Research Paper on Teen Dating Violence

Introduction

Domestic violence is the abuse or in a domestic setting. When the term domestic violence is mention, it is often stereotyped as physical violence only. However, from a broader perspective, domestic violence is any behavior by an individual with the aim of gaining control or power over a partner or spouse in a domestic setting be it a girlfriend or boyfriend or an intimate family member. The public stereotyping of this violence as only physical assault leads to a misunderstanding of domestic violence thus the rise in issues of domestic abuse. Physical abuse can be very lethal, but the destruction of individuality accompanying the other forms of violence cannot be ignored. Domestic violence can range from sexual abuse, isolation, emotional abuse, economic abuse, control, manipulating male privilege and verbal abuse which can include threats, blame or duress. Domestic violence does not discriminate. It affects anyone in any ethnic background, age range, and economic level.

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Domestic violence can start as early as during the teenage. When emotional, sexual and psychological aggression occurs in the confines of a relationship, this is termed as teen dating abuse. Stalking can be to a type of dating violence whereby a person is harassed threatened causing fear. This upcoming type of violence is gaining popularity resulting in devastating long-term and short-term effects. Victimization can start at teenage and develop into a behavior. When teens engage in behaviors for example 'name- calling', teasing among others, they take it as normal.

However, these slowly developed behaviors can end up becoming serious violence. People who are in the dating arena are expected to respect each other and not mislead each other according to ethics. Many victims of dating violence fail to report for fear of opening up to the family or friends. Dating violence can happen electronically or in person, for example, leaking explicit photos of a partner in the social media of regular texting. Physical dating violence is when a partner is physically assaulted through beating, slapping, kicking or any other form of physical assault. On the other hand, emotional abuse is when threatening or depriving a person of his or her sense of self-worth for instance through bullying, shaming, embarrassing or depriving someone of the right to social relations. Coercing a partner to engage in a sexual without his or her consent is a form of sexual abuse in a relationship. Dating violence is slowly becoming a public health problem. Statistics of teen dating violence vary widely since different studies measure and define violence in different ways over different time periods in different population groups. A Survey of youth risk behavior in the United States found that one out of ten of students in the past one year was physically abused by their partners in dating (Kann et al., 2014).

In another study examining the prevalence of teen dating violence among 7th - 12th-grade students in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York in the U.S, results indicated that in the past one year 9% of the teens experienced sexual violence by being forced into sexual activity. Additionally, 20.7% were physically abused, 32.6% faced psychological abuse, and 18.0% reported experiencing cyber teen dating abuse for example partners stalking their phones ("Teen Dating Violence," 2018). Teenagers who do not have healthy role models to emulate find themselves at a higher risk of getting into abusive relationships. At teenage, these youngsters are still learning how to behave in a relationship, boundaries in relationships and learning about abusive and controlling behaviors. By striving to get control of their lives, the teen is prone to finding themselves with bullying behavior and also dating violence. These behaviors are as a result if teenagers are trying to establish dominance. Teenagers are youngsters whose cognitive and emotional development is still taking place. Thus, the experiences they get in their relationship highly influence their general behavior (Makin-Byrd et al., 2013).

Teen dating violence can result in either long-term or short-term consequences on their development. Abusive teen dating victims can have poor school performance, engage in drugs and substance abuse and physical fight and also have suicidal thought. Teen dating violence is also implicated in eating disorders among the teenagers ( Haynie et al., 2013). According to (Foshee, Reyes, Gottfredson, Chang & Ennett, 2013), the consequences of dating victimization differed depending on the form of abuse. Psychological victimization was linked to an increased likelihood of alcohol abuse while physical violence was directly correlated to cigarette abuse. Also, girls reported increased marijuana use as a consequence of physical violence. Additionally, physical abuse was linked to increased likelihood of isolation from friends among the boys. According to (Vagi, O'Malley Olsen, Basile & Vivolo-Kantor, 2015), teen dating violence was also connected to high-risk behavior in that teens who experienced any dating violence were at a higher risk of engaging in high-risk behaviors as compared to those who never experienced any form of violence.

The rise in technology use has led to an increase of cyberstalking or bullying among the teenagers as a way of gaining control. Cyber controlling behaviors in teen dating starts as simple behaviors like too much texting over the daytime which can develop into the use of text messaging a way of monitoring their partners and knowing who they spend their day with. According to ("Teen Dating Abuse," 2018), the digital technology has become a platform of dating harassment among the teenagers. According to this study, teenagers were found to abuse their ex-partners or partners using the social media for example by sending degrading messages, pressuring them for explicit photos and sex and also by intentionally embarrassing them in the face of a digital technology audience. The most prevalent form of harassment was illegally tampering with a partner's social media account. This kind of harassment was reported to result in other forms of dating violence. Teenagers find themselves enslaved in abusive relationships since there are still high chances of seeing their partners' every day for example if they are in the same school. Some teenagers also lack safe social connections that can give the safe distance away from their abusive partners ("Teen Dating Abuse," 2018).

Teen dating violence affects many youths across the globe. However, specific groups are more prone to this kind of violence. More young women than men are prone to dating violence. However, statistics do not exclude the male gender. Teenagers of younger age become victims of dating violence than their counterpart who are older. Violence behavior has been reported to start at the age of 12 years. From a study carried out in U.S 20.9% female students and 10.4 percent of the males reported different forms of dating assault. The female students were more prone to all forms of violence as compared to the male students. Teen dating violence was also connected to high-risk behavior in that teens who experienced any dating violence were at a higher risk of engaging in high-risk behaviors as compared to those who never suffered any form of violence (Vagi, O'Malley Olsen, Basile & Vivolo-Kantor, 2015).

Teen dating violence topic is of importance in sociology and the school system as a whole since it tries to shed light on the issues affecting the teenagers and the society as a whole. There is need to improve the sociology program in schools to address the issue of teen dating violence. The school system and sociology as a program have been dealing with other issues affecting the society as a whole, but the topic of dating violence has been left out for a long time. This topic should be incorporated into the sociology program and also the school system to raise awareness of dating violence among the teenagers. Programs should be started in schools, for example, safe dating programs to educate the teenagers on how to protect themselves from being victims of dating violence. These programs will educate the teenagers on what healthy and normal relationships are thus preventing dating abuse among the teenagers (Temple, Le, Muir, Goforth, & McElhany, 2013).

With the incorporation of this agenda into the school's programs, the teenage schools will serve as the protectors of the students by defending them a form of harassment sexual violence is one of these forms of harassment. By shedding some light on the issue, the schools will have the responsibility to enact policies and rules about the behavior of students and ensure the enforcement of these policies and rules to protect the teenagers against these forms of violence. The dating violence behavior needs to be ingrained in the rules and policies of the schools and should be a punishable behavior thus improving the system by promoting good social interactions among the teenagers. These efforts will give the school system and sociology program a new face with the ability to promote healthy interactions among the teenagers and the youths as a whole (Temple, Le, Muir, Goforth, & McElhany, 2013).

There have been efforts to address the issue of teen dating violence, but some of these interventions bore no fruits. Some schools have incorporated the topic of healthy dating into their school programs. These programs, however, have not been helpful in addressing the issue of teen dating violence. Despite the school management hiring qualified student counselor, the counselors could not help the dating assault victims. School counselors are trained by counseling, but they do not receive training based on teen dating violence. Schools also do not have the right protocol to deal with teenage dating violence ("Teen Dating Violence, 2018").

In some states, dating violence awareness and prevention programs have been launched to bring to an end the issue dating violence among the teens. These programs vary in length with some going for a day and others for more than twenty sessions. A number of the programs address the issue with a feminist perspective while others apply gender-neutral perspective. These programs focus on gender stereotyping, attitude, management of conflict and problem-solving. Examples of these programs include the safe dates project which entails community activities for example support services for adolescent victims and also school activities which include poster contests, teaching curriculum of 10 sessions each 45 minutes long and theatre production where peers perform. The participant of the study reported a reduction in being perpetrators or victims of physical, psychological and sexual violence among teens of the 8th and 9th grade. However, this project did not show effectiveness in lowering the prevalence of severe psychological and physical violence. The project participants reported the refusal to admit violence and the gender roles defined by the society thus a need for help ("Dating Violence Prevention," 2018).

Another program, the 4th R in Canada was implemented among 9th-grade students through engaging classroom sessions. The program was effective in lowering the prevalence of assault in dating among the participants. Shifting Boundaries program showed effectiveness in that it increased the students' knowledge about dating violence and also ways to avoid violence ("Dating Violence Prevention," 2018). Other programs have also been applied have been effective. In the state of Pennsylvania, the Senate passed a bill to amend public school code addressing teen dating violence in 2013. This will help schools handle violence among teen in relationships through creating dating policies, training school facul...