Nearly one in seven Danish pupils now reports being bullied each school year, even as Denmark records among the lowest rates of repeated school bullying in Europe, according to HBSC data from the University of Southern Denmark.
The contradiction is real and revealing. HBSC trend data from the University of Southern Denmark show that exposure to bullying among Danish schoolchildren fell from around 24% in the mid-1990s to below 5% by 2018. Today, according to SDU, around one in twenty children reports being bullied at least a couple of times per month. Denmark ranks among the European countries with the lowest rates of repeated school bullying, alongside several other northern European countries such as Sweden.
Yet the latest national well-being survey for 2024/25 finds that 13.6% of pupils in grades four through nine say they have been bullied at least once during the school year. That is almost unchanged from 13.7% in 2023/24 but significantly higher than figures from earlier years, as reported by Mary Fonden summarising Ministry data. The numbers have stopped falling and in some measures are rising again.
The shift to subtle and digital bullying
What changed is not the quantity of fists thrown or insults shouted in the schoolyard. It is the form. Bullying in Denmark has become more subtle, more social and more digital. The silent treatment, exclusion from WhatsApp groups, coordinated ignoring. These tactics rarely show up in traditional incident reports yet strongly affect children’s well-being, according to recent Danish research summarised by Mary Fonden.
Red Barnet’s latest survey of nine to 17-year-olds paints a stark picture. Sixty-nine percent reported experiencing some form of digital violation or unpleasant online event in the past year, up from 55% in 2021. Twenty-nine percent said others had spoken or written negatively about them online, compared with 18% three years ago. Twenty-one percent were deliberately excluded from social media or online games.
According to DKR and HBSC data, single-digit percentages of pupils are bullied online at least a couple of times per month. That is consistent with the one-in-twenty figure for repeated offline bullying, suggesting the two forms now run alongside each other rather than one replacing the other, based on available survey data.
No expat breakdown in routine statistics
For internationals raising children here, these dynamics are harder to detect than a bruised arm or a stolen backpack. Official communication and school surveys arrive in Danish. Social exclusion hinges on language, cultural references and local platform slang.
Routine official statistics, including StatBank and the national well-being survey standard tables, do not break down bullying by a child’s origin or home language. According to Statistics Denmark, the agency does not collect bullying data directly, instead referring users to the Danish Centre for Educational Environment and the Ministry of Children and Education. However, a 2023 study by Børns Vilkår and the Institute for Human Rights found that around half of pupils with a minority ethnic background in grades six and nine had experienced bullying based on their skin colour, nationality, religion or culture. That finding strongly indicates that children with ethnic minority backgrounds face disproportionate exposure.
Research and social-services data suggest that children with foreign backgrounds are over-represented in broader vulnerability categories, and subtle forms of bullying turn heavily on in-group communication. If your child does not catch the joke or is left off the class Snapchat thread, the exclusion is real even if no teacher sees it.
Measurement clash
Part of the confusion in public debate comes from how bullying is measured. The national well-being survey asks whether a pupil experienced bullying at any point during the school year. The long-term HBSC health-behaviour study asks about bullying at least a couple of times per month. The first method captures one-off incidents and intermittent exclusion. The second tracks sustained, repeated aggression.
Both are valid, but they produce very different prevalence figures. That is why Denmark can simultaneously show a dramatic decline in regular bullying and report a plateau or slight rise in annual exposure. As the research briefings make clear, institutions use different thresholds and definitions, which leads to varying prevalence figures.
Some commentators argue that the 13-14% annual figure is less alarming than it appears, given that repeated bullying affects only around 5% of pupils. Others point out that Red Barnet’s 69% digital-violations figure covers a wide range of experiences, from serious harassment to merely unpleasant contact. These are analytical perspectives rather than settled conclusions from named institutional sources.
What to do
In practice, families dealing with bullying must navigate a patchwork of school procedures, NGO resources and national guidance, much of it only in Danish. DKR advises that young people learn digital bullying is wrong and know what steps to take: talk to trusted adults, save screenshots, report to school or platforms.
NGOs like Red Barnet and Mary Fonden offer hotlines, chat support and classroom programmes, though English materials are limited. For internationals, practical steps include asking schools for English explanations of well-being survey results, requesting meetings with class teachers and seeking bilingual mediators if language is a barrier. That is not formally codified but increasingly happens in municipalities with high international populations.
If bullying crosses into threats or serious harassment, contact the police. DKR advises that digital bullying falls under crime-prevention frameworks, though guidelines stress education over prosecution for minors.
Denmark’s success in cutting traditional schoolyard bullying is real, as confirmed by SDU’s long-term HBSC data. But the new forms are harder to see, harder to measure and harder to stop. Until routine well-being surveys capture origin and language, and until schools treat digital exclusion as seriously as physical aggression, one in seven will remain a stubborn floor rather than a falling ceiling.
