I pick my son up from school most days, and from his first day of kindergarten I got into the habit of routinely asking him two specific questions: 1) “How was your day?” and 2) “Was there any bullying?” I’d ask the latter question with a conspiratorial raise of my brow—as if asking him if they’d served Five Guys burgers for lunch in the cafeteria. These daily interrogations started out as a lighthearted way to get my son to talk a little about his day, although I was also genuinely interested in the nature and extent of bullying at his school. He’d sat in the back row of enough of my presentations starting at an early age to know the basics of bullying and other trouble kids can get into at school and online. I didn’t expect much in terms of content for my research in the stories he would tell, but more than anything my goal was to open up a line of communication between him and I on this topic that most kids don’t like discussing. I hoped that these early low-stakes conversations...