Your friendships matter more than any of this, and they need looking after

Between about thirteen and seventeen, friendship groups rearrange themselves repeatedly and it's genuinely painful. People you were close to at eleven are strangers at fifteen. That part is normal and it isn't anybody's fault.

What isn't normal — and what's worth being able to name — is a friendship that consistently makes you feel worse.

A good friendship, at any age

• You can say you aren't free without an interrogation.
• Your good news is safe with them. This is a bigger test than bad news, and a lot of people fail it.
• They tell you the true thing kindly, rather than the comfortable thing.
• You don't have to keep track of a story you've told.
• You aren't competing.

Things that are worth noticing

Being included but not really. Being the one who is always slightly the joke. A friend who is warm one-on-one and cold in the group. Being made to feel that the friendship is conditional on going along with something.

None of those need a big confrontation. Mostly they need you to quietly invest somewhere else. Friendship isn't a debt and you're allowed to let something fade.

The online part

Your phone is a genuinely useful thing and also the main place this stuff happens now, so:

Nothing you send is private. Not on a disappearing app, not to someone you trust completely. Screenshots exist. Relationships end. Assume anything you send could be seen by your mum, and use that as the filter.

Never send images of yourself. Not once, not to a boyfriend, not because he promised. This is the single thing most likely to cause you serious and lasting harm, and every adult who deals with the aftermath says the same thing.

Anyone you've only met online is a stranger. Including if you've spoken for months. Including if they're supposedly your age. Adults who target teenagers are patient, they're good at it, and they don't announce themselves.

Compare less. What you're scrolling is other people's edited best minutes against your ordinary Tuesday. Knowing that doesn't stop it working on you — the only thing that reliably helps is doing it less.

If something has gone wrong

If an image exists that you didn't want to exist, if someone is threatening you, if someone you met online has asked for something — tell an adult today.

A parent, a teacher, an aunt, a youth leader, a school nurse. Whoever you can actually say it to.

You won't be in trouble. The adults who handle this have seen it many times and aren't shocked. And the one thing that makes it worse, every time, is trying to handle it alone while it gets bigger.