Group chats have become breeding grounds for coordinated harassment among South African teens, turning ordinary digital spaces into platforms for bullying. Digital group chats, which were once seen as innocent spaces for school conversations and sharing memes, are now evolving into hotspots for organised online harassment among South African teenagers. Experts caution that the combination of WhatsApp-driven echo chambers, zero-rated data bundles, and inadequate moderation on platforms is fostering a dangerous “pack mentality,” transforming typical peer conflicts into widespread digital aggression.
Rorke Wilson, an associate at The Digital Law Company, says these online mobs form quickly and naturally inside high-school ecosystems. “When we get these digital mobs, when it happens in high schools, it sort of just generates organically in the same way that teenagers can be horrible to each other,” he said. Wilson says that while much of this behaviour is child-on-child bullying, some cases involve adults exploiting teens online.
He referenced one of the world’s most high-profile cyberbullying cases, that of Canadian teenager Amanda Todd, to illustrate how unregulated platforms can allow harm to escalate. In 2012, Amanda Michelle Todd, born in 1996, became one of the most widely known victims of long-term online harassment after years of being targeted and exploited on social platforms. According to Canadian police reports and extensive media coverage, Todd had been manipulated by an online offender who blackmailed her and spread images of her without her consent.
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The harassment continued across multiple platforms and school environments, leading to repeated bullying and physical intimidation from peers. A month before her death in 2012, she posted a YouTube video using handwritten flashcards to explain the pressure, threats, and bullying she had endured.
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