Bullying Essay (Essay Sample)

Bullying
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Harassing and repeatedly engaging in activities that hurt people that experience difficulties in standing up for themselves amounts to bullying. Bullying is aggressive, hurtful and can sometimes be violent. It is predominant in schools and occurs across all ages, socioeconomic classes, races, and cultures. Reports indicate that over a quarter of middle school and high school students become bullying victims in their school environment (Stuart-Cassel, Terzian, & Bradshaw, 2013). Other reports indicate it affects a fifth of students in elementary through high school. Girls have a predisposition to engage in violent bullying and girls in relational aggression characterized by spreading rumors and social exclusion (Robinson, 2010).
There are different forms of bullying namely verbal, social, and physical and cyber bullying. Verbal bullying involves using hateful comments about others in reference to their culture, ethnicity, race, religion, gender, and sexual orientation among other aspects. Social bullying may involve excluding others from certain associations, public humiliation and gestures intended to demean others. Physical bullying may involve inflicting pain on others, confiscating others’ belongings without consent, and inappropriate sexual touch. Cyber bullying involves intimidating others as well as spreading malicious rumors through the internet (Government of Alberta, 2005). Bullying creates an unsafe learning environment that poses long-term consequences for the victims.
Bullying victims are susceptible to depression and anger that stems from feelings of being helpless in comparison to others. In the long term, victims exhibit behavior problems in schoolwork and eating disorders. Victimization has far-reaching adverse consequences than just the immediate trauma and injury. Victims engage in risky health behaviors such as abusing drugs and alcohol and tobacco use and conduct that leads to unintentional violence and becoming homeless (Koeppel & Bouffard, 2012).
In schools, students increasingly perceive the learning environment as unsafe. Bullying impacts the learning climate by affecting children’s participation in the classroom. Exposing students to high levels of social bullying either as victims or bystanders is reported to cause students to become disengaged from the classroom activities (Stuart-Cassel, Terzian, & Bradshaw, 2013). It affects bystanders because they feel helpless to stop the bullying and guilty for not helping victims. It causes them to suffer from anxiety, low self -esteem and depression.
Bullies and victims experience problems establishing social relationships because their peers avoid them. Bullies remain isolated because of their bullying behavior and victims become loners because of the frequency of which they are targeted. Victims are also unable to control their anger that unintentionally prompts more bullying. They also react to bullying more aggressively with some opting to carry weapons such as knives for defense. They also display high levels of mistrust that makes them seem unfriendly and hostile. Bullies and victims may suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder characterized by nightmares, insomnia, panic attacks, chronic physical exhaustion and headaches. These consequences can in turn affect their ability t...