More young people are reporting coercive control behaviour from their peers
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More than 1,000 teenagers and young people have reported experiencing coercive control by their peers, including friends, according to support service Kids Helpline.
The data, obtained exclusively by triple j’s hack program, spans the period from January 2024 to July 2025 and represents a small but growing proportion of overall calls to the support service.
“They [teenagers and young people] are reporting this more frequently. The terms ‘coercive control’, ‘toxic relationships’, ‘gas-lighting’, are really coming through in the notes our counsellors are recording,” Kids Helpline National Service Manager Leo Hede told hack.
Over three-quarters of reports of this kind of behaviour were made by girls and young women, and people aged 15 to 18 were most likely to contact Kids Helpline to report coercive control-type behaviours.
Kids Helpline takes calls nationally from children and young adults aged from five to 25.
Coercive control refers to a pattern of controlling behaviour, and it can include emotional and verbal abuse, isolation and tracking physical movements.
According to the Australian Institute of Family Studies, between 7.5 and 28 per cent of the population has experienced coercive control. Studies into the behaviour have focused on romantic relationships, and researchers say no good data exists to show its prevalence in friendships or other non-romantic relationships.
Mr Hede said the Kids Helpline data showing the rise was not necessarily all bad news, because it could potentially reflect increased education around unhealthy relationships.
“They [young people] are becoming more attuned to these behaviours within their relationships and are able to identify it more often,” he said.
Nicky, a young person in her 20s who spoke to triple j hack on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive and private information, says she experienced coercive control from a friend for a number of years before realising how detrimental it was to her own mental and physical health.
Nicky describes the dynamic as akin to “love-bombing”, a term typically used to describe a pattern of behaviour where a person showers a partner with gifts or affection before devaluing or degrading them.
“They were really nice and lovely, and then something goes wrong and they’re awful, then they’d try and redeem themselves,” Nicky told triple j hack.
Nicky says her friend would try to isolate her from her own boyfriend and other friends, and insist on location-sharing so that she could be tracked.
The behaviour took its toll on Nicky’s mental health, but she says her friend would not listen to her concerns.
“It got to a point where it was very much walking on eggshells. I didn’t feel like I could say anything to her.”
Sophie, also not her real name, told triple j hack she also experienced verbal abuse from a friend, when she questioned the friend’s controlling behaviour.
“If I called out that behaviour … then it would be ‘you’re a bad friend, you’re abandoning me,'” Sophie told hack.
Sophie says her friend would also track her using Snap Map, a feature on messaging platform Snapchat that allows users to track the locations of their friends.
Content retrieved from: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-26/young-people-coercive-control-friendships/105694776.
