What Is Bullying

Bullying is unwanted, aggressive behavior among school aged children that

involves a real or perceived power imbalance. The behavior is repeated, or has
the potential to be repeated, over time. Both kids who are bullied and who bully
others may have serious, lasting problems.

In order to be considered bullying, the behavior must be aggressive and include:

 An Imbalance of Power: Kids who bully use their power—such as

physical strength, access to embarrassing information, or popularity—to
control or harm others. Power imbalances can change over time and in
different situations, even if they involve the same people.
 Repetition: Bullying behaviors happen more than once or have the
potential to happen more than once.

Bullying includes actions such as making threats, spreading rumors, attacking

someone physically or verbally, and excluding someone from a group on
purpose.

 Types of Bullying
 Where and When Bullying Happens
 Frequency of Bullying
Types of Bullying
There are three types of bullying:

 Verbal bullying is saying or writing mean things. Verbal bullying includes:

o Teasing
o Name-calling
o Inappropriate sexual comments
o Taunting
o Threatening to cause harm
 Social bullying, sometimes referred to as relational bullying, involves
hurting someone’s reputation or relationships. Social bullying includes:
o Leaving someone out on purpose
o Telling other children not to be friends with someone
 o Spreading rumors about someone
o Embarrassing someone in public
 Physical bullying involves hurting a person’s body or possessions.
Physical bullying includes:
o Hitting/kicking/pinching

o Spitting
o Tripping/pushing
o Taking or breaking someone’s things
o Making mean or rude hand gestures
Where and When Bullying Happens
Bullying can occur during or after school hours. While most reported bullying
happens in the school building, a significant percentage also happens in places
like on the playground or the bus. It can also happen travelling to or from school,
in the youth’s neighborhood, or on the Internet.

Frequency of Bullying
There are two sources of federally collected data on youth bullying:

 The 2017 School Crime Supplement (National Center for Education

Statistics and Bureau of Justice) indicates that, nationwide, about 20% of
students ages 12-18 experienced bullying.
 The 2017 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention) indicates that, nationwide, 19% of students in
grades 9–12 report being bullied on school property in the 12 months
preceding the survey.
Bullying Facts

Bullying directly affects students’ ability to

learn.

 According to the Center for Disease Control, students who are bullied are more
likely to experience low self-esteem and isolation, perform poorly in school,
have few friends in school, have a negative view of school, experience physical
symptoms (such as headaches, stomachaches, or problems sleeping), and to
experience mental health issues (such as depression, suicidal thoughts, and
anxiety) (Center for Disease Control, Bullying Surveillance Among
Youths, 2014).
 Bullying affects witnesses as well as targets. Witnesses are more likely to use
tobacco, alcohol, or other drugs; have increased mental health problems; and
miss or skip school (StopBullying.gov).
 Youth who bully others are at increased risk for substance use, academic
problems, and experiencing violence later in adolescence and adulthood. Youth
who bully others and are bullied themselves suffer the most serious
consequences and are at greater risk for mental health and behavioral
problems. (Center for Disease Control, 2017).
Bystanders can be powerful allies.
  Students have a unique power to prevent bullying. More than half of bullying
situations (57 percent) stop when a peer intervenes on behalf of the student
being bullied (Hawkins, Pepler, & Craig, 2001) .
 Unfortunately, peer bystanders intervene in bullying less than 20% of the
time (Hawkins, Pepler, & Craig, 2001).
 Student bystanders are often aware of situations before adults in the school
(Hawkins, Pepler, & Craig, 2001 ); it is therefore important that all students feel
empowered to intervene safely in bullying situations. A school can facilitate this
behavior by cultivating a climate of respect and tolerance within the school.
Students should be encouraged to stand up for one another and such behavior
should be recognized and rewarded.
 Since student bystanders can often intervene most effectively, it’s important for
schools to encourage bystander intervention by teaching skills and offering
resources that support this behavior. Schools should also seek to ensure that
bystanders are protected and students know not to put themselves in danger.
 In a recent meta-analysis, it was found that programs are effective at changing
bystander intervening behaviors whey there are opportunities for youth to
discuss reasons why they might not intervene to help targets, develop
understandings of others, and practice effective bystander intervention skills
with role-plays (Polanin, Espelage, & Pigott, 2012).
Bullying is not a “rite of passage” but a serious threat to student safety and well-being.

 Some say bullying makes children tougher and is not a serious problem, but the
reality is that students who are bullied are more likely to report increased
negative effects to their emotional and physical health.
 Students, parents, educators, and communities all have a responsibility to
address bullying in schools, on line and in communities.
 Many students feel that the adults in their lives – parents, teachers, community
members – are failing to adequately address this issue (Danielson & Emmers-
Sommer, 2016; Tenenbaum, Varjas, Meyers, & Paris, 2011 ).
 Areas of concern include:
 Education – School avoidance, loss of academic achievement and
increase in drop out rates
 Health – Physical and emotional including stomachaches, headaches,
sleeping issues, depression, fear or anxiety
 Safety – Harm to self and others, including self-isolation, increased
aggression, alienation, and retaliation.
Anyone can bully, and anyone can be bullied.
  Bullying is a behavior, not an identity. Labeling as student as a “bully” can have a
detrimental effect on their future and often limits their ability to change their
behavior (StopBullying.gov, 2016 ).
 Students can have multiple roles: they can be the one subjected to bullying and
the one who bullies (StopBullying.gov, 2016 ). Strategies that focus on holding
students accountable for their behavior – but also empower them to change
that behavior – are more effective than punitive punishments and peer
mediation in bullying situations.
 Any student can exhibit bullying behavior – male or female, popular or un
popular, students with good grades, and those who struggle academically.
Teachers need to focus on a student’s behavior, not their profile, when
determining if bullying occurred.
Bullying isn’t about resolving conflict; bullying is about control.

 In conflict, children self-monitor their behavior and generally stop when they
realize they are hurting someone.
 When bullying, children continue their behavior when they realize it is hurting
someone, and are satisfied by a feeling of power and control.
 Bullying does not occur between evenly matched opponents; the child bullying
has more power in some way than the target (Salmivalli, 2010 ).
 Rigby (2008) identifies six of the most common power resources:
1. Being able to physically hurt others, often due to being superior in size,
strength, or physical capabilities.
2. Being numerically superior, such as a group of three individuals ganging
up on one individual.
3. Being more confident and assertive than others, which can propel
someone to directly make fun of another individual without worrying
how that will influence themselves or their reputations.
4. Having superior social or manipulation skills, which can provide the
ability to turn people against someone or have them excluded.
5. Having greater social status and the ability to influence others, or access
to embarrassing or private information.
6. Being able to sophistically threaten or hurt others, such as making fun of
someone in a subtle way that goes unnoticed by adults in schools, which
allows the bullying to continue.
c

 Involving community members such as law enforcement officials, faith

organizations, community action groups, and others allows school officials and
 c46parents to address ©the bigger issues of disrespect, bias, and violence that
can contribute to bullying issues in schools (StopBullying.gov, 2016; Swearer,
Wang, Collins, Strawhun, & Fluke, 2014 ).
 A community-wide effort shows students that adults care what happens to them
and that they are not alone.
 There are inconsistent findings for the effectiveness of zero-tolerance and peer
mediation approaches to school bullying. Programs that emphasize prevention,
early identification of students with behavioral concerns, and provide prosocial
social skills instruction (e.g., building character and empathy, providing social-
and emotional-development skills, and conflict management skills) are
successful at reducing bullying behaviors and victimizations (Swearer, Wang,
Collins, Strawhun, & Fluke, 2014 ).
 According to the Center for Disease Control , promising elements of bullying
prevention programs include:
 Multi-tiered systems of support, which includes universal programs or
activities for all youth within the community or school; selective
interventions for groups of youth at risk for being involved in bullying;
and preventive interventions tailored for students already involved in
bullying.
 Multicomponent programs that address multiple aspects of bullying
behavior and the environments that support it. Examples include
examining school rules and using behavior management techniques and
social emotional learning in the classroom and throughout the school to
detect and provide consequences for bullying.
 School-wide prevention activities that include improving the school
climate, strengthening supervision of students, and having a school-wide
anti-bullying policy.
 Involving families and communities by helping caregivers learn how to
talk about bullying and get involved with school-based prevention
efforts.
 Developing long-term school-wide approaches that strengthen youth’s
social-emotional, communication, and problem-solving skills.
 Focusing on program fidelity by forming an implementation team to
make sure the programs are carried out exactly as they were designed.
 According to a recent meta-analysis (Lee, Kim, & Kim, 2015), successful bullying
prevention programs include the following
 Training in emotional control (awareness of personal feelings and the
feelings of others, self-regulation of impulses and actions)
  Training in peer counseling (education and activities that empower
students to help one during bullying situations)
 Establishment of a school policy on bullying (schools regularly assessing
the needs of their students, establishing and revising school bullying
policies with the support of school administration, and promoting a
school culture that does not tolerate bullying).
 Effective bullying prevention tactics include school-wide instruction on the
behaviors that are expected. Rather than only focusing on rules about what
students should not do, schools should also advocate positively stated
expectations to students, such as being respectful and kind to others (Ross &
Horner, 2014).
 Students and educators believe that, in order to prevent cyberbullying, schools
need to cultivate positive and kind online behaviors for students rather than
merely trying to curtail the negative behaviors, which is what they referred to as
“cyber kindness” (Cassidy, Brown, & Jackson, 2011).
 It is essential for bullying prevention efforts to include education and awareness
about how to be inclusive of peers, particularly for students with disabilities
(Falkmer, Anderson, Joosten, & Falkmer, 2015; Raskauskas & Modell, 2011), or
students who identify as LGBTQ (Snapp, McGuire, Sinclair, Gabrion, & Russell,
2015).
 Youths’ resilience is a protective factor in mitigating the negative effects of
bullying. Resilience is one’s ability to spring back, rebound, and successfully
cope with bullying victimization. Resilience is fostered with supportive
environments, positive peer relationships, a sense of belonging, and self-
efficacy (Hinduja & Patchin, 2017).
 Mentoring is a useful strategy for bullying prevention. Older peer mentors can
serve as positive role models to younger students by modeling appropriate and
alternative ways of responding to bullying situations, as well as identifying
responsible online behavior to prevent cyberbullying (Studer & Mynatt, 2015).
 Allowing students to be involved in bullying prevention efforts has a great
impact. Students feel empowered by being directly involved in analyzing
bullying issues, creating ideas to help solve the problem, and enact creative
solutions. Student-led bullying prevention initiatives give students self-efficacy
and a sense of agency with leadership (Shriberg et al., 2017).
  More than one out of every five (20.8%) students report being bullied (National
Center for Educational Statistics, 2016).
 The federal government began collecting data on school bullying in 2005, when
the prevalence of bullying was around 28 percent (U.S. Department of
Education, 2015).
 Rates of bullying vary across studies (from 9% to 98%). A meta-analysis of 80
studies analyzing bullying involvement rates (for both bullying others and being
bullied) for 12-18 year old students reported a mean prevalence rate of 35% for
traditional bullying involvement and 15% for cyberbullying involvement
(Modecki, Minchin, Harbaugh, Guerra, & Runions, 2014).
 33% of students who reported being bullied at school indicated that they were
bullied at least once or twice a month during the school year (National Center
for Educational Statistics, 2016).
 Of those students who reported being bullied, 13% were made fun of, called
names, or insulted; 12% were the subject of rumors; 5% were pushed, shoved,
tripped, or spit on; and 5% were excluded from activities on purpose (National
Center for Educational Statistics, 2016).
 A slightly higher portion of female than of male students report being bullied at
school (23% vs. 19%). In contrast, a higher percentage of male than of female
students report being physically bullied (6% vs. 4%) and threatened with harm
(5% vs. 3%; (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2016).
 Bullied students reported that bullying occurred in the following places: the
hallway or stairwell at school (42%), inside the classroom (34%), in the cafeteria
(22%), outside on school grounds (19%), on the school bus (10%), and in the
bathroom or locker room (9%) (National Center for Educational Statistics,
2016).
 43% of bullied students report notifying an adult at school about the incident.
Students who report higher rates of bullying victimization are more likely to
report the bullying (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2016).

 More than half of bullying situations (57%) stop when a peer intervenes on
behalf of the student being bullied (Hawkins, Pepler, & Craig, 2001).
 School-based bullying prevention programs decrease bullying by up to 25%
(McCallion & Feder, 2013).
 The reasons for being bullied reported most often by students include physical
appearance, race/ethnicity, gender, disability, religion, sexual
orientation (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2016).

Effects of Bullying
  Students who experience bullying are at increased risk for poor school
adjustment, sleep difficulties, anxiety, and depression (Center for Disease
Control, 2017).
 Students who are both targets of bullying and engage in bullying behavior are at
greater risk for both mental health and behavior problems than students who
only bully or are only bullied (Center for Disease Control, 2017).
 Bullied students indicate that bullying has a negative effect on how they feel
about themselves (19%), their relationships with friends and family and on their
school work (14%), and physical health (9%) (National Center for Educational
Statistics, 2016).

 Students who experience bullying are twice as likely as non-bullied peers to

experience negative health effects such as headaches and stomachaches (Gini &
Pozzoli, 2013).
 Youth who self-blame and conclude they deserved to be bullied are more likely
to face negative outcomes, such as depression, prolonged victimization, and
maladjustment (Perren, Ettakal, & Ladd, 2013; Shelley & Craig, 2010).

Cyberbullying
 Among high school students, 15.5% are cyberbullied and 20.2% are bullied on
school property (Center for Disease Control, 2017).
 The percentages of individuals who have experienced cyberbullying at some
point in their lifetimes have nearly doubled (18% to 34%) from 2007-2016
(Patchin & Hinduja, 2016).
 90% of teens who report being cyberbullied have also been bullied offline
(“Seven Fears and the Science of How Mobile Technologies May Be Influencing
Adolescents in the Digital Age,” George and Odgers, 2015).
 23% of students who reported being cyberbullied notified an adult at school
about the incident (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2016).
 Only 40–50% of cyberbullying targets are aware of the identity of the
perpetrator (Patchin & Hinduja, 2016).
 Those who are cyberbullied are also likely to be bullied offline (Hamm, Newton,
& Chisholm, 2015).

Statistics about bullying of students with disabilities

 When assessing specific types of disabilities, prevalence rates differ: 35.3% of
students with behavioral and emotional disorders, 33.9% of students with
autism, 24.3% of students with intellectual disabilities, 20.8% of students with
 health impairments, and 19% of students with specific learning disabilities face
high levels of bullying victimization (Rose et al., 2012).
 Students with specific learning disabilities, autism spectrum disorder, emotional
and behavior disorders, other health impairments, and speech or language
impairments report greater rates of victimization than their peers without
disabilities longitudinally and their victimization remains consistent over
time (Rose & Gage, 2017).
 Researchers discovered that students with disabilities were more worried about
school safety and being injured or harassed by other peers compared to
students without a disability (Saylor & Leach, 2009).
 When reporting bullying youth in special education were told not to tattle
almost twice as often as youth not in special education (Davis & Nixon, 2010).
 Successful strategies to prevent bullying among students with disabilities
include (Rose & Monda-Amaya, 2012):
 Teachers and peers engaging in meaningful and appropriate social
interactions.
 Creating opportunities to increase social competence and positive
interactions.
 Schools adopting appropriate intervention strategies that encourage
social awareness and provide individualized interventions for targets
with disabilities.

Statistics about bullying of students of color

 25% of African-American students, 22% of Caucasian students, 17% of Hispanic
students, and 9% of Asian students report being bullied at school (National
Center for Educational Statistics, 2016).
 More than one third of adolescents reporting bullying report bias-based school
bullying (Russell, Sinclair, Poteat, & Koenig, 2012).
 Bias-based bullying is more strongly associated with compromised health than
general bullying (Russell, Sinclair, Poteat, & Koenig, 2012).
 Race-related bullying is significantly associated with negative emotional and
physical health effects (Rosenthal et al, 2013).

Statistics about bullying of students who identify or are

perceived as LGBTQ
  74.1% of LGBT students were verbally bullied (e.g., called names, threatened) in
the past year because of their sexual orientation and 55.2% because of their
gender expression (National School Climate Survey, 2013).
 36.2% of LGBT students were physically bullied (e.g., pushed, shoved) in the past
year because of their sexual orientation and 22.7% because of their gender
expression (National School Climate Survey, 2013).
 49% of LGBT students experienced cyberbullying in the past year (National
School Climate Survey, 2013).
 Peer victimization of all youth was less likely to occur in schools with bullying
policies that are inclusive of LGBTQ students (Hatzenbuehler & Keyes, 2012).
 55.5% of LGBT students feel unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation,
and 37.8% because of their gender expression (National School Climate Survey,
2013).
 30.3% of LGBT students missed at least one entire day at school in the past
month because they felt unsafe or uncomfortable, and 10.6% missed four or
more days in the past month (National School Climate Survey, 2013).
 For bullied LGBTQ students (Duong & Bradshaw, 2014) and bullied students in
general (Morin et al., 2015), if they identify one supportive adult in the school
they trust, they are less likely to face adverse consequences.
 There are less rates of LGBTQ bullying in schools with clear bullying policies that
are inclusive of LGBTQ students (Hatzenbuehler & Keyes, 2012).

 Students were less likely to report having experienced homophobic bullying and
report more school connectedness in schools with more supportive practices,
including (Day & Snapp, 2016):
 Adequate counseling and support services for students.
 Considering sanctions for student violations of rules and policies on a
case-by-case basis with a wide range of options.
 Providing effective confidential support and referral services for students
needing help because of substance abuse, violence, or other problems.
 Helping students with their social, emotional, and behavioral problems,
and provide behavior management instruction.
 Fostering youth development, resilience, or asset promotion.

Bullying and Suicide

 There is a strong association between bullying and suicide-related behaviors, but
this relationship is often mediated by other factors, including depression, violent
behavior, and substance abuse (Reed, Nugent, & Cooper, 2015).
 Students who bully others, are bullied, or witness bullying are more likely to
report high levels of suicide-related behavior than students who report no
involvement in bullying (Center for Disease Control, 2014).
 A meta-analysis found that students facing peer victimization are 2.2 times more
likely to have suicide ideation and 2.6 times more likely to attempt suicide than
students not facing victimization (Gini & Espelage, 2014).
 Students who are both bullied and engage in bullying behavior are the highest
risk group for adverse outcomes (Espelage & Holt, 2013).
 The false notion that suicide is a natural response to being bullied has the
dangerous potential to normalize the response and thus create copycat
behavior among youth. (Center for Disease Control, 2014).