Two in five Australian parents who participated in the study said that cyberbullying and bullying were their biggest concerns when sending their kids back to school.

Frankston High School student Danai Harawa said she thinks every parent worries about cyberbullying.

"They just don't expect it to happen to their child. They might not have that discussion with their children about how to deal with it or that it's okay to speak out," she told Fairfax Media.

The study, by Telstra in combination with Project Rockit, showed that despite parents' concerns, 21 per cent were unsure if their child had been a victim of cyberbullying.

Victorian parents were the least likely to know if their child was a victim. Parents in New South Wales were most likely to worry about their child's safety online.

Project Rockit co-founder Lucy Thomas said, "there is a gap between how young people and their parents see cyberbullying".

McKinnon Secondary College Principal Pitsa​ Binnion​ said the rise in concern from parents about cyberbullying could be attributed to the fact that they did not grow up with these challenges when they were teens.

"We weren't raised with this technology being so available, and lives totally revolving around the digital framework. So therefore, it's an unknown for parents," she said.

Mrs Binnion also said cyberbullying victims were often reluctant to tell parents for fear of worrying them, but also because they might be punished by having their devices taken away.

Ms Harawa said that victims were also worried to speak out because of consequences from bullies.

"A lot of children don't speak out about it because they're scared of how the bully might react or think that things might get worse," she said.

The study also showed that more than 90 per cent of teenagers recognised that cyberbullying was a problem for young people in Australia, with one third regarding it as an "extremely big problem".

This statistic does not surprise Mrs Binnion.

"That exclusion, that harassment of that nature, and then when everybody jumps on the bandwagon, I think is very, very difficult for teenagers to navigate ... teenagers just want to belong," she said.

Despite this, Ms Harawa said young people needed to tackle cyberbullying and the best way to do that was though positive education.

"It's important to spread awareness and use our voices and create change. If we don't speak up now we'll never see justice for the people around us."

"Violence against violence and hate against hate isn't going to do anything, it's just going to make the situation worse. You need to educate ignorance with a positive energy and actually outline what the issue is and make [the bullies] understand the situation, rather than feeding into it negatively."

A new program to combat cyberbullying will be launched on Monday.