AI-manipulated images driving sharp rise in cyberbullying reports, Dutch helpline says

The number of young people seeking help for online bullying in the Netherlands has risen steeply this year, and the organisation that runs the helpline says manipulated images made with artificial intelligence are playing an ever larger part in the abuse.

Stichting Offlimits, the Dutch expertise centre for online abuse, received 955 reports of cyberbullying between January and September 2026, against 860 for the whole of 2025 and 298 in 2024. The organisation says that more than 17 per cent of this year's reports involved AI-manipulated images, compared with 2 per cent in 2024. Dutch outlets reporting the figures give the share as 17.3 or 17.4 per cent.

Several anti-bullying organisations in the Netherlands have warned that AI is increasingly being used to bully children and young people online, including through fake images and copied voices, according to Dutch press coverage on 9 October.

Fake images, real consequences

Offlimits says easier-to-use AI tools make it simpler to create images that are not real. Reports include fake images of young people kissing, dancing or being sick, none of which happened, and some involve teachers. In some cases, Offlimits says, young people are shown in sexual situations or naked.

Babette Keuning, coordinator of the Offlimits helpline, said online bullying does not stop when a young person leaves school: what might once have happened in the schoolyard now continues at home on the phone and spreads rapidly.

Offlimits says that for a victim it makes little difference whether an image is real, edited or made entirely with AI. The loss of control over the image, the shame and the fear that classmates or a whole school will see it are the same either way. It adds that for young people from some religious or stricter backgrounds, even apparently harmless fake images of kissing or dancing can have serious consequences.

Bullying through online games

The helpline also reports images of teachers and pupils being used for "ship" accounts, and a game called "raad de leerling" (guess the pupil). These are forms of online humiliation that can be less easy to recognise as bullying.

The Dutch figures sit alongside warnings from the United Nations. Najat Maalla M'jid, the UN special representative on violence against children, presented a report to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in March 2026; her office said AI technologies are increasingly used to humiliate, threaten and exploit children online.

Calls for early action

Offlimits is urging parents and schools not to wait. It wants online behaviour discussed with young people early and regularly. The helpline offers free, anonymous advice.

The Dutch figures come as social media claims and court cases over harm to young people continue in other countries, including the United States, where platforms face lawsuits over alleged harm from their products, including on TikTok and Snapchat.

Families who want to know more can read about how a social media harm claim works and the case against the platforms.