Paper Example on Bullying: A Growing Scourge in Society

Introduction

Some people find pleasure in abusing, coercing, intimidating, or use of force to threaten others. Such people are known as bullies, and the act of coercing, intimidating, mocking, abusing, and use of physical strength on others is bullying. In most cases, the vice affects students in learning institutions. However, there are other forms of bullying in various societal levels, such as workplaces, correctional facilities, and predominantly everywhere in society. Recently, the invent of technology brought about a form of bullying known as cyberbullying, which takes the vice to a whole new level. It is the kind of bullying that affects anyone using the internet. For instance, this form of bullying has been used by politicians to attack their opponents. It is also used when people of different races attack one another via the internet. Bullying is a national problem affecting mostly young people. As a result, it is essential to examine the types and dimensions of bullying, its harmful effects on society, and preventions and intervention mechanisms.

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Dimensions and Types of Bullying

Studies indicate that bullying is developed in childhood. Children who are raised by strict and harsh parents or relatives tend to create negative attitudes. They also exhibit violent characteristics (Moon, 845). Therefore, when they get to school, they extend the same negativity and violence learned at home to fellow students. The situation tends to be worse if such students have massive bodies that make them feel like they command authority in the school. Besides violence within a family setup, children can develop bullying behaviors such as laughing and mocking others because of their physical looks, races, and sexual preferences. They generate these behaviors if parents fail to teach them that it is terrible to look down on others because of their physical appearance.

Bullying has been a prevalent issue in learning institutions across all schools across the globe. In African countries, bullying was particularly experienced in the secondary school level of education. It was seen as a way to strengthen and make the students endure the sufferings when in school. Thus, bullying in African schools was advocated to help students grow and become responsible people who can face difficult life situations.

There are four distinct dimensions of bullying. It can be physical, verbal, social or emotional, and cyberbullying. Physical bullying is where a person usually older or more energetic than another, cause bodily harm to another person. It can be in either beating, kicking, whipping, or any other form of punishment that causes physical injury to another person. It is the most common type of bullying. The bully can be punished for causing bodily harm to another person. The verbal dimension of bullying is where one person speaks ill of another person to destroy their reputation. It is a type of bullying that is mostly used by politicians and celebrities when attacking one another. Verbal bullying usually causes emotional stress to the bullied person. The third dimension of bullying is social or emotional bullying. In this type of bullying, a person is rejected by others in society, making him/her feel stigmatized. It is a type of bullying that causes emotional stress. Cyberbullying is the fourth dimension of bullying. It closely relates to social or emotional bullying. The only difference between the two is that cyberbullying relies on technology. In cyberbullying, the perpetrators can use words, images, or videos that cause emotional stress to a person. Cyberbullying is the most recent type of bullying. Research shows that social or emotional bullying and cyberbullying are the leading cause of suicides in learning institutions compared to the other types of bullying.

Bullying in Learning Institutions

Bullying, in most cases, occurs when people from different backgrounds form a social unit like a school, military camps, prison, among other social settings. Bullying has been the cause of violence in schools disrupting the overall learning environment by threatening the safety of learners, their teachers, and the general staff. It indirectly causes campus shootings, which have reportedly been on the rise since the 1990s. Studies indicate that these shootings are usually acting of retaliation following bullying activities in school. Thus, it causes tension and other forms of unrest within institutions of higher learning in the United States. Although gun shoots create public attention, there are other forms of bullying, causing severe damages in these institutions and communities in the surrounding (Chester 11).

More severe and recurrent school violence includes cyberbullying, gang violence, and gender-based strife among students. According to Chester (1), one review done in 2014 suggests that 35% of young learners experience bullying at some point every year. Moreover, as indicated by the analysis, in a class of 30 students, ten will become victims of bullying at school by the end of a year. In addition to the report, the child helpline also confirmed that bullying in schools is among the top three reasons school-going children contact them.

Bullying and Health

Bullying can have very harmful effects on the health of the victims. The detrimental outcomes of bullying speak about how severe the consequences can be to the health of the victims, which lasts into adulthood with signs of distress or depression and anxiety ("School violence" 6). Health practices, in most cases, focus on the victims of bullying activities even though reports say that the executors have serious adverse outcomes in the future.

According to Chester (1), there is a link between rational bullying and low quality of life on the victim and the bully, while Sam et al. (1305) also talk about the adverse health effects of cyberbullying. These two forms of bullying are probably the least common, but they equally have severe health complications. They destroy the victim's peer relationship and statuses by making them feel belittled and less fitting into society. These forms of segregation may involve social exclusion, whose net health effect is psychological torture, emotional distress, and depression. These symptoms are predominant in children who rarely socialize with their peers.

Effects of Bullying

When analysing the impact of bullying, it is essential to keep in mind that the perpetrators of bullying are individuals who are suffering from either mental or psychological experiences (Whitley 63). They are victims who use intimidation as a mean of either escaping their distressful past or hide something in their life that they consider being a weakness. Therefore, bullying has numerous consequences and often have far-reaching effects both on the victim and the bully

Emotional Trauma

Bullying causes emotional trauma, which is just as harmful as physical injuries. The intensity of the "emotional pain" resulting from bullying and the tendency to underestimate its impact on the affected person makes them likely to incessantly develop server trauma (Baier, Dirk, et Al., 2348). It can lead to significant "emotional scars," for example, failure, rejection, guilt, and other everyday psychological injuries. For instance, extreme cases of bullying manifest among students include forced by a bully to sleep outside the dormitory. Such experience makes the victims develop a "feeling of inadequacy" defencelessness, worthlessness, and despair. Their "sense of wellbeing" is dwarfed. In fact, at a later stage in life, emotional distress may make the victims develop a sense of isolation, fear, high irritability, or even desire to also bully as a means of getting even.

Social and emotional bullying and cyberbullying are the leading cause of psychological trauma. Emotional trauma is the most dangerous effect of bullying. In extreme cases, the emotional trauma can lead to the death of the victim or the bully if the victim decides to avenge the bully. There are numerous cases of students committing suicide due to bullying. There was a girl from Virginia who committed suicide as a result of bullying. She killed herself because her classmates edited her photos in a manner that showed that she was naked. The classmates posted the picture on a class Facebook page for everyone to see. The girl ended up committing suicide because of the humiliation and ridicule of the class.

Physical Symptoms

Bullying occurs in various ways, such as violent, aggression, and physical attack, which may hurt the victim. The victims can also suffer physical injuries if they are forced to do hard things. The aggressive attacks may cause injuries such as bone dislocation or loss of eyesight, which can result in permanent damage. Nevertheless, the emotionally inflicted pain also manifests physically through symptoms such as insomnia, chronic pain, headaches, stomach aches, anxiety, and dizziness. Physical injuries may also occur when the victim attempts to avenge the bully.

In a school setup, bullying can cause absenteeism, low self-esteem, and reduced morale of a student. Bullying that is driven by racial differences, sexual preferences, or social status can lead to a division in the school, society, military institution or prison. The division can lead to the development of gangs on either side. The situation can amplify to a severe rivalry between two opposing teams. Numerous cases of tribal, racial, cultural, or group conflicts start as simple bullying activities.

Just like other targeted social vices such as racism, bullying is also motivated by the bully's feeling that he or she is not the same as the victim. In this case, the "feeling of not being the same" motivates them to be aggressive towards the victims. Anything that creates a sense of "social stratification," such as sexual orientation, predisposes individuals to bullying. Therefore, a child who belongs to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) community are at higher risk of being bullied by their peers (Russell et Al., 224) compared to the straight ones. "Racial, ethnic, and religious minorities also tend to attract higher rates of attention from bullies than members of majority groups" (Earnshaw et Al., 1003). Research and proven analysis sources are all from sociology, psychology, and statistics. These sources have shown many adverse effects of bullying on the victim, which have far-reaching consequences.

Prevention and Interventions

Bullying is a problem that affects everyone in society either directly or indirectly. It is a problem that has existed for a long time because society has failed to address the issue with the seriousness that it deserves. The first step in prevention and intervention of bullying in the community is to understand the root cause of bullying. Bullying starts to develop at a very young age. The environment in which a child is brought up plays a significant role in creating a bully in the child. Therefore, it is the role of the parents to raise their kids in a peaceful environment. Scolding a child and using cursing words on the child can severely affect the child. Parents should also warn their children when they are still young against discriminating, laughing, talking ill, and mocking others because of their physical looks, sexual preferences, disabilities, or social status.

The bystander effect is one of the reasons the prevention of bullying has not been successful. The bystander effect is a phenomenon expert use to explain a situation whereby a third party witnesses a victim bullied but cannot make any efforts to help in such a case. It is essential to prevent any form of bullying, whether there is a relationship or no relationship between the person passing by and the bullied. People should be concerned about others, even if they are strangers. That...