Phoebe Burgess has candidly revealed the crippling impact of online criticism as she fronts a powerful new anti-bullying campaign.
The former NRL WAG, 37, has joined the likes of former Nine star Brooke Boney and NBL star Isaac Humphries for a Snapchat-led campaign to raise awareness about online bullying.
The initiative, a collaboration between Snapchat and anti-bullying organisation Project Rockit, features stars sharing personal experiences with bullying and educating people on how to recognise and report potentially harmful behaviour.
Speaking to Daily Mail, Phoebe said that she was drawn to the campaign as it made her rethink her own online behaviour.
‘This campaign came at a really relevant time for me,’ she said.
‘Reading through Snapchat and Project RockIt’s findings made me take a closer look at my own behaviour online and acknowledge I had been altering the way I engaged with social and messaging platforms due to the actions of others.’
Phoebe Burgess has opened up about the debilitating effects online criticism as she steps up to front a new anti-bullying campaign from Project Rockit and Spapchat
Phoebe added that she realised that she had been turning a blind eye to bullying, saying that she had altered her world to cope with being a ‘target’ for trolls.
‘I thought I knew how to spot bullying – yet for a long time, I chose to ignore it, just like so many Australians do,’ she said.
‘I was shrinking my world, completely disengaging and not showing up, all in the hopes of being a less visible target.’
She added that the thought of others, particularly young people, coping with bullying in such a way was ‘heartbreaking.’
‘I was a master of “ignoring it”. I convinced myself that if I hadn’t seen the headlines or the comments – then really, they didn’t exist,’ she said.
‘It was the ultimate “ignorance is bliss” mentality. But the thought that young people, or anyone else, were coping in the same way was heartbreaking.’
Phoebe is certainly no stranger to the slings and arrows of online criticism, particularly after her 2019 split with her NRL star husband Sam, and has frequently hit back at trolls.
She admitted that while she’s learned to ‘ride the ups and downs,’ for a long time she believed online trolling was simply part and parcel of life on social media.
‘I thought I knew how to spot bullying – yet for a long time, I chose to ignore it, just like so many Australians do,’ she told Daily Mail. ‘I was shrinking my world, completely disengaging and not showing up, all in the hopes of being a less visible target.
‘I shrank my world to fall off the radar,’ she added. ‘I stopped reading any headline about myself and, for almost two years now, I haven’t clicked on a single story with my name in it. I barely consume news at all. I went to fewer work events to stay less visible, and I disappeared from social media for months at a time.’
‘It’s been a constant for the past decade, and for a long time I genuinely believed that choosing to work in this space meant accepting every opinion, judgment, and comment that came with it,’ she said.
‘I told myself it was the price of doing what I love – and that I somehow deserved the ugly parts as much as the good.’
Phoebe added that while trolls tend to come in ‘peaks and troughs’, she is still shocked by people’s comments.
‘Over time, I noticed a real shift in the types of ‘trolling’ I was coming across,’ she said.
‘There’s a big difference between a spicy comment or a hurtful opinion that stings, and something that is undeniably violent or threatening.
‘It’s genuinely shocking to read such deeply personal, soul-crushing words from someone who doesn’t know me at all – someone wishing harm, expressing hatred, or targeting women as a whole.’
She said that despite developing strategies to cope, there was still an overarching ‘fear’.
‘I learnt to ride the ups and downs so that the good doesn’t make or build me up and in turn, the nasty or the bad can’t break me down again,’ she said.
Phoebe, who shares two children – Poppy, 8, and Billy, 6 – with ex-husband Sam Burgess (pictured), said that she is already educating the youngsters about online bullying.
‘If I choose to ignore it again and again, as I have for a long time, I’m sending a message about how we deal with the hard, ugly, unfair and un-shareable things. And I don’t want that message to be of passive acceptance,’ she said
‘But that mentality can’t and didn’t stop the fear creeping in.’
Phoebe added: ‘There’s no invisible barrier that protects you from comments or the people who write them, so I built one myself.
‘I shrank my world to fall off the radar. I stopped reading any headline about myself and, for almost two years now, I haven’t clicked on a single story with my name in it. I barely consume news at all. I went to fewer work events to stay less visible, and I disappeared from social media for months at a time.’
Phoebe, who shares two children – Poppy, 8, and Billy, 6 – with ex-husband Sam Burgess, said that she is already educating the youngsters about online bullying.
‘Even though we haven’t reached that full leap into the online world yet, I’m already very aware of the example I’m setting,’ she said.
‘We have regular, honest conversations about our own behaviour, how we treat others, and how to recognise poor behaviour both in real life and online.’
She said that her previous strategy of ignoring bullying was not a good example to set for her kids.
‘If I choose to ignore it again and again, as I have for a long time, I’m sending a message about how we deal with the hard, ugly, unfair and unshareable things. And I don’t want that message to be of passive acceptance,’ she said.
‘I want them to feel brave, to respect themselves enough to act, and to know they’re worth standing up for.
‘More than anything, my mission is to raise them to know they can always come to me, talk to me, and trust me, especially at the most difficult parts of their little lives.’
