Bullying those who are weaker, more vulnerable, or different is as old as humankind. In recent years children and young people have increasingly become victims of cyberbullying over digital devices including mobile phones, computers, and tablets and through the sending, posting, or sharing of negative, harmful false or humiliating material. Like all bullying, this can generate anxiety, stress and depression, poor self-esteem, social withdrawal, and isolation and may result in self-harm and suicide. Parents, teachers, and practitioners are now more aware and attentive to the possibility that a young person exhibiting any of these symptoms may be experiencing cyberbullying.
However, there is another more troubling phenomenon that steps beyond the boundary of what we have previously understood as bullying. This is the worldwide on-line networks which pursues young people through games like Roblox and Minecraft and draws them into an ecosystem ‘that actively encourages and glorifies acts of violence and degradation.’ LGBTQI+ youth, racial minorities and those suffering from mental illnesses or disorders are particularly targeted as they are recognised as more vulnerable.
A New Form of Bullying
Writing in the Guardian on 21st July, Ariel Bogle reports on a network known as 764 which includes both victims and perpetrators across the globe. She reports that ‘Legal records from numerous countries suggest they often celebrate violence, manipulation and harm for its own sake, collecting records of such acts to gain notoriety and control’ with young people recruiting others. She cites the case of a 14-year-old boy who stabbed an elderly man in the back with the footage rapidly streamed across the network. Others have been convicted for the production and possession of child abuse material and encouragement of others to self-harm and suicide.
The ‘Crimefluencer’ Model of Harm
Australian authors Weston et al (2026) have proposed a theoretical framework to explain the functioning of ‘crimefluencer’ networks ‘in which harmful and criminal behaviours are rewarded and escalated within gamified social media environments’. Drawing on the literature of gamification, coercive control, and youth exploitation they propose a model which explains how ‘platform affordances, social dynamics, and coercive mechanisms interact to produce escalating cycles of harm and entrapment.’
While our field is familiar with ideas of coercive control and youth exploitation gamification may be a new concept. It refers to ‘the application of game design elements, such as point scoring, levels, challenges, and rewards, to non-gaming contexts to shape behaviour.’ These experiences are designed to create a sense of being skilled, competent, and exercising agency and to ‘achieve recognition, belonging, or status within valued social groups.’ Participants progress through increasingly challenging tasks with the reward of recognition through likes, shares, and views being tangible evidence of success and with novel, extreme, or transgressive acts attracting most attention and status.
The model extends the notion of coercive control to digitally networked environments to include online power dynamics between strangers which ‘may be distributed across loosely connected, decentralised online social networks.’ Crimefluencers build their status by extorting content from others recording themselves committing crimes or acts of violence against themselves or others who are rewarded with inclusion and recognition. In addition, ‘threats of exposure, reputational harm, or the dissemination of previously shared content,’ locks them more securely in place.
Adolescence is a time of a need to belong, sensitivity to peer opinion and pressure and the ongoing process of identity creation. These factors in combination with a lack of experience and resources to understand and resist coercion and absence of aware adults put them further at risk.
A Vicious Cycle is Created
A self-reinforcing cycle of recruitment, compliance, escalation, social reward, and entrapment is created which is sustained ‘through continuous recruitment of new victims, while existing participants are retrained through escalating expectations and coercive dynamics.’
What is to be Done?
The authors assert that this can only be addressed through ‘structural, system-level change,’ by redesigning reward systems to avoid incentivising risk, limiting the virality of harmful content, and embedding safeguards capable of detecting and responding to emerging patterns of escalation.’ In this way ‘responsibility for harm is redistributed from individual users to the socio-technical systems that shape behaviour.’
For practitioners, awareness of this highly lethal form of bullying and willingness to explore the possibility that adolescent clients have become trapped is crucial. If we can’t see it, we cannot help find a way out at a more individual and family level.
Bogle, A. Inside the Horrifying online Network where Children Exhort Others to Commit Violence and Self Harm The Guardian Tuesday 21st July 2026
Weston, X., McGregor, J., Turley, E., & Peel, R. The Crimefluencer Model of Harm: The nexus between gamification, coercive control, and youth exploitation Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) licence. https://doi.org/10.25916/sut.32163618
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