Bullying involves activities or behavior that the members of society who has more power tend to exercise their power over those with less power to force them to do what they require them to do. This practice is unwanted and is common in public schools especially middle or high schools. It is characterized by the imbalance of powers, aggression among who practice it and may occur repeatedly. Bullying can either physical or emotional attack, threatening, passing rumors, or even isolating someone from a group with a purpose. Physical attacks include hitting, yelling, or grabbing someone’s item while emotional attacks include laughing at someone, nicknaming her/him, or making a person not happy with himself or herself. The results of bullying are fear, distress or harm to the bullied. This behavior is not acceptable in any society, and
...there is a need for addressing it as a big issue. This paper aims at discussing bullying as it occur in middle school and addressing the bullied on effective ways of avoiding this act.
As defined in the above, bullying is an intimidation of people with less influence by those with higher influence. Apart from the above forms, bullying may take other many forms depending on the context on which it occurs. For instance, if the bullying occurs in the context of computers then it can be termed as cyberbullying if it happens due to the difference in races, it is racial discrimination and many other forms of gender discrimination, discrimination based on religion and many other forms of bullying like homophobia and sexual harassment. Cyberbullying occurs over electronic and communication media and involves the use of devices like mobil
phones, computers, and other communication devices together with communication/social networks like social media, chat, and websites. Here bullying take place through text messages, phone calls, spreading rumors by email or over social media, unpleasant pictures and videos posted on social sites among others (Kowalski 2007). Although bullying causes distress, not all behavior that leads to distress qualifies to be termed to as bullying. This exception covers behaviors like mutual conflict where there is disagreement but no imbalance of power, social rejection more so if done deliberately and repeatedly and physical aggression in the form of nastiness are not treated as bullying.
From the experts’ point of view, the following reasons are the causes of bullying. The primary reason people bully others is to be noticed. They think that when they force and push others forcing them to do according to their wishes, people will notice them. According to experts, these people draws the attention of other people and end up being popular people. Others bully with an intention of hurting the victims so as to see they crying and how they behave and respond back when they are nervous. Also, bullying can be as a result of lack of close supervision from those who are responsible while other bully due to self-inspiration from their personalities or due to lack of or they suffer from low self-confidence. Again jealousy may lead to bullying especially based on classwork performance (Ma 2002). For example, poor class performers may tend to bully that small student who defeats them in classwork. Furthermore, if issues of mutual conflict are not well settled, they may lead to bullying but in a form of
revenge. Others may get personal feelings then transmit those feeling to others in the form of bullying. For example, if a student was punished in the school may transmit the bitterness to other by bullying them.
Cyberbullying has become a common issue in the current technology. It does not only happen on civilians but also on students. Among children, cyberbullying occurs when a child is harassed, embarrassed, or threatened by another child through the internet or mobile devices like cell phones and tablets (Kowalski 2007). It does not always occur among children alone but sometimes among a child and an adult. This case the bullying is termed to as exploitation. For example, when adults lure children to offline meetings, this is referred to as sexual exploitation or sexual predator. Sexual predator occurred when children bully adults intrigued through sexual harassment. In this context, the form of bullying depends on child’s exposure to technology and his/her imagination. There is a frequent change of role from being bully to a victim, sometimes being a victim others being a bully. Cyberbullying results punishment due to exceeding their authority and violation of their free right of speech. This educates the student on cyber-ethics and law.
There are many effects of cyberbullying to students. They engage themselves in use of alcohol and drugs. They believe alcohol and drugs will reduce their distress. They may drop out of schools especially the bullied ones. This is due to the fear of the repetitive act of being bullied from day to the other. The bullies drop out of school escaping the due punishment whenever they are caught bullying others. Instead, the bullied may not drop
but instead become unwilling to attend schools. Victims also scope poor grades in classwork. This is due to lack of enough time to study and self-drive while revising the coursework. They also suffer from self-esteem and may end up having some health problems. Other effects may include suicidal thoughts, poor appetite, lack of sleep and fear.
Due to the above effects, students are advised on how to cope up with these environments and the following are ways on how to avoid bullying in middle school. Firstly, make use of body language rather than relying on verbal confronting. The body language here suggests the way of walking, i.e. walk upright without pocketing. This will make the student appear more confident as well as bigger. Also, embrace and try as much as you can to attain it. Self-esteem gives self-confidence which should be in all the students. Again the students are advised not to fight unless you are well skilled (Ma 2002). Make sure you don’t speak a lot since that can serve as evidence against you. Try to be humble and do not react according to their expectation. Avoid doing anything physical to the bully, instead, just walk away. Do not keep quite but tell your counselor and continue if it is repetitive.
To conclude, bullying is repetitive behavior that the influential person exercise on the less influential person to intimidate him or her. The form of bullying depends on the context in which the events occurs. Bullying can be physical, emotional, isolation, sexual harassment among many others. Bullying that occurs due to the difference in sex is termed to as gender discrimination, that occur based on the
difference in color or race is racial discrimination. Bullying is caused by the lust for power, recognition from the other, lack of self-esteem among other causes. It leads to distress, abnormal fear, skipping school, healthy problems, and many other impacts. The victims are required not to engage in physical violence with the bullies but do nothing and report the matter to their counselors.
Reference
- Ma, X. (2002). Bullying in middle school: Individual and school characteristics of victims and offenders. School effectiveness and school improvement, 13(1), 63-89.
- Kowalski, R. M., & Limber, S. P. (2007). Electronic bullying among middle school students. Journal of adolescent health, 41(6), S22-S30.
