts shrinking themselves. They stop putting their hand up. They learn to hide who they are. They start editing themselves before the world gets the chance to provide them with the opportunity they really deserve.
And as a result, this response can quietly shape the way you move through the world for decades. We see it show up as people-pleasing, perfectionism, struggling to trust others, fearing rejection or believing you’re somehow “not enough.”
Those beliefs don’t just affect school. They influence careers, friendships, intimate relationships and the opportunities people feel confident enough to pursue.
At PROJECT ROCKIT we often say the opposite of bullying isn’t kindness – it’s belonging. That’s not just a slogan. It’s backed by decades of research. Belonging is one of the strongest protective factors for young people’s mental health and one of the strongest predictors of engagement, resilience and wellbeing.
When young people genuinely feel like they belong, they stop shrinking themselves. They start speaking up. They back others. They take up the space they always deserved.
The good news is those stories aren’t permanent. With the right support, relationships and opportunities, people can rewrite them.
It’s something Brooke Boney knows firsthand. Speaking about her own experience of childhood bullying, Brooke has recalled being called the n-word, pushed against a wall and told she “didn’t belong there.”
Those experiences stayed with her, but they haven’t been allowed to define what came next. As Brooke puts it: “I learned it doesn’t matter what others think of you. What matters is what you think of yourself. Never let someone else’s negative behaviour or opinions change the way you feel about yourself.”
That idea of choosing what happens next is deeply personal to me, too. Co-founding PROJECT ROCKIT became part of my own healing.
I know what it’s like to be bullied – believe me, it’s soul destroying. I also have my own regrets – both the times I treated others badly or I didn’t stand up. I realised I couldn’t change what happened to me, but I could choose what happened next.
When I finished high school, I worked out that some of the stories we carry about ourselves were written by other people – about our confidence, our worth, what we’re capable of! The powerful realisation I had is this: The people who mistreated us DON’T get to define us. Brave beginnings is a call out to young Aussies that you’re allowed to pick up the pen and rewrite your own story.
We need to stop treating bullying as a behaviour problem. It’s a culture problem. And culture takes a whole community to change.
After 20 years, one thing is crystal clear: awareness isn’t enough. The vast majority of young people already know bullying is wrong. The real question is: do they have the confidence, skills and empathy to do something different when it matters? How can we expect young people to stand up for something if they don’t know what they stand for?
At PROJECT ROCKIT, we bring the whole school community together. Most importantly, young people lead the way. We hand them the mic to co-design the kind of cultures they want to live in – online and offline – and we develop them as capable, empathetic leaders of change. But they need adults standing beside them.
That’s why we work with students, teachers and families. We equip young people with practical strategies to navigate bullying and online harm. We support teachers to build cultures of belonging that last well beyond a single workshop. And we help parents better understand their children’s digital lives so those conversations continue at home.
Belonging isn’t a luxury. It’s one of the strongest protective factors for young people’s mental health, and it needs to be intentionally built into our schools, our homes and our online spaces.
Because here’s what we’ve learnt after reaching almost one million young Australians:
Bullying can spread. But so can courage.
Sometimes all it takes is one brave beginning for someone else to realise they’re not alone.
PROJECT ROCKIT
PROJECT ROCKIT is Australia’s youth-driven movement against bullying, hate and prejudice. For nearly 20 years, we’ve mobilised almost one million young Aussies from 3,000 schools with the skills, confidence and peer community to lead change against the issues that impact them the most.
