Teenage bullying

Introduction

Bullying refers to all forms of behavior that belittles individual or impose domination over others. Though bullying can be either dispute-related or predatory, it ranges from physical, verbal, emotional, or technologically meted out over the internet. Bullying amongst the teens is mostly common in school, social places, and or streets where teens go out of their way to harm or ostracize their subjects. This paper seeks to analyze the causes and effects of teen bullying.

Relevant statistics

In the US alone, close to 30% of the population have been subjected to bullied, while 13percent of the student in grades 5 to 10 have bulled others. On the other hand, at least 20% of the American teens have harassed or physicality harmed their classmates while over 20% of the American teens have agreed to have ostracized their classmates. However, in spite of the high statistics, bullying is more common among boys than amongst girls.

Effects of bullying

Self-esteem

Bullying affects victim’s quality of life. For example, while other students are comfortable playing with their friends, children subjected to constant bullying find themselves in constant fear, tension, and anxiety. This also leads to stress that may affect their quality of life, and make them vulnerable to opportunistic infections due to low immunity.

Effect on academic achievements

The effects of bullying are not only physical injuries that may be life threatening, but also emotional. According to Marcia, bullying hampers student’ academic achievements because they cannot concentrate in class or miss lessons and school days.

Social isolation

Bullying affects the victim's self-esteem as well as self worth leading to social isolation. Subjects of constant bullying and usually withdrawn and insecure because of fear that their assailants would met lash out or ridicule them in public.

Aggression and violence

Apart from these, bullying has long-term consequences on self-esteem and may lead to loss of life. Over the past two years, bulled teens become aggressive and violent and grow up into bullies. In the US alone, bulled teens have returned to their schools with firearms to revenge, ending up hurting or killing even the innocent. According to the ‎2013 Winter Garden, Florida shooting suspect was privately bullied by his classmates and as a result, he came to school and started shooting indiscriminately. On the other hand, tends who are constantly exposed to violent scenes become bullies themselves.

How to stop bullying amongst teens

Mass education

Education can help stop teen bullying. For example, teaching teenage bullies about the long terms effect of bullying on the victims and teach the teenagers how to avoid being victims. Educating the parents can also help them understand their children especially the bullied because bullying has underlying causes that drives their bully teens. Parent should understand their children because the teenage bullying has underlying emotional, psychological causes.

Social control

Both formal and informal sanctions may be introduced to help eliminate teenage bullying. Some of the common informal social controls include ridicule, criticism, and shame. These sanctions can help teenage bullying because teenage bullying is a form of deviant behavior.

Conclusion

In conclusion, bullying is a socially unacceptable behavior caused by both social rejection and various underlying drivers. The main risk factors include personality, psychosocial factors such as social rejection, struggle for power, family risk factors such as painful childhood experiences, and poor parenting. Despite all these risk factors, the effects of bullying outweigh the benefits of bullying. However, it is important to understand that bullying is a deviance that can be controlled and eliminated. It is also important to understand that the statistics provided above may not be reliable because there are cases in which bullying incidences are not reported or under reported.

Posted by November 23rd, 2016

 
 
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