Frequently Asked Questions

Find answers to common questions about Power of Zero, our programs, bullying support, digital parenting, and how schools and families can work with us.

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We founded Power of Zero because we saw the harm being caused by cyberbullying, and we wanted to teach children and teens to use their power well, with zero bullying and zero violence. That’s why we chose to the name “Power of Zero”. Over time our work expanded to helping young people develop the human strengths needed to flourish in the digital age, but the central idea remains the same: empowering the next generation to use their influence for good.

Power of Zero helps schools, families, and communities prevent bullying, strengthen digital wellbeing, and build the human qualities children need to flourish in the digital age.

Power of Zero works with schools, educators, parents, researchers, nonprofit partners, and education systems around the world.

Most anti-bullying approaches focus on the behavior of individual students, punishing the child who bullies or supporting the child who is targeted. The No Bully System® works differently. It addresses bullying at the level where it actually occurs: within the peer group. By engaging bystanders’ compassion and shifting the group’s social dynamics, schools achieve lasting change that discipline alone cannot produce.

It means every adult in the building plays a role. All teachers and staff are trained to recognize and interrupt bullying when they see it. A designated Solution Coach® handles escalated cases using the Solution Team® process. And school leadership creates the cultural conditions, through policy, values, and practice, that make belonging the norm. No single person carries the weight alone.

A Solution Coach® is a staff member trained to facilitate the Solution Team® process, a structured conversation that brings together 6-8 students to collectively resolve a bullying situation. This role is most often filled by a counselor, safeguarding lead, or pastoral care staff member, though any trained staff member can take it on.

The Classic No Bully program for US schools is a year-long partnership. This allows enough time for staff training, cultural change, and meaningful follow-through. International school programs are structured to fit the school calendar and context. Most schools begin to see measurable shifts in peer dynamics and staff confidence within the first semester.

Yes. The No Bully System® is designed to work across the full school community, from elementary through high school. The Solution Team® process and school culture work are adapted to be age-appropriate and responsive to the specific social dynamics of each group.

Cyberbullying is treated as an extension of peer dynamics, not a separate problem. The same group relationships that drive face-to-face bullying also shape what happens online. By addressing the underlying social dynamics in the school community, the No Bully System® helps reduce cyberbullying as well as in-person bullying, without requiring schools to police technology.

Schools are not left to figure it out on their own. No Bully provides direct training for Solution Coaches® and school staff, practical resources for each level of the system, and ongoing support throughout the partnership year. The goal is to build internal capacity so that the system becomes part of how your school operates, not a one-off program.

Superpowers is designed to integrate naturally into the rhythm of your school year — not to sit alongside everything else as another demand on your teachers’ time. Most schools are already delivering some form of social-emotional learning, digital citizenship, and wellbeing support. But these are often separate programs with separate frameworks, separate language, and separate demands on teachers who are already stretched. Superpowers brings them together into one coherent program — one set of character strengths that guides how children understand their emotions, treat others, and make choices at school, at home, and online. For teachers, that means one framework to learn, one language to use, and one set of lessons to deliver. For children, it means the same strengths they practise in the classroom are the ones they draw on in the playground, at home, and in their online lives. One program. One set of character strengths. For school, home, and online.

Most social-emotional learning programs were designed before smartphones, social media, and AI became part of childhood. They teach children how to manage emotions and build relationships — which matters enormously — but they were not built for the world children are actually growing up in today.

Superpowers goes further. It brings together three bodies of evidence and practice that are too often kept separate: the proven impact of social-emotional learning, the depth and moral grounding of character education, and the practical wisdom of digital citizenship. The result is a program that doesn’t just help children feel better — it helps them become better. Kinder, more resilient, more thoughtful, and wiser in how they navigate their online-offline lives.

Every child needs Superpowers. That conviction is at the heart of everything we do.

Superpowers is currently available in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Filipino. We are actively working to bring the program to school systems across Asia, translating and localizing it so that it speaks to the lives, language, and culture of every child we reach.

If you are interested in bringing Superpowers to children in your country or language community, we would love to hear from you.

Superpowers is offered on a partnership basis, and fees vary based on your school’s size, the number of year groups participating, and the scope of the program. Every Superpowers partnership includes teacher training as an essential component. This is not an optional add-on — it is where the program’s success begins. Schools that invest in training their teachers see the strongest results in their students. The research is clear on this: social-emotional and digital citizenship depends not just on what is taught, but on how it is taught, and on who is doing the teaching. We are committed to making Superpowers accessible to schools that share our mission, and we are always happy to discuss what works best for your context.

Not all unkindness is bullying. Conflict between children — disagreements, fallings-out, social friction — can land painfully but it’s a normal part of growing up. Bullying is different: it’s repeated aggression, it’s intentional, and it involves a power imbalance. The child on the receiving end feels unable to make it stop. If your child is caught up in a falling-out with a friend, that matters and deserves your attention but the approach is different from responding to sustained targeting.

Before you do anything, give your child a chance to tell you their story fully. Ask them how they want you to handle it. Jumping straight to the school — even with the best intentions — can feel to your child like you’ve taken over something that’s theirs to manage, and can sometimes make things harder socially. That said, if the bullying is serious, sustained, or involves anything physical or online that has been shared widely, the school needs to know. They are your ally in this — and a good school will take it seriously.

Start by listening and reassuring them that they are not in trouble and that you will work on this together. Then screenshot and document everything before reporting, since content can disappear quickly. Report to the platform. If the content involves threats, images shared without consent, or anything that rises to the level of harassment, it should also be reported to the school and, where necessary, to the police. The most important thing is that your child knows they can come to you — and that coming to you makes things better, not worse.

This is more common than most parents realise, and it doesn’t mean you’ve failed. Keep the door open without pressure — “I’m here whenever you want to talk” is enough. In the meantime, look for other trusted adults in their life: a teacher they respect, a family friend, a coach. Sometimes children find it easier to open up to someone who isn’t their parent. That’s not a rejection of you. It’s them finding a way through.

This is one of the hardest things a parent can face — and one of the most important. Children who bully others are usually struggling themselves: with belonging, with power, with what they’ve learned about how to get respect. Responding with shame or punishment rarely changes behaviour. Start by asking questions rather than making accusations. Help them understand the impact of what they’ve done. And look at what might be driving it — what’s happening in their social world that they’re trying to manage this way?

The instinct to step in and make it stop is completely natural. But the most protective thing you can do for your child is build a relationship strong enough that they keep coming to you. That means responding without overreacting, listening without interrogating, and acting with them rather than for them wherever possible. You are not helpless — hold the outlook that problems can be solved and they will begin to take that view too.

Model the behavior you want to see. Most parents worry that their teenager is spending too much time online. But here is the uncomfortable truth most of us are spending just as much time on our phones as our teenagers, if not more. And our teenagers know it. They are watching us scroll at dinner, check our phones the moment we wake up, and carry them from room to room like a third hand. You cannot rail at your teenager for being too much online while doing exactly the same thing yourself. It doesn’t work and deep down, every parent already knows that. The most powerful thing you can do is put your phone away. Not face down on the table. Not in your pocket. In another room. Model the relationship with technology that you want your teenager to have and then you’ll have the credibility to talk about it.

It’s less about how much time your teenager spends online and more about what they’re doing with it.

A teenager who spends two hours gaming with friends, learning a new skill on YouTube, or finding a community of people who share their interests is having a very different experience from one who spends two hours scrolling passively through social media feeling worse about themselves. Time alone doesn’t tell you much.

What’s worth paying attention to is whether their online life is affecting sleep, schoolwork, or face-to-face relationships. Those are the real signals.

The best way to understand what your teenager is doing online is to ask with genuine curiosity rather than suspicion. And the Family Tech Agreement is a natural starting point for that conversation. It creates space to ask your teenager honestly: do you feel like your screen time is getting out of control? Would you like some help with that? You might be surprised by the answer. Most teenagers already know — and many already want to change it.

This is one of the questions parents ask us most, and our answer might surprise you. We don’t think the right question is “what age?” We think it’s “what readiness?”

The pressure your teenager feels to have a smartphone is real. For most teenagers, it isn’t just a status symbol; it’s the gateway to the social world their peers already inhabit. Dismissing that pressure doesn’t make it go away. But giving in to it without thought doesn’t serve your teenager either.

Here are three signs that your teen has the maturity and character for a smartphone

  • They take responsibility in other areas of their life, such as schoolwork, commitments, and relationships, without constant prompting.
  • They show kindness and empathy in their face-to-face relationships. How a teenager treats people offline is usually how they’ll treat people online.
  • They can put their device down when asked, without drama or negotiation. That single moment of self-regulation tells you more than any age chart.

When you do decide they’re ready, the Family Tech Agreement is the perfect starting point for a conversation you have together before the phone arrives, not after the first argument about it.

Most teenagers want to tell their parents when something online has hurt or scared them, but only if they trust that the conversation won’t immediately turn into punishment, interrogation, or the removal of their phone. How you respond the first time determines whether they come to you the next time. When your teenager comes to you or when you notice something is wrong, start by listening. Not investigating. Not problem-solving. Just listening. Let them tell you what happened in their own words. Then reassure them clearly: you are not going to take their phone away, it is not their fault, and you are going to work on it together. If action is needed, cyberbullying, threatening messages, or harmful content shared without consent should be reported to the platform, and if necessary, to the school or law enforcement. Screenshot and document everything before reporting, as content can disappear quickly. If your teenager’s mental health is affected, seek support from a counselor or mental health professional.

Researchers commonly define bullying as repeated harmful behaviour between students that involves a power imbalance. This definition is widely used in schools and education systems around the world. In practice, however, the power imbalance is not always present from the beginning. Bullying behaviors themselves — humiliation, exclusion, or intimidation — can create the imbalance over time, especially when other students support or tolerate what is happening. This is why bullying so often spreads through peer groups, and why the most effective responses address the whole social environment — not just the students directly involved.

Cyberbullying is bullying that happens through digital tools — social media, messaging apps, gaming platforms, or any online space where students interact and compete for attention, likes and status. What makes cyberbullying particularly damaging is its scale and permanence. Unlike bullying that happens face-to-face, a single online incident can reach a vast audience almost instantly. Harmful posts, images, or messages can be seen, shared, and commented on by hundreds of people — amplifying the humiliation and making it nearly impossible for the targeted student to escape or move on. For this reason, even a single act of online harassment can have the devastating impact of repeated bullying when it publicly humiliates a student in front of their peers. In most cases, cyberbullying is not separate from school bullying — it is an extension of it. Often the same students who bully in classrooms and hallways continue the behavior online, carrying the social dynamics of the school day into spaces where there are no teachers, no rules, and a much larger audience.

Conflict is a normal part of growing up. Students disagree, fall out, and argue — and these experiences, though uncomfortable, are part of how young people learn to navigate relationships. Bullying is fundamentally different. In conflict, both students feel they have some power to influence the situation. In bullying, one student repeatedly uses humiliation, exclusion, or intimidation to dominate another — and the targeted student feels unable to stop what is happening. Often the behavior happens in front of others, which is precisely what makes it bullying rather than conflict. The distinction matters because the response needs to be different. Conflict can often be resolved by bringing students together to talk it through and repair the relationship. Bullying requires addressing the wider social environment — including the peers who witness, support, or tolerate the behavior.

Yes. When bullying targets a student because of who they are — their race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or religion — it can cross into harassment, which carries different legal and institutional obligations for schools. The line between bullying and harassment is not always clear, but the distinction matters. Harassment is typically defined as conduct that creates a hostile environment for a student based on a protected characteristic. Schools have a legal duty to address harassment, and in many cases are required to report it. As students move into adolescence, bullying increasingly takes the form of identity-based harassment — targeting students for their gender identity, sexual orientation, or race. Sexual harassment also becomes more common, particularly online, where harmful images and comments can spread rapidly. If you believe a student is experiencing harassment rather than — or in addition to — bullying, it is important to involve school leadership and, where appropriate, seek legal guidance.

No — and this is one of the most important boundaries to hold. Banter is a part of how young people interact, and most of it is harmless. But there is a clear difference between banter and behaviour designed to embarrass or hurt. When someone has to say “I was only joking” after the fact, the line has usually already been crossed. Intent matters, and so does impact. Young people need to understand that the responsibility for crossing the line belongs to them — and that an excuse, however confidently delivered, doesn’t undo the harm.

Most situations are best handled through schools and families. But contact law enforcement if the behaviour includes credible threats of physical harm, persistent stalking or harassment, or the sharing of intimate images without consent — this is a criminal offence in most US states. Before reporting, document everything you can: screenshots, dates, usernames, and any relevant context.

Start by listening without immediately jumping to action. Many young people are afraid that telling an adult will make things worse, so the first job is to make them feel heard and believed. From there: take screenshots to document what’s happened, use the reporting tools on the relevant platform to block the account, contact the school if other students are involved, and seek outside support if your child is showing signs of significant distress.