Every term or semester, millions of students and learners are admitted to schools around the world. Some are admitted to secondary schools, while others are admitted to universities, and yet others are admitted to kindergarten. There are no indicators of harassment during the first few days of school, but as the days pass and kids learn to know their fellow classmates' temperaments, bullying develops. This is common in high schools, and many people's memories of high school are often horrifying. They remember how they were abused, ridiculed, mocked, scorned, laughed at, beaten and given impossible assignments failure to which they were in a rude shock of what would be done to them.
Bullying
In simple terms, this word means to make another person feel inferior and belittled. It happens mostly between peers who think are better than the other financially, mentally, physically and in influence. It involves harassment, assaulting someone else physically, slandering them and constantly belittling who they (victims) are. In most cases, bullying is an action that actively involves running down the ego, personality, and effort of an individual.
There are various types of bullying. They include the physical type; this is where an individual is beaten up or just roughed up so badly. It is about who is more authoritative than who? Or on the other hand, it is about who got more strength than who? The victim is often kicked, punched, pinched and strangled in order to do something that is clearly impossible to do. Like the instigator telling the victim to go out in the dark with an empty bottle and fetch the darkness and comes back in the light with darkness enclosed in the bottle. The second type of bullying is the verbal type; This does not involve any touching or physical contact. It’s always about words, about using the words as a weapon to pierce one’s heart and completely destroy them psychologically and emotionally. This is where there is a lot of demeaning and teasing. The instigators normally use the victim's weaknesses and make mockery of them using those weaknesses. The other type that is normally common and rampant among the youth is cyber-bullying; this is where there is use of social media, the instigators normally identify a weaker social media user and uses that opportunity to begin commenting very strong hateful words on their posts and this is done so that the public can see and also join in bullying the victim. Sometimes, the instigators just inbox their targets and begin to say derogatory statements that make their victims feel inferior and not worth living (Hill, Ryan M., et al. (2017)).
Bullying has become rampant not only in the United States but also in other nations around the globe. It is estimated that about thirty percent of youths and students in the United States have encountered bullying in one way or the other. This was according to statistics gathered by an organization known as Family First Aid. In schools, the younger teens are mostly victims of physical bullying while the older teens are always victims of verbal and cyber bullying. Gender also plays a major role in the type of bullying that happens among the youth/teenagers. Boys are always involved in the physical type while girls/ladies are involved in the verbal/emotion type, where they begin rumor-mongering against each other, and when things become too much to handle, they confront each other verbally. When the Verbal battle gets worst, that’s when they engage physically just to prove who is superior to the other.
For the boys, they don’t have much time and energy to spend on speaking many words. They always get so physical and always want to be known for being physically stronger than their victims. Physical bullying is harassment. This harassment can graduate gradually from one level of harassment to another and turns to sexual harassment, just like what happens in prisons. (Cutbush, S., & Williams, J. (2016)).
There are a number of effects of bullying that makes it virtually impossible for the youth to perform well academically. Physical injuries that result from beatings, kicking and strangling can be a source of pain that does not allow the patient to concentrate on whatever is being taught in class. They can’t also have personal study time because they will spend that time nursing their injuries. This is one source of poor academic performance resulting from bullying.
When a teen student or pupil is always disturbed by what the bullying peer said, they spend most time withdrawn from the others and sometimes skip classes. They can’t be free with their fellow students because of what the instigator said to him/her in front of a crowd. This means that they will not be free to ask questions and to go straight to the lecturers or teachers whenever they didn’t understand a concept. This would affect their school performance. To add onto this, there are various teenagers who give their attention to social media and post staff that they like. They, therefore, expect to have lots of likes and comments. From the comments, there are many people who say lots of demeaning statements, these teenagers then internalize these statements and derogatory statements and they fall into a state of depression and psychological torture. Eventually, they don’t perform well in school and sometimes they commit suicide.
It is assumed that those who bully always have a free and happy life. This is not true because behind that bold face they give to the world, they have their personal fears and intimidations. It is these fears and intimidations that make them wild and outspoken because they do not want to be overtaken by the nature of those shortcomings. They, as well, in their quiet time have these concealed weaknesses torturing their minds. Most of them feel horrible bullying others but that’s the only way they can boost their self-esteem (Asif, A. (2016))
In order to reduce or stop bullies from successfully completing their mission, teenagers can move in groups. This is because the bullies usually are in the habit of singling out their victims and doing with them whatever they want. Another remedy is to report any form of bullying to the relevant authorities. This is difficult to do since the bullies might come back for the person who reported but it is wise to report anonymously in order to be safe from the wrath of angry bullies. (Hill, Ryan M., et al. (2017)). Not keeping quiet about bullying is the best thing one can do to him/herself. Teachers and parents should also be vigilant and look out for signs of bullies in school and in the neighborhood and stop them on the spot.
In conclusion, bullying is like academic cancer, it can never be present in the school life of any person, and that person manages to pass or make commendable academic performance. Bullying affects the adolescent’s emotions, academics, psychology, health, self-esteem, world view and his or her posterity as a whole. If not handled in time, it leads to chronic depression and eventually suicide.
Work Cited
Cutbush, Stacey, Jason Williams, and Shari Miller. "Teen dating violence, sexual harassment,
and bullying among middle school students: Examining mediation and moderated mediation by gender." Prevention Science 17.8 (2016): 1024-1033.
Hill, Ryan M., et al. "The role of bullying in depressive symptoms from adolescence to emerging
adulthood: a growth mixture model." Journal of affective disorders 207 (2017): 1-8.
Asif, Ammara. "Relationship between Bullying and Behavior Problems (Anxiety, Depression,
Stress) among Adolescence: Impact on Academic Performance." (2016).
