Julia

How can we prevent bullying from happening?

It might be hard to believe that bullying has become a worldwide issue that is happening so often that it is hard to stop it from happening, but this is our reality. Bullying is violence that a person(s) does to others. The person who is harassing other people is called a bully. There are many types of bullying: physical, verbal, or even social (it is also called cyberbullying). No matter which one, they all can hurt someone’s feelings and can let others suffer for a long time. So, how can we prevent this from happening? 

Basic Information about Bullying

Some may think bullying is related to “pranks,” but they are a different thing. If a prank is an action that is just making fun of others and they both are having fun with it, then this is not a big deal, but with bullying, it is an action that makes that one person unhappy, and it brings them a negative mood. A lot of physical bullying happens at the age of 11-15. Verbal and cyberbullying happen from middle school to higher grades, especially in high school (prevnet). Most of the time, bullying happens at school in these specific locations. Playground, bathroom, or on the bus ((Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs (ASPA)). There are more places where bullying can occur, but these are the most common and most easy to get bullied.   

 

Effects of Bullying

The reason that bullying is a severe problem, there are many outcomes of bullying. The most common but serious outcomes are anxiety, depression, self-harm, suicidal thoughts, or even suicide ((Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs (ASPA)). Of course, there are more, but these are just the most common ones. Bullying has a significant impact on people’s lives. As said above, this can end and ruin someone’s life just because the bullies were bullying them for fun or for something else. Another outcome that bullying brings is it leaves trauma to the people who got bullied, so they suffer from the trauma that they are feeling feared and could not come out of that moment.

A grade 8 parent Ms. Wang who has a daughter who has experienced bullying before said that “as a parent, if I see my child getting bullied, I feel really upset. The first thing I would do is to have a conversation with my child and ask about how they feel. I would then contact the school to keep an eye on my child whether she/he gets bullied.” She then continued “When my daughter told me she was getting bullied, I had told her assistant teacher about this, and she then told your co-teacher about this problem. I think as parents, we need to take action for our children to have a better life in their school and to make them happy. None of the parents want their child to be living in fear and not wanting to go to school.” This parent is really telling that parents can be another pathway for their child where it brings them to another place that is different from feeling isolated. How this is related to the effect side is that bullying a friend, or a person can also lead to bullying their parents. This means that when the person who got bullied is feeling fear, then their parent might also feel feared and upset.

In another interview with a grade 8 counselor, Ms. Kara said that “Kids who are bullied often feel isolated. Isolation leads to depression and depression leads to suicides. Suicide is directly linked to bullying because of the intense emotional pain that bullying causes in those that experience it”. She said suicide is a direct link with bullying where young people who are bullied think that nothing will change, and it is not worth it to keep living.  In the newspaper by Karen Kaplan, there was a study for teenagers about the percentage of suicide after getting bullied. The study leader, Mitch van Geel said “In the United States, between 5 percent and 8 percent of teenagers try to kill themselves each year. But the problem is global”. This newspaper was published in 2014 which means this quote indicates that around that time, in a total of 100 teenagers, 5 to 8 teenagers tried to suicide each year. This seems not much, but the keyword is “teenager”. Even when adults suicide, there are a lot of conversations around those issues and sometimes there is news coming up around those problems, but when teens suicide, then there will be more news and conversations happening around this. At the end of the quote, Mr. Mitch van Geel stated “but the problem is global”. Here, he’s saying that this is a global issue, and we really need to stop this from happening. 

  

Causes of Bullying

There are a lot of websites telling us the effects of bullying and how bad it is, but not much explaining the causes of bullying and why they become bullies. Some bullies are mean and evil that is like the “bad kids,” but there are also bullies who are normal kids that needed people to express their feelings and emotions (Hurd). This does not mean that they did the right thing to bully someone else just to express their feelings and emotions, but they are different from those kids who were bullying others for fun. In this article, it is all going to be explained. The first reason the bully became a bully is because of family problems. At home, the bully might be the one who gets bullied or violented by his/her family. Since they do not have power at home, they are expressing their aggressiveness toward others that are weaker than them. Also, many parents are trying to compare their children to other people’s children or compare them with their siblings. The second reason is jealousy (Hurd). Jealousy is part of bullying because when other kids try to show off something that this bully does not have or could not have, then this bully starts to feel they are much weaker than them and they do not have anything better than the kid who had shown off. This is when they start to feel that bullying is a way that they can take over the power of other people. The third reason bullying happens is because of social connections. Sometimes, the bully might get inspired by others on social media, and people around them think that the actions other people do are so mature and so cool that they think they are ok to copy. There are obviously more causes, but the last reason is envy and wants to revenge. The bully might have experienced bullying before, but they had zero power to fight against the people who have bullied them. Now, they think they are much more powerful than other people and they think bullying them back is a way to express their feelings and emotions when they got bullied.  

 

Solution

The solution to prevent bullying from happening is to prevent these causes of bullying stated in the previous part. This might seem hard to understand, but this is one of the solutions to the problem of bullying. What this means is that if we prevent the causes like abuse from parents, then this will decrease the possibility of bullying. As said above, child abuse and problems from family members are a big cause of bullying. Since they have no one in their family to talk about what they have experienced and to express their feelings to, the only way they can do this is to bully other people and express their aggressiveness to those people. Another example could be social connections. This is a big cause leading to cyberbullying. Suppose actions are taken to allow fewer young people on social media to do whatever they want and post fewer things about bullying. In that case, this will really help to prevent the cause of social connections which leads to cyberbullying. The percentage of cyberbullying increased from 18% to 37% in just 12 years (Vlasova). This is a lot. If we can prevent this from happening, then this number will decrease as much as the actions taken by humans.  Even though there might be changes in the future, there are also side effects to it. There might be outcomes while preventing the causes. When we stop the child abuse that happens at home, this may affect the family relationship, if we prevent children and teens from socializing, this can affect their friendship. If we cut down all the connections between children/teenagers and social, then this can make them more lonely since we have cut down the relationship between families and friends. So, when we try to take action to help, we really need to look closely at how will action affect their life, will it ruin them more or will it help more. 

Another solution to prevent bullying from increasing is by having lessons more interesting for students to learn the importance of learning what really is bullying. Dr. Joel Haber, a bullying prevention expert said that true bullying starts at age 7-8 when kids start to communicate and knows what real power is to them (Kids in the house). This means that starting in elementary school, bullying needs to be taught in an easier way by teachers to let those kids know the definition of bullying and why it is important for them to know. According to Ms. Kara’s answer, she stated that it is important to teach kids about bullying when they are young. As time passes, the idea and thought each child has can change while they are growing. This can be a positive way or a negative way. Then she continued stating that some classes like mentoring, can be a time for students to discuss and explore deeply about the topic of bullying. The important part from here is to make the program interesting which has some games for students to play, interesting facts, and time for them to discuss how each of them thinks about bullying. In both pieces of evidence, both experts had stated the importance of learning at a young age about bullying.

How to deal with bullying? 

Many people might think that since there were a lot of big ideas about bullying, the way we can deal with bullying might also be big. It is not. The most common way that almost everyone knows is to stand up for yourself and tell an adult that can help you (Bauer). Also, only a few people know that ignoring those people is another thing that we can do when we are bullied. However, parents need to know that every child is different in the responses they give to their parents (Nair). What this means is that some child does want their parent to help them to solve this problem, but some doesn’t want their parents to be involved in this situation. Also, when children are responding, some might be happy about that and share all the experiences they’ve got, but on the other hand, some might be so scared that they need time to speak up for themselves. Most of the parents who have met these criteria, they lose their patience for waiting for their child to respond. This can make the situation worse because then the child will have a tougher time since they think that if they tell their parents once more, then the situation will be the same as last time.

In the same article, it stated that more than one out of five students reports that they got bullied in their life (Nair). It seems a lot of people are reporting because it is one out of five not one out of ten or twenty, but this is still a small number of students reporting bullying and asking for help. The reason they are not reporting to an adult is that firstly, they do not want to worry their parents about getting bullied. Secondly, they are just embarrassed that if they report to an adult, then they think that they cannot do anything for themselves and they do not want to rely on adults. Finally, they think that after they report to an adult, they think the situation will get worse, and more students know about this problem, so they decide to not report.

Although these ideas can impact them a lot and can also make them more afraid, reporting and standing up is always a great way to deal with bullying. This can help the teachers know how serious it had impacted the kid who has been bullied and also this can give them a better idea of why teaching students about bullying is important. 

After interviewing Ms. Kara with the question of what her perspective on bullying is, she said that “It’s been my experience that all types of bullying are harmful, bullying seems to happen more frequently than before. Unfortunately, I think this will continue to increase.” Even a counselor thinks bullying will happen more and more often than before which means that the intensity of bullying will increase as well.   

With all said above, this is all the information about bullying. After interviewing experts, and reading all the websites, the information given here is mainly what all of them said. Of course, there are more and more websites talking about bullying and more about news in current days, but the most important thing is that there are solutions to it that need to be taken. This is how we can prove the importance of human actions can save another life. 

Work Cited

Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs (ASPA). “Effects of Bullying.” StopBullying.Gov, 21 May 2021, www.stopbullying.gov/bullying/effects.

 

Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs (ASPA). “What Is Bullying.” StopBullying.Gov, 5 Nov. 2021, www.stopbullying.gov/bullying/what-is-bullying. Accessed 30 May 2022

 

“Age Trends in the Prevalence of Bullying.” Prevnet, www.prevnet.ca/sites/prevnet.ca/files/fact-sheet/PREVNet-SAMHSA-Factsheet-Age-Trends-in-the-Prevalence-of-Bullying.pdf. Accessed 31 May 2022

 

“At What Age Does Bullying Start?” Kids in the House, 17 Dec. 2014, www.kidsinthehouse.com/teenager/bullying/at-what-age-does-bullying-start?qt-more_videos=1#qt-more_videos.

 

Bauer, Ted. “The 6 Main Causes of Bullying and What to Do about It.” Fingerprint For Success, www.fingerprintforsuccess.com/blog/causes-of-bullying. Accessed 30 May 2022

 

Haines, Kara. E-mail interview. 23 May 2022.   

 

Hurd, Sherrie A. “7 Main Causes of Bullying That Explain Why Children Become Bullies.” Learning Mind, 29 Apr. 2021, www.learning-mind.com/causes-of-bullying-why-children-become-bullies. Accessed 30 May 2022

 

Kaplan, Karen. “Teens Taunted by Bullies Are More Likely to Consider, Attempt Suicide.” SIRS Issues Researcher, 10 Mar. 2014, explore.proquest.com/sirsissuesresearcher/document/2262365326?accountid=4047. Accessed 31 May 2022

 

Nair, Madhu. “Definition of Bullying.” University of the People, 11 Feb. 2021, www.uopeople.edu/blog/definition-of-bullying. Accessed 30 May 2022

 

Vlasova, Helen. “Bullying Statistics: Breakdown by the 2022 Numbers.” Admissonsly.Com, 21 Nov. 2020, admissionsly.com/bullying-statistics. Accessed 31 May 2022

 

Wang, Li Hwa. Telephone interview. 23 May 2022.