Bullying

Abstract

Bullying is a pervasive problem found in elementary, middle, and high schools across the United States and around the world. It can take many direct and indirect forms, including physical violence, name-calling, taunting, teasing, malicious rumor-spreading, and social exclusion. Once thought of as a normal part of growing up, bullying is now widely recognized as a serious problem that must be met with systematic preventative efforts. This article examines the nature, prevalence, and effects of school bullying. It discusses profiles of bullies and victims, and explores the most effective methods now used to combat bullying.

Overview

Bullying is a pervasive problem found in elementary, middle, and high schools across the United States and around the world. As an international phenomenon, school bullying occurs at similar rates in disparate cultures, countries, and educational settings. Once seen as a normal, if not harmless, part of growing up, bullying is now recognized as one of the primary threats to school safety today. Since the late 1990s, several fatal school shootings committed by the victims of bullying have brought major media attention to the issue. The result has been an increase in public awareness about the harmful effects of school bullying and a flurry of local, state, and nationwide programs designed to prevent or at least contain the problem. Psychologists, sociologists, and school administrators have all published a plethora of research about bullying.

Definitions of bullying include four basic elements. First, bullying does not happen between peers who share an equal or similar degree of power, but always involves a more powerful perpetrator intimidating a weaker subject. Bullying depends upon an imbalance of power, which can be created by any number of factors, including but not limited to physical size, age, popularity and psychological strength. Second, bullying is deliberate; a bully intends to cause harm or distress in their victims. Third, bullying can come in direct and indirect forms. Physical violence, such as shoving, poking, hitting, or tripping, is a form of direct bullying. So is verbal bullying, which includes name-calling, teasing, and derision, whether in person or through outlets such as text messaging or social media. Indirect bullying is social in nature and involves the bully excluding their victim from a peer group. An example of this type of bullying is spreading malicious rumors. Fourth and finally, bullying is continual; it consists of an ongoing pattern of abuse.

School bullying is most prevalent among children between the ages of nine and fifteen, who are in the stages of late childhood and early adolescence, and occurs most often in elementary and middle schools. As children mature, the types of bullying in which they engage tends to change. Younger school bullies use name-calling and forms of physical aggression more often than older school bullies, who are more likely to sexually harass their victims, or inflect their bullying with sexual overtones. In some cases, bullying among older children may also involve racially charged or homophobic abuse.

A subset of bullying increasingly recognized as a serious and growing issue is cyberbullying, or bullying conducted through electronic communications, especially the internet. This may take place on social media, on gaming platforms, in chatrooms, via email, and over text messages to mobile phones. Cyberbullying is seen as especially problematic because it can cross the traditional division between school and home, affecting victims constantly. The lifespan of online content such as social media posts means hurtful messages can remain visible indefinitely, and are sometimes visible to wide audiences. Online bullying can also be anonymous and more difficult for teachers and parents to notice, complicating prevention efforts.

As awareness of cyberbullying increased, researchers began surveying students about their personal experiences of such harassment. In 2000, the Crimes Against Children Research Center interviewed 1,501 young people ages ten to seventeen. At that time, the survey found that one in seventeen children—about 6 percent—had experienced threats or harassment online. This number increased to 9 percent five years later and to 11 percent in 2011. The National Center for Education Statistics reported that in the 2016–17 school year, 15 percent of students surveyed stated that they had been bullied online or by text, an 11.5 percent increase over the 2014–15 academic year. Other studies revealed much higher rates of cyberbullying. According to the Pew Research Center, for example, 46 percent of Americans aged thirteen to seventeen reported ever being cyberbullied in 2022.

Experts now recognize bullying as a form of violence. In fact, some consider school bullying to be "the most prevalent form of low-level violence in schools today" (Whitted & Dupper). If allowed to continue unchecked, school bullying severely compromises school safety. Several studies have demonstrated that bullying can lead to a heightened disposition to crime and violent retributive behavior in bullies, victims, and bystanders who witness bullying. These negative effects are magnified by the fact that 85 percent of bullying incidents involve bystanders.

In order to prevent children from being harmed by school bullying, professional educators and parents should understand the depth of the bullying problem in US schools, be aware of the common characteristics of bullies and victims, and be acquainted with the most effective bullying prevention methods now in use.

Applications

Prevalence of School Bullying. Virtually all school children around the world are in some way affected by school bullying. The United States is no exception: The American Medical Association reported that 50 percent of all US school children are bullied at some point during their schooling and 10 percent are bullied on a regular basis. Another study showed that 1 in 5 elementary school children and 1 in 10 middle school students in the US are bullied regularly. Still another study, conducted by the National Institute of Child Health and Human development, found that 13 percent of all sixth to tenth graders bullied classmates and 11 percent had been bullied regularly. The National Center for Education Statistics found that during the 2016–17 school year, 20 percent of middle and high school students reported being bullied, and that 15 percent had been cyberbullied. A 2022 study by the Pew Research Center found that nearly 50 percent of students aged thirteen to seventeen reported ever being cyberbullied.

School bullying is a universal problem throughout the US, occurring at similar rates in urban, suburban, and rural environments.

School Bullying's Negative Effects. Besides disrupting classroom activities, school bullying generally harms children's ability to learn at school, and has been shown to contribute to truancy and dropout rates. As a low-level, subtle form of violence, bullying creates an unsafe school environment and can lead to more serious types of violence among students. Those students who witness bullying often become distressed, intimidated, and fearful that they themselves might become victims of bullying. These feelings may harm academic performance and distract attention from school work. In fact, bullying prevention programs have been proven to raise the overall academic achievement of schools, suggesting that rampant bullying undermines educational efforts.

Bullying also causes extremely damaging effects in the victims of bullies. These effects are similar to those caused by child abuse, and their intensity and persistence tend to increase when the bullying begins at a younger age. Victims of bullying suffer from lowered psychological well-being, poor social adjustment, and psychological distress. Many victims are targeted because they have low self-esteem, a problem that is only exacerbated by the bullying. Victims commonly experience emotional problems such as anxiety, depression, and loneliness more often than their peers. They may also develop somatic symptoms, such as problems sleeping, chronic headaches and stomachaches, bedwetting, and fatigue. Bullying also often leads to academic and behavioral problems in victims, who may lose interest in school, or use somatic symptoms as an excuse to stay home from school.

While most victims react to bullying by withdrawing and suffering in silence, a rare subset of victims retaliates with violent behavior. In most cases, victims direct violent behavior against themselves in the form of suicide. However, as adults, some victims have sought out and murdered those who bullied them as children. Other victims have conducted highly publicized school shootings in which they targeted those classmates who bullied them—perhaps most prominently in the case of the mass shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999. Victims of bullying can increase the overall likelihood of serious school violence because they are more likely than other students to bring a weapon to school for protection.

There is evidence that school bullies also suffer from their own behavior. However, it is difficult to establish whether these negative consequences are direct results of bullying or are products of the psychological issues that led to bullying. Nonetheless, bullies are prone to suicide and alcoholism, and are significantly more likely to become involved in delinquent activities, such as vandalism, truancy, and carrying weapons, and to become involved in the criminal justice system. Studies have shown that by the age of twenty-four, 60 percent of former bullies have been convicted of a crime and 40 percent have more than three arrests. In comparison, only 10 percent of non-bullying males have criminal records by this age.

Common Characteristics of Bullies and Victims. Researchers have found that there are certain characteristics shared by both bullies and their victims. Children who come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to bully and be bullied. So are children whose parents are divorced, overly authoritative, harsh, or abusive. Boys are more likely to be bullies and victims, although girls are more often perpetrators and targets of indirect, social forms of bullying. Girls are also more often targets of sexual harassment.

There are other characteristics of bullies not shared with victims. Bullies are opportunistic, aggressive, impulsive, tend to dominate others, and are not afraid to use violence to achieve desired ends. Additionally, bullies tend to lack empathy with their victims. These characteristics could result from the fact that bullies are more likely to have been raised in families that use corporeal discipline, or by parents who are un-nurturing and under-involved in their children's lives. Many bullies tend to have a positive, inflated self-image and have below-normal levels of anxiety, depression, and loneliness compared to their peers. This type of bully is usually of average or above-average popularity in comparison to other youth in their peer groups. They are often overly confident, an attitude which may help to establish their dominance in the social hierarchy of their peer group. Another, contrasting type of bully tends to have low self-esteem and be relatively socially isolated. They often suffer from depression or anxiety, readily conform to peer pressure, and struggle to connect with others.

Victims typically have poorer social skills and fewer friends than other members of their peer group. They tend to be passive, anxious, and lacking in self-confidence, or perceived as weak or vulnerable. Victims are often conspicuously different from their peers. They commonly have a physical or developmental disability, or possess characteristics associated with an ethnic minority. Some victims are targeted because they deviate from traditional gender stereotypes. While bullying is common almost everywhere, some groups may be at greater risk of being bullied, depending on the specific social environment. For example, LGBTQ youth—who overall face significantly higher rates of bullying than heterosexual, cisgender students—may be more susceptible to bullying in some communities than in others.

Experts commonly agree that there are two distinct types of bullying victims: submissive and provocative. Submissive victims are far more common than provocative ones. They are passive, and react to bullying by withdrawing from social interaction. Provocative victims are rarer. They tend to suffer from hyperactivity disorders, and thus exhibit behavior that irritates and frustrates their classmates. These victims react to bullying with a mixture of anxiety and aggression.

Combating School Bullying: Obstacles to Combating School Bullying. Many researchers believe that the primary obstacle to combating school bullying may actually be teacher awareness. Most of the time, teachers either fail to perceive bullying, or fail to grasp its serious, harmful nature. One study showed that while 85 percent of teachers feel that they always or often intervene to stop bullying, only 35 percent of students feel that teachers do so. Moreover, 40 percent of elementary school students and 60 percent of middle school students believe that teachers only try to stop bullying once in a while, or that they never try to stop it at all.

One reason for this problem is that many teachers do not have an adequate understanding of what constitutes bullying. Virtually all teachers classify physical aggression as bullying, but only some consider verbal abuse such as name-calling, and indirect measures such as social exclusion, to be bullying. Even if teachers do understand what constitutes bullying, they often have trouble identifying bullying when they see it. For example, teachers often do not know what behaviors they should look for as signs that students may be suffering from indirect bullying. Teachers also fail to intervene in many cases of physical bullying, as they mistake the incidents for consensual "rough-play." These failures stem from the fact that most teachers have not been properly trained to recognize and intervene in bullying incidents.

A second major obstacle to combating bullying is the reluctance on the part of students to report incidents of bullying. In 2010, the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance found that victims report the bullying they experience only 36 percent of the time. Since most incidents of bullying involve bystanders, many students besides the victim are in a position to report these incidents to parents or school officials. However, those who witness bullying most often fail to report it, either for fear of being bullied themselves or because they fail to see the bullying behavior as inappropriate.

Key Methods for Combating School Bullying. The most effective strategies for combating school bullying utilize a whole-school approach, meaning they seek to change the social dynamics of the entire school, rather than just those between the bully and their victim.

As a first step in reducing school bullying, it is crucial that each school carry out an assessment of its bullying problem. A student survey about bullying, for example, allows teachers and administrators to see the true extent of the school bullying problem, and can additionally raise awareness among students about the serious nature of bullying and its consequences. The latter objective should also be accomplished through school-wide assemblies or teaching efforts that seek to dispel myths about bullying and other forms of aggressive behavior.

As a second step, teacher and student bystanders to bullying should all be made aware that putting an end to bullying is their personal responsibility. This step is especially crucial because it addresses the bystanders who witness and exacerbate school bullying. This step can be carried out by instituting and publicizing a school policy about bullying. Such a policy should define and denounce bullying, and include measures that will be taken to deal with individual incidents of bullying. It should also include a statement of social responsibility that explicitly makes all students, parents, and school staff responsible for reporting incidents of school bullying that they witness or know about.

As a third step, students and teachers should receive training on how to neutralize, halt, and prevent bullying. Evidence shows that training teachers to recognize and successfully intervene in bullying incidents enables students to feel more confident about doing so as well. Once teachers understand the nature of school bullying problems, they can integrate anti-bullying content into their classroom lesson-plans, and so further educate students about school bullying. When teachers set firm limits on bullying behavior, they act as role models for the student population.

Training that teaches students to combat bullying should focus not only on victims and bullies, but on the entire school population. Bystanders to bullying must be taught how to stop escalating bullying incidents and instead end them; they must be taught how to defend the victim instead of tacitly encouraging the bully by condoning bullying behavior. Such training should teach students to seek adult help, but it should also teach students how to actively use problem-solving skills to resolve interpersonal conflict without adult assistance.

Bullies and victims may also be singled out and taught social skills that will enable them to avoid engaging in bullying behavior in the future. Helping victims learn how to actively resist bullying may or may not help to decrease bullying behavior, but it should help to build self-esteem among victims and so neutralize some of the damage caused by bullying.

Evidence shows that all of these intervention methods are most effective when they are used with elementary school students. This is because bullying tends to escalate as children age, and early intervention prevents more serious bullying behavior from developing. Additionally, anti-bullying measures are most effective when parents and community members are involved with the efforts.

Various comprehensive anti-bullying programs that integrate the above methods in various ways have been developed, and some have been made available commercially. Examples include "Quit it!," which was developed by the National Education Association using an early intervention approach; "Bullyproof," also developed by the National Education Association and focusing on older age groups; "The Whole School Response Program," used widely throughout Great Britain; and the "Bullying at School Program," which was developed in Norway by an innovative school-bullying researcher, Dr. Dan Olweus. Many authorities have established websites and other resources focused on bullying prevention, such as the US federal government's StopBullying.gov.

State Laws that Address School Bullying. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 required each state to define what constitutes a "persistently dangerous" school and to allow students who attend such schools to transfer to different schools within the same school district. Schools that were continually rated "persistently dangerous" risked losing federal funds. As the most common form of low-level violence in schools, bullying could cause a school to be rated as dangerous. This fact, along with some highly publicized school shootings carried out by the victims of bullies, caused many state legislatures to address school bullying. New anti-bullying legislation most often becomes a part of a school's already existing safety plan or anti-violence policy. Such legislation varies from state to state, but it commonly defines bullying, mandates that state employees who witness bullying report it, mandates employee training about bullying, and/or mandates that schools institute bullying prevention programs.

From 1999 to 2010, there were over 120 bills enacted by state legislatures to address bullying. In 2015, Montana implemented its anti-bullying law, becoming the fiftieth state to do so, meaning all US states now have such legislation.

Terms & Concepts

Bully: A child who deliberately and systematically intimidates and/or harasses another child who is less powerful.

Bystander: A person who witnesses a bullying incident. Bystanders may actively or tacitly encourage the bully, defend the victim, or intervene in the situation.

Cyberbullying: Bullying that takes place through electronic communications, such as online or via text messages.

Direct Bullying: Includes physical and verbal forms of bullying such as hitting, shoving, poking, tripping, name-calling, and teasing.

Indirect Bullying: Includes social forms of bullying such as malicious rumor-spreading and causing the victim to be rejected or excluded by a peer group.

Low-Level Violence: Ubiquitous forms of aggressive behavior, such as bullying, that go unchecked either because they are not perceived by authority figures or because they are not seen as serious threats to school-safety.

School Bullying: Deliberate and continual harassment or intimidation inflicted by a more powerful peer on a less powerful peer at school.

School Bullying Prevention Program: A program designed to reduce and prevent bullying at school. It raises awareness about school bullying among students and teachers, and then teaches these groups to intervene when they witness bullying. May also work specifically with bullies and victims to teach new social skills.

Social Exclusion: A form of indirect bullying whereby a bully causes their victim to be excluded from a peer group. This type of bullying tends to be more common among girls than boys.

Victim: A child who is targeted by a bully on a regular basis. There are two types of victims—submissive and provocative. The former has low self-esteem and withdraws as a result of bullying. The latter usually suffers from a hyperactivity disorder and so seems to instigate bullying by behaving in an irritating matter. A provocative victim reacts to bullying with a mixture of anxiety and aggression.

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