Bullying refers to a type of aggression that revolves around other forms of assault and abuse against kids as well as adults, including sexual, physical, emotional, and verbal abuse, which peers or strangers perpetrate. All types of aggression contribute to power imbalance abuse, which entails using power negatively to subjugate, dominate, humiliate, or control other people. From this perspective, it becomes evident that bullying is not just a behavior people learn (Jenkins & Nickerson, 2019). Rather, it is a social problem as well. Hounding is not a problem that just affects schools. Harrying exists in various forms and diverse relationships among adults too. Harassment is evident in varied spheres of life, including both private and public within the society. Mistreatment can take place in families in line with intimate relationships, especially via violence against children and women (Elliott, Hwang, & Wang, 2019). Victimization also occurs in sports, workplaces, politics, the media, and sports, although it bears different names when it affects adults.
The bullying problem mostly affects adolescents as well as pre-adolescents. Unluckily, bullies can lead to long-term physical and psychological damage to the victims. Since young people refrain from bullying others in the presence of adults, parents and teachers remain unaware of the practice. As such, they rarely interfere to aid children in dealing with the bullying act or to stop bullies. The time victims spend with peers, if characterized by systematic power abuse and aggression, usually results in adverse implications during adult life. Nonetheless, long-term outcomes have not received sufficient research. Numerous parents either fail to deal with the bullying of their kids, are unaware of how to, or face challenges in broaching the issue. Written policies on bullying and behavior have does little to minimize the bullying problem. As such, bullying remains a community and health issue that requires general practitioners (GPs), parents, teachers, schools, and other community organizations to collaborate to address the problem (Calvete, Fernández-González, González-Cabrera, & Gámez-Guadix, 2018). The paper discusses bullying as a social problem in the community.
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Scope and Consequences
Consequences of Social Problem
Bullying has various short-term as well as long-term repercussions for both the victims and the perpetrators. Whereas traditional bullying intercessions require seeking aid for the victim and establishing repercussions for the perpetrators, it crucial to note that both the bully and the victim can realize benefits from psychological interventions. When it comes to the short-term implications of bullying for victims, it is vital to realize that all kids are unique while they are likely to portray differing behaviors during as well as after bullying (Jenkins, Demara, Fredrick, & Summers, 2016). Since relational aggression and cyberbullying have increased significantly, it is essential to note that bullying can continue for extended periods before the victims seek assistance. Among students, for instance, bullied kids usually perform poorly in school while most bullied are the worst affected academically. The various effects of bullying on victims comprise of shame, social isolation, low self-esteem, shifts in eating habits, sleep disturbance, school avoidance, poor performance at school, depression symptoms, and anxiety (Murphy, Laible, & Augustine, 2017). These repercussions affect the health and wellbeing of the victims socially and emotionally.
Aside from the victims, bullying behaviors also affect the perpetrators. Whereas empathizing with the bully is difficult, school officials and parents must realize that certain reasons drive bullies to engage in bullying behavior. Failure to help the bullies would lead to continued bullying behavior, which might worsen significantly over time. The consequences of bullies might comprise poor school performance since the bullies miss schools because of suspensions. The risk of truancy also increases while at the same time leading bullies to face challenges in maintaining social relationships (Canty, Stubbe, Steers, & Collings, 2016). The risks of substance abuse also increase among bullies.
Studies also reveal that bullying behavior also has long-term psychological repercussions on the victims. All the individuals involved in bullying during their adolescent years, including victims and bullies, face severe mental effects in adulthood. Whereas victims portray increased depressive symptoms during adulthood, the two groups experience higher incidences of psychiatric hospitalization because of mental health conditions (Calvete, Fernández-González, González-Cabrera, & Gámez-Guadix, 2018). When it comes to the victims, the provision of immediate and appropriate mental health support will eradicate several of the long-term implications of bullying. However, lack of interventions would predispose the victims to issues, such as chronic depression, higher incidences of suicidal thoughts, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorders, substance abuse, self-destructive behavior, poor health, and difficulties in establishing trusting relationships and friendships (Erika, Pertiwi, & Seniwati, 2017). These implications are severe in that they require addressing to improve the overall wellbeing of the victims.
Regarding the bullies, failure to interfere with their bullying behavior might lead them to continue such conduct into adulthood. The risks of child and spousal abuse, antisocial behavior, substance abuse, and reduced chances of receiving education or employment would increase. In this sense, bullying indeed has severe impacts on both the short and the long-term health of the victims. Abrupt involvement and follow-ups during the long term would assist mediate several of these implications (Murphy, Laible, & Augustine, 2017). Hence, schools, communities, and families should ensure to work together to gain increased comprehension of bullying and its repercussions and devise means of reducing and eradicating bullying in schools and society.
Scope of Social Problem
Bullying, particularly by peers, is a recurrent threatening or aggressive behavior between peers of unequal power or size, without including teasing in a playful or friendly manner. Adolescent bullying is the most prevalent while it comes to several forms, including physical, verbal, sexual, cyber, relational, and racial. On bullying data, it reveals that bullying ranges between 6.3 percent among Swedish girls and 41.4 percent among Lithuanian boys (Jenkins & Nickerson, 2019). In the United States, around 30 percent of students are involved in either frequent or moderate bullying, with 6.3 percent being bully-victims, 10.6 percent victims, and 13.0 percent bullies. Other studies reveal that bullying among students in middle school in the United Arab Emirates is 20 percent while Oman has 39 percent, with an average of 35 percent prevalence rate for involvement in traditional bullying while 15 percent comes in the form of cyberbullying (Jenkins, Demara, Fredrick, & Summers, 2016). When it comes to the case of Kuwait, bullying prevalence between ninth and 10 th grade based on the form of bullying ranges from 10 to 81.4 percent for girls and between 41.6 and 71.1 percent for boys. The rate of victimization is from 46.2 to 87.8 percent and between 42.7 and 80.8 percent for boys and girls, respectively (Canty, Stubbe, Steers, & Collings, 2016). From this perspective, the prevalence discrepancies relate to cultural forces and the different measures and definitions accorded to bullying.
The bullying problem relates to physical, social, and mental forces. In the case of boys, their chances of being victims, bullies, or both are higher as opposed to girls. Whereas girls and boys might have equal chances of being bullied via teasing, calling nasty names, and intentional exclusion from peers, the likeliness of boys receiving threats and being physically bullied are higher (Elliott, Hwang, & Wang, 2019). The children who have trouble in school adjustment, academic achievement, have single parents, physically weaker, have older brothers, socially isolated, or with a physical disability, including hearing, sight, speech, or walking problems, are highly likely to be involved in bullying. However, bullying prevalence, as well as victimization rates, reduce with age. By contrast, positive parenting practices are protective forces for adolescents to be involved in victimization and bullying (Erika, Pertiwi, & Seniwati, 2017). Also, having many friends is negatively associated with victimizations, whereas the bullies are less socially isolated.
Nevertheless, victims and bullies might encounter severe, long-lasting implications in their lives. Victims and perpetrators have increased chances of smoking and having trouble making friends. Individuals who bully others are highly likely to engage in risky and violent behaviors even as they reach adulthood, such as abusing drugs and alcohol, having abusive relationships, and engaging in criminal convictism. The victims usually develop psychological problems, such as loneliness and social separation, hyperactivity and psychosomatic symptoms, social phobia and anxiety, suicidal ideation, and depression, low self-esteem, and fear of attending school (Calvete, Fernández-González, González-Cabrera, & Gámez-Guadix, 2018). Bullying also implicates school attainment hence the need for addressing the repercussions at young ages to alleviate the effects on adolescents.
Social Action for Change
In the present society, various programs exist for addressing the bullying problem in society. For example, educators, parents, and counselors in American society are responding to the problem with various new and innovative strategies. The federal government has led the way by creating Stopbullying.gov. The program offers an avenue where educators and parents can acquire the resources and tools necessary to offer them the information they can utilize at school, like home, and within communities (Jenkins, Demara, Fredrick, & Summers, 2016). This amazing resource avails information concerning how to identify bullying, ways of responding to identified bullying behavior, and how to hinder it from happening in the future.
Whereas these kinds of resources have offered significant help to communities with information and support, several states have adopted their own anti-cyberbullying and anti-bullying initiatives and taken the federal government’s efforts further (Murphy, Laible, & Augustine, 2017). For example, the State of Delaware has legislation that requires schools in the state to report incidences of cyberbullying and bullying behaviors. The state has also instituted measures of allowing people to report cases of bullying to the office of the Attorney General (Canty, Stubbe, Steers, & Collings, 2016). Whereas the initiatives appear significantly helpful on the surface, legitimate concerns also exist. For example, those supporting the First Amendment claim that the definitions of cyberbullying and bullying are significantly broad in such a way that they risk threatening free speech. Many teachers, parents, and children also express concerns that bullies might take advantage of the system by issuing false reports against their victims (Jenkins, Demara, Fredrick, & Summers, 2016). Thus, whereas the existing programs appear fruitful to some individuals, others consider them as ineffective, particularly due to certain groups leveraging on the systems to take advantage of the victims.
Social Movement Action Plan
With the growing problem of bullying in society, it is crucial to have a social movement action plan, which would play an essential role in helping to combat the bullying problem. One means of doing so would be to create a reporting system. The community and schools need to establish clear processes that would facilitate in reporting violations of rules to ensure that bullies receive reasonable consequences when they break the rules (Elliott, Hwang, & Wang, 2019). Reporting systems would play a critical role in helping to track individual incidences, responses, and trends over time. To ensure that the action plan becomes effective, it would be vital to emphasize certain crucial issues. Firstly, it should be simple to increases the chances of people reporting incidences of bullying. Secondly, the reports should be maintained in such a manner that they show the emerging patterns as well as problems over time. Lastly, it would be crucial to keep the reports private and confidential, encouraging the victims to report incidences of bullying without fearing retaliation from the bullies (Erika, Pertiwi, & Seniwati, 2017). The plan would serve as a revolutionary movement in that it would welcome the affected parties to report incidences of bullying in such a manner that the perpetrators of bullying receive the punishment they deserve for engaging in such acts.
Conclusion
In conclusion, bullying is a social problem that affects both children and adults. Schoolchildren are among the most affected by the problem, although bullying also exists in other spheres of life as well. Bullying has both short and long-term implications for the victims and the bullies as well as the society while its prevalence is growing in different societies. As such, societies need to devise ways that would allow them to cope with the issue to ensure they handle the problem, such as the stopbullying.gov program by the federal government, which provides the tools and resources necessary to combat the problem. Also, adopting courses of action, such as the development of a reporting system, would play a critical role in suppressing the problem. The reason for this is that it would provide a means of safeguarding the privacy and confidentiality of the victims while ensuring that the perpetrators face the repercussions of their actions. Such actions would make society better.
The symbolic interactionism theory would offer an avenue for understanding the bullying problem and understand ways of addressing it effectively. The theory requires individuals to consider the details and symbols of daily life, their meanings, and ways persons relate with each other. From the theory, people associate meanings to symbols and later act based on how they interpret the symbols subjectively. For instance, verbal conversations are predominant symbols that make subjective interpretation apparent (Jenkins & Nickerson, 2019). In this sense, applying the symbolic interactionism theory to the bullying problem would foster an increased understanding of the symbols that characterize bullies and victims. This way, it would be possible to direct attention to the behaviors that need correcting and institute measures that tackle the bullying problem effectively. That way, it would be possible to improve the social wellbeing and health of the victims while at the same time reforming the perpetrators to adopt positive perspectives toward life.
References
Calvete, E., Fernández-González, L., González-Cabrera, J. M., & Gámez-Guadix, M. (2018). Continued bullying victimization in adolescents: Maladaptive schemas as a mediational mechanism. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 47 (3), 650-660.
Canty, J., Stubbe, M., Steers, D., & Collings, S. (2016). The trouble with bullying–deconstructing the conventional definition of bullying for a child‐centred investigation into children’s use of social media. Children & Society, 30 (1), 48-58.
Elliott, S. N., Hwang, Y. S., & Wang, J. (2019). Teachers’ ratings of social skills and problem behaviors as concurrent predictors of students’ bullying behavior. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 60 , 119-126.
Erika, K. A., Pertiwi, D. A., & Seniwati, T. (2017). Bullying behaviour of adolescents based on gender, gang and family. Jurnal Ners, 12 (1), 126-132.
Jenkins, L. N., & Nickerson, A. B. (2019). Bystander intervention in bullying: Role of social skills and gender. The Journal of Early Adolescence, 39 (2), 141-166.
Jenkins, L. N., Demara, M. K., Fredrick, S. S., & Summers, K. H. (2016). Associations among middle school students’ bullying roles and social skills. Journal of School Violence, 15 (3), 259-278.
Murphy, T. P., Laible, D., & Augustine, M. (2017). The influences of parent and peer attachment on bullying. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 26 (5), 1388-1397.
