Bullying is an expression of violence. It is defined as aggressive, intentional acts carried out by a group or an individual repeatedly and overtime against a victim who cannot easily defend himself/herself. It is common in teenagers. We see in school kids in power bully innocent teens and make them feel uncomfortable and scared. For those kids, this might seem fun but the one who gets bullied suffers a lot from mental health issues. It can be done in many forms- physical, verbal, emotional, cyber, or sexual.
Physical Bullying
Physical Bullying is unwanted physical contact between bully and victim. It includes fighting, hazing, headlocks, kicking, punching, hair pulling, inappropriate touching, pushing, etc. It can also include spilling liquids onto a victim, throwing small and lightweight objects at a victim, using weapons including improvised ones, theft and/or damaging personal belongings, etc.
Verbal Bullying
Verbal Bullying includes saying statements that make the victim feel bad about himself/herself and causing mental torture. It includes using foul language for the victim, using derogatory terms or deriding the person’s name, commenting negatively on his/her looks, clothes, and body, tormenting, harassing, mocking and belittling, threatening to cause harm, taunting, teasing, and making inappropriate sexual comments.
Emotional Bullying
Emotional bullying is the form of bullying that causes damage to a victim’s psyche and/or emotional well-being. It includes spreading malicious rumors about a person, “ganging up” on others (this could also be considered physical bullying), provoking others, or saying hurtful things which could harm the victim from inside. This bullying can also make the victim depressed and could provoke him/her to take the wrong step.
Cyberbullying
Cyberbullying is done by using technology to harass, embarrass, or target some person. It includes making a fake account of a person, making online threats, sending hurtful emails or texts, posting embarrassing photos or videos of the victim. Cyberbullying is a growing issue among young people as teens are always on their mobile phones. It is also common because there is less risk of being caught in this type of bullying.
Sexual Bullying
Harassing or physically harming someone in a sexual manner is called sexual bullying. It can also include any verbal or emotional attacks which can humiliate or shame a person sexually. It includes name-calling, crude remarks to obscene gestures, and uninvited exposure or touching. When such comments about a target’s appearance or sexual development turn physical, it turns into sexual assault. It doesn’t need to happen between opposite genders only. Girls also sexually bully other girls, shaming them with hurtful labels that expose or insinuate their promiscuity and the same goes for boys.
What Can Schools Do To Prevent Bullying?
As bullying mostly happens in schools or colleges, they can take some steps to prevent this.
Anti-Bullying Policies
The school must have a policy for bullying. The teachers, students, and parents should know where the school stands with bullying. It should have strict policies for bullying without any biases so that everyone could come there without any hesitation.
Organize An Anti-Bullying Speaker
The school should organize anti-bullying seminars to share their sentiments. This inspires the students and influences them. This can change their perspective of bullying and they can go in the right direction.
Reward For Good Behavior
When students do something bad it is easy to point out and punish them. But what if you caught someone doing something good. In that case, appreciate them and reward them, this will encourage students to do good things and will avoid them doing bad things.
Events For Bullying
There should be school-wide events that focus on bullying. For example “Bullying Awareness Wednesday”. Schools and colleges can also organize activities in each class such as designing slogans to put on the walls. It is not only the duties of schools as well as parents to take steps to teach their students the right things. If students are taught from the start what is right and wrong they will never do such things and bullying can be prevented.
