Anti-Bullying Infomation
National PTA released the findings in June 2023 of a national survey exploring the mindsets of parents and caregivers as the 2022-23 school year ended. One of the key findings of the survey showed that school violence and bullying is the lead concern of parents and caregivers. More than 6 in 10 parents surveyed reported that they worry a lot or somewhat about school violence, and this worry experienced the largest increase over the course of NPTA’s three surveys exploring parent/caregiver mindsets.
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
There are three types of bullying:
- Verbal bullying is saying or writing mean things. Verbal bullying includes:
- Teasing
- Name-calling
- Inappropriate sexual comments
- Taunting
- Threatening to cause harm
- Social bullying, sometimes referred to as relational bullying, involves hurting someone’s reputation or relationships. Social bullying includes:
- Leaving someone out on purpose
- Telling other children not to be friends with someone
- Spreading rumors about someone
- Embarrassing someone in public
- Physical bullying involves hurting a person’s body or possessions. Physical bullying includes:
- Hitting/kicking/pinching
- Spitting
- Tripping/pushing
- Taking or breaking someone’s things
- 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 2019 School Crime Supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey (National Center for Education Statistics and Bureau of Justice) indicates that, nationwide, about 22% of students ages 12–18 experienced bullying.
- The 2021 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) indicates that, nationwide, 15.0% of students in grades 9–12 report being bullied on school property in the 12 months preceding the survey.
Effects of Bullying
- Students who experience bullying are at an increased risk for depression, anxiety, sleep difficulties, lower academic achievement, and dropping out of school.
- Students who are both targets of bullying and engage in bullying behavior are at a greater risk for both mental health and behavior problems than students who only bully or are only bullied.
- Bullied students indicate that bullying has a negative effect on how they feel about themselves (27%), their relationships with friends and family (19%), their school work (19%), and physical health (14%).
- Students who experience bullying are twice as likely as non-bullied peers to experience negative health effects such as headaches and stomachaches.
- 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.
- Tweens who were cyberbullied shared that it negatively impacted their feelings about themselves (69.1%), their friendships (31.9%), their physical health (13.1%), and their schoolwork (6.5%).
Source: https://www.pacer.org/bullying/info/stats.asp
Bullying and Suicide
The relationship between bullying and suicide is complex. The media should avoid oversimplifying these issues and insinuating or directly stating that bullying can cause suicide. The facts tell a different story. It is not accurate and potentially dangerous to present bullying as the “cause” or “reason” for a suicide, or to suggest that suicide is a natural response to bullying.
- Research indicates that persistent bullying can lead to or worsen feelings of isolation, rejection, exclusion, and despair, as well as depression and anxiety, which can contribute to suicidal behavior.
- The vast majority of young people who are bullied do not become suicidal.
- Most young people who die by suicide have multiple risk factors.
- For more information on the relationship between bullying and suicide, read “The Relationship Between Bullying and Suicide: What We Know and What it Means for Schools” from the CDC.
Source: https://www.stopbullying.gov/resources/facts#_Fast_Facts
Who Is at Risk
No single factor puts a child at risk of being bullied or bullying others. Bullying can happen anywhere—cities, suburbs, or rural towns. Depending on the environment, some groups—such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or questioning (LGBTQ) youth, youth with disabilities, and socially isolated youth—may be at an increased risk of being bullied. Stigma can also spread false and harmful information that can lead to increasing rates of bullying, harassment, and hate crimes against certain groups of people.
Generally, children who are bullied have one or more of the following risk factors:
- Are perceived as different from their peers, such as being overweight or underweight, wearing glasses or different clothing, being new to a school, or being unable to afford what kids consider “cool”
- Are perceived as weak or unable to defend themselves
- Are depressed, anxious, or have low self esteem
- Are less popular than others and have few friends
- Do not get along well with others, seen as annoying or provoking, or antagonize others for attention
However, even if a child has these risk factors, it doesn’t mean that they will be bullied.
Additionally, students with disabilities, students of color, and students who identify or are perceived as LGBTQIA are at an increased risk of being bullied.
Sources: https://www.stopbullying.gov/bullying/special-needs
https://www.stopbullying.gov/bullying/lgbtq
https://www.pacer.org/bullying/info/stats.asp
Interventions
- Bullied youth were most likely to report that actions that accessed support from others made a positive difference
- Actions aimed at changing the behavior of the bullying youth (fighting, getting back at them, telling them to stop, etc.) were rated as more likely to make things worse
- Students reported that the most helpful things teachers can do are: listen to the student, check in with them afterwards to see if the bullying stopped, and give the student advice
- Students reported that the most harmful things teachers can do are: tell the student to solve the problem themselves, tell the student that the bullying wouldn’t happen if they acted differently, ignored what was going on, or tell the student to stop tattling
- As reported by students who have been bullied, the self-actions that had some of the most negative impacts (telling the person to stop/how I feel, walking away, pretending it doesn’t bother me) are often used by youth and often recommended to youth
- Tweens reported using a variety of strategies to stop the bullying including blocking the person bullying them (60.2%), telling a parent (50.8%), ignoring the person (42.8%), reporting it to the website or app (29.8%), and taking a break from the device (29.6%)
Source: https://www.pacer.org/bullying/info/stats.asp
When adults respond quickly and consistently to bullying behavior they send the message that it is not acceptable. Research shows this can stop bullying behavior over time.
Parents, school staff, and other adults in the community can help kids prevent bullying by talking about it, building a safe school environment, and creating a community-wide bullying prevention strategy.
For information and resources about all types of bullying, who is at risk, what we can do to prevent bullying as well as how to help kids that are bullied please visit the following websites:
https://www.pacer.org/bullying/
For free Elementary School Educational Activities from Pacer.org visit:
https://www.pacer.org/bullying/classroom/ele-curr/
Sno-Isle Library Staff Book Lists for bullying:
Helping Teens Cope with Bullying:
No More Bullies-Picture Books for Young Advocates
Help for Childhood Bullying
Podcasts on Bullying
https://www.goodinside.com/podcast/2360/what-to-do-when-your-kid-is-bullied/
https://player.captivate.fm/episode/aff8198a-b503-45af-bfe6-b3cc31cfcf8c
https://player.captivate.fm/episode/eac9861b-7fac-4b33-9270-e428098760b1
National PTA Resolution on Bullying:
WA State PTA Testimonies on Anti-Bullying and Anti-Harrassment:
https://wastatepta.org/tag/anti-bullying/