Experience of Young People Being Bullied Report (Assessment)

Reflection

Introduction

Bullying is one of the issues that has been discussed extensively yet remains part and parcel of the day-to-day reality (Department of Education 2017). It is truly surprising how the phenomenon has spun out of control over the past few years, leading to a range of social conflicts. To manage the issue, one will have to reconsider how communication occurs, as well as what behavioral strategies people choose to participate in a conversation. By shaping the traditional models and breaking the old that has been in use for decades, one will be able to create the environment in which bullying will become not impossible, but manageable.

The recent technological breakthrough has opened new opportunities for bullies. The creation of the environment in which people can hide behind a nickname has led to a massive drop in the responsibility levels among online users. As a result, the communication process has become significantly less careful, and the exposure to the abusive behavior of online bullies has grown exponentially for a range of vulnerable members of the population (Department of Education 2017). Therefore, the issue needs to be addressed at all levels, including the online one. As a result, dramatic improvement can be expected.

Problem Statement

Bullying has always been a significant problem and claiming that the Internet, as well as other innovative technologies, has created an even greater problem would be quite a stretch. Naturally, the transfer of the communication process into the realm of social networks has opened new opportunities for bullies to reinforce their attacks on their victims. As a result, the problem is becoming increasingly big. The anonymity which users enjoy online affects their responsibility levels significantly, triggering an immediate drop in the responsible attitudes among the target population.

Furthermore, the long-term effects that bullying has on the health status of people involved are beyond deplorable. As explained above, there is strong evidence that bullying leads to an increase in the risk of depression and the associated disorders in not only the victims of bullying but also their attackers (Serra-Negra et al. 2014). It is quite peculiar that bullies themselves are also subjected to the threat of developing health issues, including physical and mental ones. Apart from the depression-related concerns marked above, bullies may also develop substance abuse. Thus, it is crucial to determine the factors that encourage bullying and design the strategy that will help reduce the effects thereof in the target audiences by reconsidering their behaviors and approaches to communication (Cosma, Balazsi, & Baban 2015).

Examples and Effects

When addressing the issue from the health perspective, one must bring up the fact that bullying has a plethora of adverse effects on not only the victim but also the bully. Another reason for concern is that bullying comes in a variety of forms. As stressed above, the Internet has opened new possibilities for bullies to exercise their abusive behavior in the realm of virtual reality. Thus, the subject matter is slowly crawling into every single domain of people’s lives. However, apart from the identified dichotomy, bullying can also manifest itself in gender issues (e.g., sexual harassment), business (workplace bullying), etc. Therefore, it is crucial to study the nature of the subject matter to manage it appropriately (Serra-Negra et al. 2014).

Last but not least, the fact that bullying has a directly negative impact on both the physical and mental health of an individual needs to be mentioned. According to the studies conducted on the subject matter, bullying may lead to the development of depression (Nazir & Piskin 2015), anxiety (Min et al. 2015), sadness and loneliness (Rytila-Manninen et al. 2014), indifference toward previously enjoyed activities and hobbies (Nkporbu & Douglas 2016), changes in sleep and eating habits (Afzai 2014), etc. Bullies themselves are also exposed to a range of threats to their physical health and emotional well-being, such as substance abuse, aggressive behavior, depression, anxiety, etc. (Ferrara et al. 2015).

Learning Process

I must admit, though, that the process of carrying out the research required a substantial amount of effort and a lot of skills. Therefore, the information received previously about the means of conducting research was crucial to the success of my study’s outcomes. Understanding how to prepare for conducting a study by gathering the relevant materials and identifying the sources that can be deemed as credible was essential to the credibility of the outcomes.

When conducting the research, I found out that it was imperative to consider different opinions on the subject matter even though some of them seemed debatable. In other words, it became obvious during the study that every opinion voiced in a scholarly source deserves being heard and that, to come up with a compelling analysis of the problem, one must take every single opinion into account.

Furthermore, the need to select the keywords with the help of which the search was conducted also became clear in the process. For instance, even though the issue of bullying involved a range of issues that needed to be addressed, only several items related to a single topic had to be included in the set of keywords used for the search; otherwise, the results would have been unsatisfactory, and very little evidence would have been found. Therefore, the process of locating the necessary data was split into several stages, each encompassing a particular aspect of bullying.

The methodology was also chosen with due care and diligence. General research was used as the means of gathering the relevant data and analyzing it. Therefore, there was no need to recruit any participants; instead, a detailed overview of the recent findings of the problem was conducted. As a result, a range of ethical issues, such as problems with the retrieval of informed consent, were avoided. The data was analyzed with the help of a content analysis so that the essential issues regarding bullying could be identified. It should be noted, though that the identified aspects of research can be deemed as contested due to their nature. Since the choice of the methodology suggests that the problem could only be viewed from one perspective, there is always a possibility that some of the issues might be overlooked. Similarly, the credibility of the analysis results may hinge on several extraneous factors. Therefore, one must admit that the current study has its limitations.

Literature Review

Introduction: Bullying as a Phenomenon

Understanding bullying is the first step toward managing the problem successfully and designing the tools that will help handle it successfully (Lapidot-Lefler & Dolev-Cohen 2014). Therefore, scrutinizing the subject matter and determining the factors that cause it are crucial steps toward eradicating it from the landscape of social interactions (Espelage 2014). Claiming that the approach in question will become a silver bullet against bullying would be quite a stretch; however, it will provide the foundation for designing adequate management strategies in the future (Keliat et al. 2015).

According to the existing definitions, bullying can be viewed as an “intentionally harmful behavior perpetrated by one person or a group” (Saleh, Judge, & Grudzinskas 2014, p. 118). Another source suggests that the notion should be interpreted as “a form of aggression that can be direct and indirect and includes physical, verbal, psychological, and relational acts; that is intentional and occurs in a relationship characterized by a power imbalance, and that is replaced over time” (Gitterman 2014, p. 201). Finally, it is assumed that bullying can be defined as “a form of interpersonal aggression or hostility” (Chiocchio, Kelloway, & Hobbs 2015). The latter definition is by far the broadest and the vaguest of all three. However, it helps realize that the notion under analysis may be shaped significantly based on the construct with the help of which it is analyzed and the environment in which it develops (Farrell et al. 2014).

Types of Bullying

Young people face the threat of being bullied far more often than it is usually believed. In the study in question, the age of young people under analysis stretches from primary school (i.e., age 5-7) to their first work experience (i.e., considering the experiences of people aged 19-25 years old). Although the identified age category is rather broad, it helps embrace the variety of abusive attitudes that young people may experience.

School bullying is, perhaps, the least subtle and the most uninhibited type of bullying experiences that young people can undergo. In the identified scenario, bullying occurs at the level of interactions between students and, therefore, is easier to address when introducing a uniform set of standards and values for learners. The factors that may trigger bullying in the school setting include family background, poverty rates, and other characteristics that set students aside from each other (Cerezo et al. 2015).

Bullying in a family is, unfortunately, a nonetheless common occurrence in the contemporary global setting. The same is true for a significant amount of foster homes (Didascalou et al. 2015). When being exposed to a completely alien environment, a child is unable to address the problem.

The juvenile justice setting also involves a certain amount of bullying. Similarly to family bullying and the one that occurs in foster homes, the juvenile-justice-related one is quite difficult to address since it typically implies that adults – and, more importantly, the ones that have a certain amount of authority – play the role of bullies (Chou et al. 2014).

Bullies and Their Victims: Profile

The differences in the financial capacities of the students’ families and the amount of power possessed by adolescents and young adults, however, are not the only factors that define the personality of bullies and their victims. A generally positive attitude toward violence as the means to an end is another traditional characteristic of a bully, especially in adolescence or young adulthood (Gomez-Oritz et al. 2017). Failure in academic progress and problems in relationships with the family members are also viewed as typical constituents of a bully’s profile, especially in the school setting (Johnson et al. 2013). As far as gender is concerned, girls and young women are prone to be the victims of bullies to a much greater degree than boys and young men, who, in their turn, often assume the role of a bully (Kochel et al. 2015).

Effects of Bullying

There is no need to stress that bullying has deplorable effects on adolescents and teenagers that are subjected to it daily. Depression and social ostracism that bullying triggers in teenagers and young adults may even serve as the trigger for suicidal thoughts and eventually result in tragedy. Studies show that bullying also has long-term effects (Kochel et al. 2015). Contributing to the development of specific behaviors according to which people ill, later on, model their interactions with the rest of the world.

Furthermore, as explained above, there are a plethora of health issues that bullying entails among victims and bullies alike. Depression is a common condition that young bullies and their victims tend to develop. Similarly, various types of anxiety, including a social one, can be deemed as characteristic of the people that have experienced bullying in some way or have been displaying aggressive behavior toward others (Gitterman 2014). According to the results of the longitudinal study carried out to identify the long-term effects of bullying, the people that assumed the role of a bully in their adolescent years were four times more likely to develop an antisocial personality disorder than those who abstained from bullying others in their teenage years (National Institute of Mental Health 2013).

Tools for Addressing the Problem

Bullying is a complex phenomenon that needs an elaborate management approach. Since it is caused by a range of psychological, societal, and economic factors, it needs to be handled at the identified levels accordingly. In other words, it is crucial to promote a set of specific values with the help of an appropriate leadership strategy so that people could develop different communicational approaches based on the ethical standards that are promoted to them as socially acceptable (Tsai 2014). The enhancement of ethics and values is especially important as it will allow reinforcing the sense of responsibility in the participants of the communication process and serve as the primary foil for the decision-making process. Therefore, the target members of the population will develop the communication strategies that will help them identify bullying as an inacceptable model of behavior and, therefore, refuse from adopting it in their day-to-day interactions.

As far as the choice of the leadership strategy is concerned, the transformational approach should be viewed as the key means of managing the change. Helping the participants remain motivated, it will serve as the foundation for successful communication. Once young people learn about bullying, its threats, and nature, they are likely to refuse from using it ever again (Payne et al. 2016).

Conclusion

Bullying is one of the problems that are often taken for granted. Despite the measures taken to address the issue, bullying remains an integral part of interactions among young people, especially in the educational setting. Affecting the health outcomes of all parties involved, bullying as a nationwide problem must be addressed.

Reference List

Afzai, K 2014, ‘It’s time to ask the right questions: highlighting critical areas to explore cyberbullying in adolescents’, Journal of Child & Adolescent Behavior, vol. 4, no. 5, pp. 135-137.

Cerezo, C, Sanchez, C, Ruiz, C, & Arense, JJ 2015, ‘Adolescents and preadolescents’ roles on bullying, and its relation with social climate and parenting styles’, Revista de Psicodidáctica, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 139-155.

Chiocchio, F, Kelloway, E K, & Hobbs, B 2015, The psychology and management of project teams, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.

Chou, WJ, Liu, TL, Yang, P, Yen, CF, & Hu, HF 2014, ‘Bullying victimization and perpetration and their correlates in adolescents clinically diagnosed with ADHD’, Journal of Attention Disorders, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 1–10.

Cosma, A, Balazsi, R, & Baban, A 2015, ‘Bullying in Romanian school children: the role of substance abuse’, Psicologia, Saude & Doencas, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 44-56.

Department of Education 2017, Facts about bullying, Web.

Didascalou, E, Rossi, C, Vergou, C, & Andreou, E 2015 ‘Greek adolescents’ victimization experiences, reactions, ability to cope and sense of school safety’, American Journal of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, vol. 2, no. 5, pp. 41-51.

Espelage, D 2014, Workshop to examine current and potential uses of NCES longitudinal surveys by the education research community, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL.

Farrell, AH, Cioppa, VD, Volk, AA, & Book, AS 2014, ‘Predicting bullying heterogeneity with the HEXACO Model of Personality’, International Journal of Advances in Psychology (IJAP), vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 30-39.

Ferrara, P, Bottaro, G, Cutrona, C, & Riccardi, R 2015, ‘School bullying: an international public health emergency correlated to psychosomatic problems as long-term sequelae’, Minerva Psichiatrica, vol. 59. No. 3, pp. 103-108.

Gitterman, A 2014, Handbook of social work practice with vulnerable and resilient populations, Columbia University Press, New York, NY.

Gomez-Oritz, O, Romera, EM, & Ortega-Ruiz, R, & Gomez, J 2017, ‘Multidimensionality of social competence: measurement of the construct and its relationship with bullying roles’, Revista de Psicodidáctica, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 1-16.

Johnson, SL, Waasdorp, TE, Debnam, K, & Bradshaw, CP 2013, ‘The role of bystander perceptions and school climate in influencing victims’ responses to bullying: to retaliate or seek support?’, Journal of Criminology, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 1-10.

Keliat, BA, Tololiu, TA, Daulima, NHC, & Erawati, E 2015, ‘Effectiveness assertive training of bullying prevention among adolescents in West Java Indonesia’, International Journal of Nursing, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 128-134.

Kochel, KP, Ladd, GW, Bagwell, CL, & Yabko, BA 2015, ‘Bully/victim profiles’ differential risk for worsening peer acceptance: the role of friendship’, Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, vol. 41, no. 1, pp. 38-45.

Lapidot-Lefler, N & Dolev-Cohen, M 2014, ‘Differences in social skills among cyberbullies, cybervictims, cyberbystanders, and those not involved in cyberbullying’, Journal of Child & Adolescent Behavior, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 1-9.

Min, A, Park, SC, Jang, EY, Park, YC, & Choi, J 2015 ‘Variables linking school bullying and suicidal ideation in middle school students in South Korea’, Journal of Psychiatry, vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 1-7.

National Institute of Mental Health 2013, Bullying exerts psychiatric effects into adulthood, Web.

Nazir, T & Piskin, M 2015, ‘School bullying: effecting childs mental health’, The International Journal of Indian Psychology, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 130-134.

Nkporbu, AK& Douglas, KE 2016, ‘Prevalence and pattern of work place bullying as psychosocial hazards among workers in a tertiary institution in Nigeria’, Open Access Library Journal, vol. 3, no. 1, p. 2627.

Payne, HE, West, JH, Crookston, BT, & Wilkinson, J 2016, ‘Predictors of peer victimization in Peruvian adolescents’, Journal of Child & Adolescent Behavior, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 287-292.

Rytila-Manninen, M, Lindberg, N, Haravuori, H, & Frojd, S 2014, ‘Adverse childhood experiences as risk factors for serious mental disorders and inpatient hospitalization among adolescents’, Child Abuse and Neglect, vol. 38, no. 12, pp. 2012-2032.

Saleh, F, Judge, A, & Grudzinskas, A 2014, Adolescent sexual behavior in the digital age: considerations for clinicians, legal professionals and educators, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.

Serra-Negra, JM, Paiva, SM, Bendo, CB, Fulgêncio, SB, Lage, CF, Correa-Faria, P, & Pordeus, IA 2014, ‘Verbal school bullying and life satisfaction among Brazilian adolescents: profiles of the aggressor and the Victim’, Comprehensive Psychiatry, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 132-139.

Tsai, SC 2014, ‘Childhood bullying of males on the basis of sexual orientation in rural North America: a longitudinal examination of victims’ perceptions, part one: the 1960s’, Asian Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences (AJHSS), vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 66-76.

Appendices

Appendix A: Summaries of Weekly Reading

Bullying is one of the numerous forms of aggression that can manifest itself in a variety of ways. Bullying may come in the forms of physical, emotional, and other types of abuse. Despite the fact that a range of attempts have been taken to prevent the problem from occurring and eradicate bullying from the society and the process of interaction between adolescents, it remains part and parcel of the present-day reality. Bullying leads to an array of health issues, from physical to mental ones. Depression and suicidal tendencies as a result of low self-esteem can be viewed as the most dangerous effects of bullying. The problem needs to be handled at several levels, including social interactions and the personal development of an individual affected by bullying. With due care, a recovery becomes a possibility, yet caution must be taken when managing the needs of both bullies and their victims.

Appendix B: Data Gathering Tool

In order to collect the necessary data, the tool known as general research was applied. To be more specific, a detailed overview of the latest information on the topic of bullying was carried out. The databases of scholarly journals related to healthcare were viewed as the essential storage of primary and secondary sources. Furthermore, the sites belonging to the state organizations such as the National Institute of Health were considered as the source of statistical data and essential information about the problems of bullying that adolescents face on a daily basis. The information collected with the help of the tool was quite useful in understanding the nature of the problem and the ways of approaching it. In the course of the search for the relevant content, keywords such as “adolescents bullying effects”, “adolescents bullies victims,” “bullying educational setting,” etc. were used. In the course of the search, only peer-reviewed scholarly journals were selected. Furthermore, the date of publication was set at no earlier than 2013. As a result, only recent and, therefore, credible data was considered.