Teen Bullying

Simply studying at high school or college might be dangerous for a teenager. Teen bullying is a very complex situation to find the way out. Peer harassment can provoke a teen to get depressed, violent, or even commit suicide.

Bullying is one of the most underrated problems at school today. Bullies often consider such behavior as a good way to gain recognition and respect from other students and maybe adults. Unfortunately, most bullying goes unnoticed and unreported. Yet, the scars from bullying can last a lifetime, showing up in depression and even suicide. Alternatively, this form of harassment can result in vengeful, violent behavior such as school massacres.

Bullying is a series of violent and aggressive acts directed towards other teens. There are 4 types of bullying:

Physical Bullies
Physical bullies are action-oriented. This type of bullying includes hitting or kicking a victim or taking or damaging a victim's property.

Verbal Bullies
Verbal bullies use words to hurt or humiliate another person. Verbal bullying includes name-calling, insulting, making racist comments and constant teasing.

Relational Bullies
Relational or relationship bullies try to convince their peers to exclude or reject a certain person or people and cut those victims off from their social connections. The most devastating effect with this type of bullying is the rejection by the peer group at a time when children most need their social connections.

Reactive victims
Reactive victims are often the most difficult to identify because, at first glance, they seem to be targets for other bullies. However, reactive victims often taunt bullies and physically bully other people themselves. A reactive victim may provoke a bully into action, then fight back and claim self defense.

Signs of bullying
You can understand that your teenager is being haunted by bullies by constant fear and reluctance to go to school, loneliness, and decrease of self-esteem and worsening of performance at school. If not stopped, bullies continue their cruel job and they become more and more cruel and merciless.

It is parents’ duty to observe their teenagers and prevent them both from becoming bullies or their victims. The bullying must be stopped with all possible help as it has really bad consequences for both bullies and their victims. More than a half of identified bullies have a criminal conviction by the age of 24. Young children who were labeled by their peers as bullies required more support as adults from government agencies, had more court convictions, more alcoholism, more anti-social personality disorders and used more mental health services.

Emotional scars from bullying can last lifelong. Most victims are afraid to report bullying. Even when they do report such facts, few adults know how to cope or intervene with bullying situations. Children and teenagers who are repeatedly bullied sometimes see suicide as their only escape.