Bullying: Common Among Middle School Students

Bullying is one of the leading causes in teen suicide today. People bullied in the past or present have been studied and it has shown that they have a lower quality of life. Though they have a lower quality of life, the have better physical and mental health. (“Seaman” 1). Studies have shown that most bullying happens in middle school and high school. There is bullying in elementary school but it is minimal and less serious (“Bullying Statistics” 1). Most kids refuse to speak up while being bullied in fear that the bully will just taunt them more (“Cyber-Safety Act” 2). Bullying has become a very serious issue regarding our society today.

Bullying is an epidemic right now. We area inundated with it. Some instances it seems that bullying is culturally appropriate. We see it everywhere. It is in the business world, Hollywood, schools, over the internet and on the playgrounds, to name a few. Bullying happens to people of all ages. The most heard about is in childhood and adolescence. Bullying comes in different forms. Physical bullying, such as hitting, pinching, shoving or kicking. Verbal bullying such as taunting, teasing or name-calling. Relational bullying is causing damage to someone’s social status or relationships. Lastly, Cyber bullying is the use of electronic communications to send threatening messages. Getting called a name once is not bullying however, to repeatedly

Bullying is unwanted, aggressive behavior among people of all ages, but mostly school-age children. Society has been aware of bullying since around 1693, but it was not viewed as a real problem until the 1970s. “While overall incidents of school violence, such as assault and theft, have declined in the last decade, bullying is on the rise.” (qtd in Tyre) The percentage of middle and high school students that have been victimized by bullying went up from 14 percent in 2001 to 32 percent in 2009. (Tyre)

The word 'bullying' has developed a very traditional definition amongst society: a face-to-face interaction involving either verbal abuse and/or physical abuse. With the technological advances that have occurred within the past 15 years, bullying has become anything but traditional. Children and teens have more access to the Internet and to social media platforms more than ever before, thus allowing them to avoid face-to-face interaction. Within the past 15 years, there has been a significant rise of cyberbullying in the youth demographic (ages 12-18) (Slonje, Smith, & Frisén, 2013). In order to understand what the difference between traditional bullying and cyberbullying is, one must familiarize themselves with the definition of cyberbullying.

Raskauskas and Stoltz (2007) asked a group of 84 adolescents about their involvement in traditional and electronic bullying. The researchers defined electronic bullying as “…a means of bullying in which peers use electronics {such as text messages, emails, and defaming Web sites} to taunt, threaten, harass, and/or intimidate a peer” (p.565). The table below is a frequency table showing the adolescents’ reported incidence of being victims or perpetrators or traditional and electronic bullying.

Cyber bullying and face-to-face bullying are to major concerns in today’s society, the movie Mean Girls and the novel Destroying Avalon have themes about bullying in them. The texts show us how more people can be affected by certain types of bullying as well as how it can change behaviour and how bullying can build up to physical violence.

Studies show the dangers in bullying and how it is on the rise especially with use of the

Some students wonder what bullying means and why it affects health to the bullied. Bullying is defined as a form of youth violence by attacking or intimidating with the goal to hurt, cause fear in the way of physical abuse, teasing or by causing rumors. Bullying can also be in the forms of technology through social networking like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The bullying ways always involve an imbalance of powers between the bully and the bullied, this resulting in physical injury, social and emotional problems such as being a loner, and eventually leading to suicide. Even though bullies hurt people in terrible ways, they may have been hurt too.

Bullying has been a problem for a very long time; however in these present times bullying is becoming an epidemic. Maybe the reason behind this is the new occurrence of social media in our society, and the new strategies used by bullies to harass there victims. In this report the topics that will be covered are why bullying is an issue to study in human development, describe three components or types of behavior in bullying that are observed by researchers. Explain how gender and sexual orientation that influence the styles of bullying, how bullying affects self-esteem and what affect does the family system have on bullying.

Bullying is a problem that is on the rise in society; however, many individuals have a distorted view of what bullying entails. Usually when someone thinks of bullying, they assume that it is a standard part of a child’s life. This view, on the contrary, is erroneous. Bullying is actually abnormal behavior, many times, leaving victims with a dismantled self identity. Since some people do not understand the consequences of bullying, the actions of the bully often go unnoticed and are perceived as “kids being kids”. The issue of bullying goes deeper than that nevertheless. Despite the erroneous views that many individuals hold towards bullying, it is still a distortion of normal behavior in children.

“Nationwide, one out of four students from the ages twelve to eighteen have been bullied. That is twenty five percent to the teenage/young adult population and these numbers are continuously to rise every day” (Wassdorp, Bradshaw, and Leaf 116, 149-156). Bullying is the action of repeated harmful acts or harassing another in various forms. Many situations fall under one or even multiple of these categories: physical, verbal, indirect, and cyber. What this does is strips the victim down from their identity and leaves them to pity themselves for being the way they are. Bullying is an issue in this nation because it tears apart the teenage/young adult population, and it is causing an increase in risk of suicide among these groups. Bullying is

I was bullied a lot in middle school. Mostly because before the first day of fifth grade before school I told my parents I was nervous and they told me there was this nice boy named Will that would-be friends with me but I didn’t really know him. On the first day of school I went around asking literally everyone if they knew him and when I finally found him he thought I was weird that I was asking around to find him and he wouldn’t talk to me.

With school-aged children, bullying more frequently happens while they are at school, or afterward when the students are not being supervised by their teacher in places like the cafeteria, bus, lockers, playground or neighborhood. Now that kids have access to online technology, bullying can also happen on the internet. With this in mind, teachers must now research and understand what bullying is, and develop methods to help fight against bullying. Bullying is the aggressive, unwanted behavior that occurs between kids of all ages. Children that bully are using the power they believe they have over other kids to try to control and harm them. Bullying can happen via verbal, social, or physical abuses, such as name-calling, threats, spreading rumors, isolation, embarrassment, spitting, hitting, destroying personal things, etc. In order to be considered bullying, these bad behaviors are repeated over time.

Have you ever been called a nasty name? Or even made fun because of your hair, or even your clothes? Or have you have made fun of someone because of their hair or clothes? Bullying is something that is active across the world, and it doesn 't just happen in schools, it can happen anywhere at any time to anyone. We can all always do our best to prevent it but the outcome is very low.

Bullying can be hard to define, because research has shown that it comes in many forms which makes it difficult to find one set of characteristics that will describe a bully. Conclusively, studies have defined bullying as a set of repeated aggressive behavior that is intended to harm someone, which usually involves an imbalance of power between the victim and the perpetrator (Morgan, 2012, p. 174). Studies have shown that there are two distinct types of bullying, which is a direct form of verbal and physical aggression, and indirect, which often results in name calling, rumors and exclusion (Aluedse, 2006, p. 38). This form of peer victimization can have devastating effects on a child 's academic work and their physical and psychological well being (Limber, 2003, p. 23). In terms of gender, boys are more likely to be involved in physical bullying (direct) as for girls are more likely to be involved in indirect bullying (Wang et al, 2009, p. 371). Previous research indicates, that parents and friends are two important factors of social interaction associated with bullying and victimization among adolescences. Bullying is quite common among middle school children, because it is during this time that children go through puberty and hormonal changes. During this time students are looking to be accepted and fit into a specific group; however, when there is a lack of acceptance and esteem due to victimization, this can cause children to isolate themselves from those around them