Cyberbullying And Race / Ethnicity : A Study Of Philadelphia High School Students

In 2015, roughly one out of four students (22%) reported being bullied (National Bullying Prevention Center). These students develop social withdrawal, symptoms of anxiety and depression, and physical complaints throughout their primary and secondary educational years (B.B. 77). Sometimes, it does not stop there. Students that have been bullied are 2.4 times more likely to report suicidal ideation and 3.3 times more likely to report a suicide attempt than their peers who report not being bullied (National Bullying Prevention Center). Measures need to be taken so that these statistics aren’t as high and alarming. Bullying is a problem, but it is a problem that can be resolved.

Students experience many negative effects from bullying which effect their mental, emotional, and physical health as well as their social well being and academic performance. (Berger, 2007). Diversity and bullying are often linked. Learning to respect diversity means that we as a school district and community must eliminate bullying (San Antonio & Salfass, 2007). Much research has been done on student perceptions of bullying but few have examined the issue from the perspective of school counselors.

Bullying is defined as the prolonged malicious act of harming peers by abusing their own--or an existing imbalance of--power, and has become one of the most common sources of trauma among adolescents. One report shows that one of three children were victims of bullying during some point in their life, and that 10-14% of all adolescents were victims of chronic bullying for at least six months prior to participating in the survey. Children who were victims of bullying are also found to be at a higher risk of diagnoses for anxiety disorders and depression during young and middle adulthood. These victims are reported to be more likely to have lower levels of general/physical health, and lower educational acquirements than young and middle-aged adults who were not bullied (Wolke & Lereya, 2015). Because bullying is such a prominent problem, citizens, policymakers, and social scientists alike, should feel or have some social and moral obligation to address, and hopefully avert bullying. The state of bullying, and how it is enacted, is constantly changing and adapting to social frameworks. Because bullies can adapt to social changes and regulations, we, as a society, should be equally adaptive in how we perceive, address, prevent, and punish bullying.

Bullying has become more of an issue that is threatening our younger generation today. Bullying is becoming more of a vicious act in public schools throughout the United States (Coloroso, 2003; Felix & McMahon, 2006). There are many adverse effects that are caused by this disgraceful act. The average school-age child is silently or overtly tormented on a daily basis. Many of these students who experience bullying feel that they have no one to talk to, or that they have no where to go. The motives that the bullies take can cause harmful and even devastating results. In today’s society, bullying provokes emotional, social, and cognitive distress in the

Bullying at school is a big problem that is found in all the schools in the United States and across the world. Since the late 1990s there have been several fatal school shootings committed by victims of bullying that have brought bullying major media attention. This has resulted in an increase of awareness about the harmful effects on the kids being bullied as well as the bullies themselves. This has brought a large amount of local, state, and nationwide programs designed to try to prevent bullying or to at least try to contain the problem. “In an effort to adequately address the problem, many schools are taking a proactive approach through prevention and intervention, but how do we know if and when such intervention is effective? First and foremost, we must have an accurate understanding of the dynamic and complex phenomenon of bullying across development and as it spans the multiple levels of the social ecology” (Casper, Meter, & Card, 2015, par 2). Many psychologists, sociologists, and school administrators have been publishing research on school bullying. Bullying is a significant threat to many children because it causes psychological problems not only for those who get bullied but also those who do the bullying. Even though bullying is a significant problem the are few solutions that can help prevent or significantly reducing bullying like reporting bullying, know the characteristics, and passing laws.

Bullying has always been a very common issue in schools, but not easily recognized or taken care of. It was not until the increased number of s hootings in the 1900's and suicides that attention was brought into bullying in schools or “schoo l-bullying” (“School Bullying” 1). Today bullying impacts up to thirty percent of middle- to high-schoo l students (“School Bullying” 1). Whether or not bullying is more dominant in one’s life i s dependent on the age group: bulling general starts in early preteen years, but subsid es before adulthood.

The first study in this section was conducted by Cornell, Gregory, Huang, and Fan (2013). The participants of the study include ninth-grade students and teachers. Students provided reports of bullying victimization, and both students and teachers reported their perceptions of the prevalence of teasing and bullying at school, using the Prevalence of Teasing and Bullying (PTB) scale (Bandyopadhyay, Cornell, & Konold, 2009). Measures of peer victimization were obtained from 25 ninth-grade students and 10 ninth-grade teachers from Virginia public high schools. The study revealed that bullying, as perceived by both students and teachers, was predictive of dropout rates four years later (Cornell et al., 2013). The results of the study provided evidence that peer victimization in high school is an important factor in high school academic performance. The results of the study also contributed to knowledge about predicting dropout rates of high school students who have been exposed to bullying (Cornell et al.,

The Bullying Policy has been introduced around the world which, according to the 2014 observations , rates of bullying vary across studies from 9% to 98%. An observation of 80 studies analyzing bullying involvement rates for both bullying others and being bullied for 12-18 year old students reported an estimate rate of 35% for traditional bullying involvement and 15% for cyberbullying involvement (Modecki, Minchin, Harbaugh, Guerra, & Runions, 2014). This means the Bullying Prevention Policy affects million of students nationwide due to the programs created. More specifically, females face a higher indication of bullying victimization than males do. To explain, high percentages of each gender are faced with the aggressive acts of violence, making it extremely hard to perform well in the school environment. Furthermore, as many as 93 percent of students hear derogatory words about sexual orientation at least once every day at school or in their community (violencepreventionworks). Negative name calling and harassment about sexual orientation can be disrespectful to all students. For an example, 3 out of 4 students who are bullied/harassed with such remarks are not identified as lesbian, gay,

In most cases 64% of students do not report being bullied and only 36 % of students report it. Moreover, having an adult intervene on behalf of the student being bullying has been effective in reducing the hostile behavior against the other student being bullied by more than half of the bullying situations by 57%. Programs against bullying have shown to decrease the percentage of children being bullied by up to 25%. Above all, students have reported to be bullied the most because of appearance by (55%), body shape by (37%), and race by (16%). Cyber bullying (online bullying) has become common among students and 19.6% of children become victims. From those children who are being cyber bullied 90% report being bullied in person as well. However, children who have a disability have a higher chance of being bullied two or three times more than children who are not disabled. Children who identify as LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) were also bullied because of what they identified themselves with in regards of their sexual orientation. For that reason, 81.9 students from the LGBTQ community were bullied. Overweight students were victims of bullying and 64% were reported. Lastly, being a victim of bullying elevates suicidal ideation by 2.4 attempts more, and 3.3 more times likely to prepare a plan and proceed to commit suicide. In conclusion, children need interventions such as positive reinforcement and cognitive therapy to overcome the effects of bullying (Pacer,

Bullies are often insecure teens themselves, and many bullies suffer from teen depression as well. Teens are more at risk of being bullied than others, including teens with special needs. Being perceived as different from the greatest peer group is one of the main reasons for depression in teens, and bullies tend to target teens who are different from them in some way. It is important for parents and school officials to look out for the warning signs that a teen is being bullied based on his or her race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or religion. Just because a teen has one or more risk factors for bullying does not mean that action needs to be taken, but it does mean that the adults in the teen’s life should look for signs that there is a problem at

To expect greatness in any field of life, it all starts from a place of quality education and that's what America has constantly strived for. School is the place where everyone is given equal opportunity to learn and shape himself or herself into contributing members of society. At the same time each individual’s academic success defines what it means to have a good life. Unfortunately, schools face lots of problems trying to do the right thing. Among major challenges that schools face, bullying has a strong attribution to the poor academic experience among student victims. Today, students still risk being bullied everyday. This paper studies bullying in secondary school with

Bullying among school-aged children is regarded as a widespread problem in the United States and there is no one-size-fits-all solution to the problem. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES), over one third of students in elementary and middle schools are impacted by bullying (Klein, 2012). Bullying is defined as “unwanted, aggressive behavior among school-aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. The behavior is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated, over time” (Klein,2012). Studies show that the consequences of bullying not only include students who are bullied, but the effects extend to those who bully and

Seals and Young (2003) studied the prevalence of bullying and its relationship to grade-level, gender, ethnicity, self-esteem, and depression. Participants in their study consisted of 454 seventh- and eighth-graders in five school districts in the Northern Delta area. These students were primarily African American (79%) and Caucasian (18%). Researchers gave these students three questionnaires to assess exposure to and effects of bullying/victimization: the Peer Relations Questionnaire, which assessed bully, victim, and prosocial behaviors; the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale; and the Children’s Depression Inventory. This study found that 24% of respondents reported being directly involved in bullying activities, of which 10% reported doing the bullying, and 13% reported being victims of bullying. The results also suggested that males were significantly more involved in bullying than females, and were twice as likely to be identified as a bully. Both genders, however,

Bullying in the United States has become epidemic, but some schools are resistant to instill anti-bullying programs, because they fear the program will be ineffective. The article, Creating An Anti-Bullying Culture In Secondary Schools: Characterists to Consider When Constructing Appropriate Anti-Bullying Programs, researchers Joseph R. Jones, and Sharon Murphy Augustine address the issue of bullying head on. Research indicates that students who are from a low socioeconomic background, students who are racially diverse, students who have a learning disability, and student’s sexual orientation has the largest effect on bullying rates in the United States (Jones &Augustine, pp. 74-76). In a recent survey, twenty five percent of students reported that they are bullied on a daily basis and that cyber bullying is at an all time high (Jones &Augustine, p. 74). Due to the increased rates of bullying, there is an increase on teen suicide and school shootings. (Jones

Bullying is recognized as one of the most significant public health concerns in the United States facing school aged children. As well as, most common type of school violence. Resulting in psychological and behavioral issues for both the victim and the bully. According to Brown, Low, Smith and Haggerty. “victims of bullying [exhibit] more loneliness and depression, greater school avoidance, more suicidal ideation and less self-esteem than their non-bullied peers” (Brown, Low, Smith & Haggerty, 2011, p.424). While victims of bullying tend to display more internalizing outcomes, bullies externalize the effects. Leading to conduct problems and delinquency. Bullying has a negative impact on school performance for both victim and bully resulting in lower levels of academic achievement, school avoidance and more conflicts with teacher and students (Brown, Low, Smith &