How much does keeping an eye on teenagers really help? A large study from South Korea suggests that parental supervision may not stop bullying directly, but that it can make a real difference by shaping the world young people spend their time in.

The study, published in The Open Psychology Journal, was carried out by Young-Chul Lee of the Naval Leadership Center in Changwon and Professor Eunhee Lee of Kyungnam University. The researchers surveyed 467 middle school pupils and 641 high school pupils from nine middle schools and 10 high schools across three cities in South Gyeongsang Province, in September 2024.

The authors note that South Korea’s 2025 School Violence Survey showed the overall rate of school violence rising to 2.5%. The team wanted to understand not just whether parental supervision matters, but how it might work.

They looked at three possible routes. These were teenagers’ use of violent media, their friendships with delinquent peers, and their own levels of aggression.

Using a statistical technique called structural equation modelling, the researchers mapped how these factors fitted together. At first glance, parental supervision had no significant direct link with whether pupils took part in bullying.

However, the picture changed once the three routes were taken into account. Parental supervision was linked to less exposure to violent media, fewer delinquent friends, and lower aggression, and each of these was in turn linked to less bullying.

In other words, supervision appeared to protect teenagers indirectly. The authors describe parental monitoring as a protective factor that can reduce teenagers’ exposure to risky influences, such as violent media, and to risky relationships.

The authors say this makes parental supervision a major factor in preventing school bullying. They argue that parents can shield their children by limiting exposure to risky environments and by helping to keep conduct problems in check.

The study offers several practical suggestions. It calls for parent education programmes that include specific guidance on teenagers’ media habits, interventions that support healthier peer relationships, and counselling procedures for handling aggression.

There are limits to the research. It was cross-sectional, so it cannot establish cause and effect, and the authors note that the links could run the other way, with teenagers who bully going on to seek out delinquent friends. The pupils were a convenience sample, and all the information came from their own reports.

The study also did not separate supervision by fathers from supervision by mothers. The authors say future research should look at each parent separately and at other protective factors, such as support from peers and teachers and the wider school climate.

Even so, the message for families is encouraging. Staying involved in a teenager’s daily life, including the media they use and the friends they keep, may help steer them away from bullying, even if the effect is not obvious at first.