More than a quarter of children have experienced bullying online, according to new research released to mark Safer Internet Day.
A survey carried out by internet safety charity CyberSafeKids found that 28% of children had encountered at least one form of cyber bullying.
The most common experience was being left out of chat groups on social media, which was reported by 16% of respondents, while 14% said that they had received hurtful messages.
According to the study, 25% of children have reported being upset or scared by something online.
CyberSafeKids' CEO Alex Cooney described the findings as very worrying.
"The only way we can protect and empower our children is if we act together as a community, strengthening our safeguards through regulation and legislation and educating our children and caregivers about how to be safe and smart online," she said.
"On Safer Internet Day 2022 we are calling on the Minister for Education to ensure that every child benefits from better online safety and digital literacy training," Ms Cooney added.
The Department of Education said that there are several supports available to schools to assist in the development of policies and practices on the safe use of the internet.
These include the Social Personal Health Education (SPHE) curriculum, the Professional Development Service for Teachers (PDST) and the department-funded national anti-bullying website tacklebullying.ie.
Campaigners are encouraging parents and caregivers to talk to their children about their internet use, to set boundaries and rules and to keep a close eye on online activity.
Safer Internet Day is an EU-wide initiative to promote a safer internet for all users, especially young people.
According to Webwise, the Irish Internet Safety Awareness Centre, more than 170,000 Irish students and 600 schools and organisations are participating in lessons, activities and online safety initiatives as part of Safer Internet Day.
In recent months, there has been renewed criticism of the safety record of social media giants with Facebook and Instagram parent Meta being accused of choosing profit over safety - claims that the company has denied.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Ms Cooney said: "Children are coming across stuff probably much earlier than we want them to, and it's a question of how do we manage that?"
The onus needs to be put back on the online service providers to ensure that this kind of content is not available online and that children cannot access it, she said.
Ms Cooney said that the pandemic saw children spending much more time online with many opportunities to make connections and as a source of entertainment and education, but there were also negative aspects of this.
There were big increases in child sexual abuse material online and increases in contacts to children with them being exposed to things that we would wish they were not, she added.
