School bullying

School bullying, like bullying outside the school context, refers to one or more perpetrators who have greater physical strength or more social power than their victim and who repeatedly act aggressively toward their victim. Bullying can be verbal or physical. Bullying, with its ongoing character, is distinct from one-off types of peer conflict. Different types of school bullying include ongoing physical, emotional, and/or verbal aggression. Cyberbullying and sexual bullying are also types of bullying. Bullying even exists in higher education. There are warning signs that suggest that a child is being bullied, a child is acting as a bully, or a child has witnessed bullying at school.
The cost of school violence is significant across many nations but there are educational leaders who have had success in reducing school bullying by implementing certain strategies. Some strategies used to reduce or prevent school bullying include educating the students about bullying, restricting of recording devices in the classroom, employing security technology, and hiring school safety officers. How schools respond to bullying, however, varies widely. Effects on the victims of school bullying include feelings of depression, anxiety, anger, stress, helplessness, and reduced school performance Empirical research by Sameer Hinduja and Justin Patchin involving a national sample of US youth have found that some victims of school bullying have attempted to commit suicide.
This behavior is not a one-off episode; it must be repetitive and habitual to be considered bullying. Students who are LGBTQIA+, have parents of lower educational levels, are thought to be provocative, are perceived to be vulnerable, or are atypical or considered outsiders are at higher risk of being victimized by bullies. Baron (1977) defined such "aggressive behaviour as behaviour that is directed towards the goal of harming or injuring another living being who is motivated to avoid such treatment".
Historically, Thomas Hughes's 1857 novel Tom Brown's School Days details intensive school bullying, but the first major scholarly journal article to address school bullying appears to have been written in 1897. Research in school bullying has dramatically expanded over time, rising from 62 citations in the 90 years between 1900 and 1990, to 562 in the 4 years between 2000 and 2004. Since 2004, research on school bullying has mushroomed. A 2022 South Korean TV series The Glory drew renewed attention to the phenomenon.
Bullying is a subcategory of aggressive behavior that is characterised by hostile intent (the harm caused is deliberate), imbalance of power (real or perceived power inequality between bully and victim), and repetition over a period of time. More ordinary types of student-student conflicts, which are sometimes part of everyday school life, are not associated with an imbalance of power. In contrast to more ordinary conflicts, school bullying can severely harm victimized students.
By definition, bullying involves an imbalance of power. A bully has power over another student because of factors such as size, gender, age, standing among peers, and/or assistance by other students. Among boys, bullying tends to involve differences in strength; among girls bullying is more focused on differences in physical appearance, emotional life, and/or academic status.
Some bullies target peers with physical impairments, such as speech impediments (e.g., stuttering). Many stutterers experience some degree of bullying, harassment, or ridicule from peers and, sometimes, teachers.
Signs that a child is being bullied may include:
Signs that a child is bullying others may include:
Signs that a child has witnessed bullying include:
There are two main methods employed in controlling bullying: Prevention (acting before something happens) or reaction (acting when something is happening or has just happened).
Preventative solutions may include:
The recommended reactions to cases of bullying are manifold, and various methods may be called for, depending on the type of bullying, and the people who are involved. Some suggestions for appropriate reaction are:
There are a number of ways in which school bullying takes place. These include verbal, physical, psychological, cyber, and sexual bullying. Direct bullying refers to an open physical or verbal attack on a victim. Indirect bullying is more subtle and harder to detect, but involves one or more forms of relational aggression, including social isolation via intentional exclusion, spreading rumors to defame the target's character or reputation, making faces or obscene gestures behind the target's back, and manipulating friendships or other relationships. Pack bullying is bullying undertaken by a group. There is evidence that pack bullying was more common in high schools than in lower grades and lasts longer than bullying undertaken by individuals.
Physical bullying is any unwanted physical contact between the bully and the victim. This is one of the most easily identifiable forms of bullying. Examples include: fighting, hazing, headlocks, inappropriate touching, kicking, pinching, poking, hair pulling, punching, pushing, slapping, spitting, stalking, or making unwanted and persistent eye contact with a victim, spilling liquids onto a victim, throwing small and lightweight objects at a victim, teasing, threatening, tickling, using weapons including improvised ones, theft and/or damaging of personal belongings.
Emotional bullying is any form of bullying that causes damage to a victim's psyche and/or emotional well-being. Examples include: spreading malicious rumors about people, "ganging up" on others (this could also be considered physical bullying), ignoring people (e.g. the silent treatment or pretending the victim is non-existent), provoking others, belittling or saying hurtful things (which are also forms of verbal bullying).
Verbal bullying are slanderous statements or accusations that cause the victim undue emotional distress. Examples include: foul language or (profanity) directed at the victim; using derogatory terms or deriding the person's name; commenting negatively on someone's looks, clothes, body, etc., (personal abuse); tormenting, harassing, mocking and belittling, threatening to cause harm, taunting, teasing, and making inappropriate sexual comments.
Coupled with the increasing use of computers and the internet, the use of such technology and social media has moved some bullying from the schoolyard to the internet. According to the website Stop Cyberbullying, schools experience difficulties in controlling off-campus bullying due to the perception that their role stops at the gates of the schoolyard. Schools are under pressure to not exceed their authority and to avoid violating students' right to free speech. Suggestions have been made that principals act to include cyberbullying in their code of ethics, allowing disciplining of bullying outside of school facilities and according to Professor Bernard James, "the timidity of educators in this context of emerging technology is working in the advantage of the bullies". Educators do appear to have support from the students. For example, three high school students from Melville, New York, organized a Bullying Awareness Walk, where several hundred people turned out to show their support.
Researcher Charisse Nixon found that students do not reach out for help with cyberbullying for four main reasons:
Research suggests that cyberbullying is sometimes an extension of bullying already taking place elsewhere. Students who are cyberbullied have, in many cases, also been bullied in other ways before (e.g., physically or verbally at school). There are few students who are bullied exclusively over the Internet. Some cyber victims are physically stronger than cyber bullies, which leads these bullies to prefer online confrontations to face-to-face contact.
Sexual bullying is "any bullying behaviour, whether physical or non-physical, that is based on a person's sexuality or gender." A BBC Panorama questionnaire aimed at English teens aged 11 to 19 found that, of the 273 respondents, 28 had been forced to do something sexual, 31 had seen it happen to someone else, and 40 had experienced unwanted touching. U.K. government figures show that in the 2007–2008 school year, there were 3,450 fixed-period exclusions and 120 expulsions from schools in England due to sexual misconduct. This included incidents such as groping and using sexually insulting language. From April 2008 to March 2009, ChildLine counselled a total of 156,729 children, 26,134 of whom spoke about bullying as a main concern and 300 of whom spoke specifically about sexual bullying. Sexting cases are also on the rise and have become a major source of bullying and the circulation of explicit photos of those involved, either around school or on the internet, put the originators in a position to be scorned and bullied.
About 15 percent of college students claim to have been victims of bullying. The misconception that bullying does not occur in higher education began to receive attention after the suicide of college student Tyler Clementi. According to a recent study, around 21.5% of college students reported rarely being victims of cyberbullying while around 93.3% of students said they rarely bullied others.
A 2020 report in the United Kingdom based on data from the Twins Early Development Study, a sample of twins born between 1994 and 1996 found that private school students were fifteen percent more likely to experience bullying during secondary school (ages eleven through sixteen).
Some of the British boarding schools have become known for bullying as described in a 2019 article in the Guardian as places where students were sent as young as six and the founders of the school thought emotional hardship made students tough when in fact it caused damage known as "boarding school syndrome". The writer meets with his bully in their thirties who apologizes and explains that the bully was also being sexually abused by teachers and senior boys and he took it out on younger students. The political leaders in Britain inevitably came from these schools before they went to Oxford or Cambridge and two Guardian writers attribute issues with British society to these early experiences.
The 2021 USA Today article "Bullying in Private Schools" states that it is hard to say whether private or public schools have worse bullying issues in the United States. A bullying expert Dewey Cornell states in the article, ""In practice, bullying occurs everywhere, and it is a question of whether school authorities recognize the problem and make a concerted effort to respond to it or ignore it."
In the U.S. independent (private) schools, the administration has the parents as their main customer as opposed to the public schools that serve the larger society, as Paul Tough illustrates in the 2011 New York Times Magazine article "What if failure is the key to success?"
The private schools also have more autonomy on deciding how to handle bullying where public schools in most states are governed by state law that regulate responses including investigation and require efforts to stop the spread, according to a 2023 New York Times article, "After student's suicide, elite school says it fell 'tragically short.'
The article describes the $76,000-year boarding school Lawrenceville in New Jersey where 17-year-old Jack Reid killed himself after a persistent false rumor was spread that he was a rapist and the school failed in their duty of care to him both to correct the rumor and to be available to him the night he killed himself. This is a rare admission of guilt following a settlement with Reid's family.
The Latin School of Chicago in 2022 had to create new anti-bullying plans after a 15-year-old committed suicide. The students family filed a lawsuit against the school stating that the school ignored the bullying harm done to their son.
This is the same private school that in 2020 along with many other schools nationwide had alumni accuse the school of racist bullying during their time at the school through an Instagram page Latin Survivors.
Another difference with private schools in the U.S. is that overall they do not have to follow the First Amendment or its hate speech provisions although some states have different laws.
In 2002, "Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Aggression in Girls" by Rachel Simmons broke ground in addressing girl-on-girl bullying where girls fight with "body language and relationships instead of fists and knives". She described a culture, most prevalent between ages 10 and 14, where friendship become weapons and girls turn on each other causing great harm to the target.
Simmons research was tailored mostly to white, affluent girls and their alternative aggressions. This covert aggression is often hard for educators to identify and often was attributed to lack of social skills by the target. There was a code of silence around it for girls who if bullied were deeply humiliated and tended to blame themselves. Simmons argues that the cultural of femininity doesn't allow for girls to have open conflict the way boys do. She also looked at how bullying could infect close female friendships and become emotional abuse.
The 2004 Mean Girls film was based on another seminal 2002 work by Rosalind Wiseman, "Queen Bees and Wannabe: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and the New Realities of Girl World." This book delves more into all-girls cliques in adolescence as a guide for parents. She and Simmons emphasize that the damage done by adolescent bullying can last into adulthood and have long-term consequences. Wiseman describes a school reality where often the adults don't get it.
Wiseman divides adolescent cliques into types including the Queen Bee (who wields power over the clique and school), the Sidekick (number two who backs up the Queen Bee), Floaters (don't belong to one group), Torn bystanders (often too scared to intervene) and Targets (victim of bullying).
As the damage of bullying in adolescence gets understood more than it was in the early aughts, many now understand bullying causes long-term chronic damage. There's also attention on how mothers can replicate the same roles and keep bullying cyclical.
In the 2009 piece "Examining the Invisibility of Girl-to-girl Bullying in Schools: A Call to Action," Susan SooHoo, professor of education at Chapman University, describes how often girl-to-girl bullying can be ignored by teachers. She describes "dehumanizing rituals and practices, passed on from mother to daughter" and how the "othering" bullying by females can continue into adulthood.
She defines girl-to-girl bullying as psychological warfare that uses, among other things, exclusion and relational aggression in a form of abuse intended to cause harm.
At independent and boarding all-girls schools, alumnae can also support girl-on-girl bullying. Miss Porter's school in Farmington, Connecticut was infamous when there was a "mean girls lawsuit" covered in Vanity Fair and one key aspect is that alumnae moms would encourage the bullying on campus by a sanctioned group of older girls. The Mean Girls film was also planned to be made into a sequel around 2015 called Mean Moms that would have starred Jennifer Aniston but is on hiatus.
Several main categories of bullying have been identified. Coloroso noted that some bullies need to feel superior to others (the "confident bully"). Bullies with low self-esteem often try to bring others down (the "social bully"). Other bullies appear tough but are cowardly; they tend to want to be seen as tough (the "fully armored bully").
Other factors associated with being a bully is lower school performance and higher self-esteem.
Bullying victims display a variety of defining characteristics, including emotional and physical behaviors. Increased susceptibility stands out as one prominent feature. Bullying frequently targets those who, for various reasons, may believe they are defenseless, different, or weak. Being introverted and feeling alone, they just avoid social situations at all costs. Because of this vulnerability, victims of bullying are more likely to experience anxiety, fear, and low self-esteem. In an effort to deal with the stress brought on by bullying, victims could isolate themselves, withdraw socially, or have a hard time forming relationships.
The worsening of mental health is another trait of bullied individuals. A variety of emotional problems, including sadness, anxiety, and even post-traumatic stress disorder, can result from persistent teasing and bullying. They are lonely and easily distracted especially in school. The stress and distraction brought on by bullying may also cause victims to do worse academically. The serious effects of bullying on a person's mental health are highlighted by the fact that some victims may turn to self-harm or even consider suicide as a means of escaping the suffering.
In conclusion, understanding the characteristics of bullying victims is essential for the prevention and intervention of bullying. By recognizing and addressing these traits, educators, parents, and society as a whole can work together to create a safer and more supportive environment for all individuals, reducing the prevalence and impact of bullying. Empowering victims, fostering empathy, and implementing anti-bullying programs are steps in the right direction to combat this pervasive issue.
Victims of bullying tend to be physically smaller, more sensitive, unhappy, cautious, anxious, quiet, and withdrawn. They are sometimes characterized as passive or submissive and might use self-deprecating or self-defeating humor styles. Possessing these qualities makes these individuals vulnerable, as they are seen as being less likely to retaliate.
Another risk factor for becoming a victim is low self-esteem; however, low self-esteem can also be a consequence of having been bullied. Victims of cyberbullying, on the other hand, may not have lower scores than uninvolved students but might have higher body-related self-esteem than both victims of traditional bullying and bullies.
Bullying locations vary. Most bullying in elementary school happens on the playground. In middle school and high school, it occurs most often in hallways, which have little supervision. According to the U.S Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics, more than 47% of victims report being bullied in hallways and stairways. Bus stops and bus rides to and from school can also be sites of bullying; children tend to view the driver as someone with no disciplinary authority.
McNamee and Mercurio state that there is a "bullying triangle", consisting of the person doing the bullying, the victim, and the bystander. Conversely, the US Department of Health and Human Services divides the participants into 7 actors, consisting of the initial "triangle" plus those who assist, those who reinforce the actions of the bully, those who aren't involved but witness the bullying ("outsiders"), and those who come to the assistance of the victim after the fact ("defenders").
School bullying might not end with interaction between students; other dynamics may be visible within a school. Students may bully each other or others (teachers, staff, parents), but the students may also experience bullying from teachers or staff. These dynamics may also be in play between staff and teachers, parents and teachers, or any other combination thereof.
As a result of bullying, victims may feel depressed, anxious, angry, stressed, helpless, out of control, and may experience a significant drop in school performance, or, in rare cases, commit suicide (bullycide). They tend to feel more lonely and have difficulties adjusting to school. Over the long term, they may feel insecure, lack trust, exhibit extreme sensitivity or hypervigilance, develop mental illnesses such as avoidant personality disorder or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), or develop other health challenges.
Victims of bullying may also desire revenge, sometimes leading them to torment others in return or retaliate against their bullies with force. A notable example of the latter was in 2011, when an Australian teenager named Casey Heynes became a viral sensation after throwing to the ground a bully who was punching him, which prompted both widespread public support for Heynes and the concern of some experts.
Anxiety, depression, and psychosomatic symptoms are common among both bullies and their victims. Alcohol and substance abuse are at risk for developing later in life. People suffering from depression often feel better when they talk to others about their lives; victims of bullying, however, may be reluctant to talk to others about their feelings because they fear being bullied for doing so, which can, in turn, worsen their depression. According to Mental Health America, more than 10% of young people exhibit symptoms of depression strong enough to severely undermine their ability to function at school, at home, or whilst managing relationships.
In the short term, bystanders who witnesses bullying may experience anger, fear, guilt, and sadness. If they are witness to regular episodes of bullying, they may begin to exhibit the same symptoms as the victims themselves.
While most bullies, in the long term, grow up to be emotionally functional adults, many have an increased risk of developing antisocial personality disorder, which is linked to an increased risk of committing criminal acts (including domestic violence). Bullies have been shown to have higher levels of loneliness and lower levels of adjustment to school.
The educational effects on victims of school violence and bullying are significant. Violence and bullying at the hands of students may make the victims afraid to go to school and interfere with their ability to concentrate in class or participate in school activities. It can also have similar effects on bystanders. Bullied students may miss classes, avoid school activities, skip school, or drop out of school altogether. Bullied students may also have lower grades, greater academic difficulties, and be less likely to anticipate going on to higher education. International analyses highlight the impact of bullying on learning outcomes, showing that bullying is related to lower achievement. Further, unsafe learning environments create a climate of fear and insecurity and a perception that teachers do not have control or do not care about the students, which reduces the quality of education for all.
The 2006 UN World Report on Violence Against Children shows that victims of corporal punishment, both at school and at home, may develop into adults who are passive and over-cautious or aggressive. Being bullied is also linked to a heightened risk of eating disorders and social and relationship difficulties. A 1958 study of children born in England, Scotland, and Wales looked at 7,771 children who had been bullied at ages 7 and 11 and found that by age 50, those who had been bullied as children were less likely to have obtained school qualifications and were less likely to live with a spouse or partner or to have adequate social support. These victims also scored lower in tests designed to measure cognitive IQ and were more likely to report that they had poor health.
The economic impact of violence against children and adolescents is substantial. Youth violence in Brazil alone is estimated to cost nearly US$19 billion every year, of which US$943 million can be linked to violence in schools, while the estimated cost to the economy in the USA is US$7.9 billion a year. Studies show that school-related gender-based violence alone can be associated with the loss of one primary grade of schooling, which translates to an annual cost of around US$17 billion to low- and middle-income countries. In Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Nigeria it is estimated that US$974 million, US$301 million, and US$1,662 million respectively are lost due to failures in the equal education of girls and boys, with violence in school listed as one of the key factors contributing to the under-representation of girls in education. In Argentina, the cost of early dropping out is estimated to be 11.4% of GDP, and in Egypt, nearly 7% of potential earnings is lost as a result of the number of children dropping out of school. It is not clear how much of these preceding losses may be attributable to school bullying.
According to the American Psychological Association, "40% to 80% of school-age children experience bullying at some point during their school careers." Various studies show that students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and students with disabilities experience bullying more often than other students.
Statistics referencing the prevalence of bullying in schools may be inaccurate and tend to fluctuate. In a U.S. study of 5,621 students ages 12–18, 64% of the students had experienced bullying and did not report it.
Although research suggests that there might be a weak association between school bullying and school shootings, there is some evidence that having been a victim of school bullying is related to increased risk of a school shootings. The media have portrayed some individuals, such as Charles Andrew Williams, Eric Hainstock, Seung-Hui Cho, Luke Woodham, Michael Carneal, Wellington Menezes Oliveira, Karl Pierson, Jose Reyes, and Todd Camren Smith, as having experienced bullying and then becoming school shooters. However, research suggests that the vast majority of individuals who have been victims of bullying do not become school shooters.
Studies have shown that bullying programs set up in schools with the engagement of staff and faculty have been shown to reduce peer victimization and bullying. Incidents of bullying are noticeably reduced when the students themselves disapprove of bullying. Classroom activities where students reflect on bullying decrease the cases of bullying while increasing the communication between students and school staff.
The current literature shows that school-based anti-bullying programs are also effective in reducing bullying perpetration and bullying victimization by ~15%, based on moderate-quality evidence. However, as there is variation in the effectiveness of anti-bullying programs, further research is required to identify specific programmatic features that make programs effective. A 2019 study found that school-based anti-bullying programs may lower the incidence of bullying by as much as 25%.
Measures such as instituting zero tolerance for fighting or placing troubled students in the same group or classroom are actually ineffective in reducing bullying. Methods that are effective include increasing empathy for victims; adopting a program that includes teachers, students, and parents; and having students lead anti-bullying efforts. Success is most associated with beginning interventions at an early age, constantly evaluating programs for effectiveness, and having some students take online classes to avoid bullies at school. Another way to help victims is to provide peer support. Peer support can help a victim improve his or her school performance.
Based on UNESCO case studies of six countries that have succeeded in reducing school violence and bullying (Eswatini, Italy, Jamaica, Lebanon, Republic of Korea and Uruguay) as well as two countries that have maintained low levels over time (the Netherlands and Sweden), there are a number of factors that contribute to effective national responses.
Factors that contribute to effective national responses include:
The case studies also identified a number of factors that can limit the effectiveness and impact of national responses. These include lack of data on specific aspects of school violence and bullying and on the sub-groups of students who are most vulnerable, low coverage of interventions, lack of systematic monitoring of school violence and bullying, and of robust evaluation of the impact of programmes.
Section 89 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006 provides for an anti-bullying policy for all state schools to be made available to parents.
The victims of some school shootings have sued both the shooters' families and the schools. At one point only 23 states had anti-bullying laws. In 2015, Montana became the last state to enact an anti-bullying law. At that point, all 50 states had an anti-bullying law. These laws are not going to abolish bullying, but it does bring attention to the behavior, and they let the aggressors know it will not be tolerated.
In 2016, a legal precedent was set by a mother and her son, after the son was bullied at his public school. The mother and son won a court case against the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, making this the first case in North America where a school board has been found negligent in a bullying case for failing to meet the standard of care ("duty of care") that the school board owes to its students. A similar bullying case was won in Australia in 2013 (Oyston v. St. Patricks College).
The Ministry of Education has launched a series of projects. In 2006, they started the 'anti-bully plan'. In 2008, they launched the "prevent-bully video from public project"—which included encouraging informants and monitoring the school—in the hope that it could improve education quality.
South Africa
Bullying is still not recognized as a specific crime in South Africa. However, four laws protect children in South Africa:
The South African Schools Act 84 of 1996 (SASA)
The Children's Act 38 of 2005
The Child Justice Act 75 of 2008
The Protection from Harassment Act 17 of 2011
This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC-BY-SA IGO 3.0 (license statement/permission). Text taken from School Violence and Bullying: Global Status Report​, 17, 29–31, UNESCO, UNESCO. UNESCO.
This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO. Text taken from Behind the numbers: ending school violence and bullying​, 70, UNESCO, UNESCO. UNESCO.