Negative Effects Of Bullying

Societal pressure also comes in the form of body shaming, which is defined as the criticism of another person’s body shape or appearance. According to a 2016 study, there is correlation between body shaming, body dissatisfaction, and eating disorders, all of which happen to be most prevalent in young women (Mustapic p. 447). In recent years, body shaming has become a huge problem due to the popularity of social media platforms. Women of all shapes and sizes are ridiculed on Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and other sites for not conforming to societal normalities. The 2016 study also assessed eating disorders in relation to age and body mass index (BMI) of participants (Mustapic p. 449). Age did not have much effect on the data, which is unsurprising due to the fact that all participants were close in age. What is more surprising, however, is that BMI also had little effect on the data. One would think that women with greater BMIs would

“Body image begins to form in grade school because that’s when children/people start comparing themselves to others,” said Dr. Gene Beresin, a child and adult psychiatrist and associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical. Body image is how a person perceives themselves, including their imagination, emotional, and physical sensations (The Media and Body Image, 1). Teens that suffer from negative body image let the bad thoughts shatter their self-esteem, the sense of how valuable they are as people (Maynard, 1). The lowered self-esteem may lead to depression, eating disorders, or mental disorders. Bryan Karazsia, the associate professor of psychology at the College of Wooster, said, “Body dissatisfaction is not linked with health. It’s linked with a lot of negative things like eating disorders, unhealthy exercise habits, low self-esteem, and depression.”

In the United States alone, 40-60% of girls in elementary and middle school are worried about gaining too much weight and not being accepted by anyone ("Prevalence vs. Funding" 1). Adolescents and women are surrounded with the idea of culture’s “perfect body type” where girls are stick thin and gorgeous. Culture is obsessed with outer beauty and being as flawless as you can be, and often leave out how important inner beauty is. This idea of outer beauty often results in women trying to warp their body image to please the people around them ("Prevalence vs. Funding" 4). Adolescent girls use the media to help figure out how they should look and act, which consequently mirrors how their eating patterns change and evolve. Adolescent girls are targeted by culture, pressured by their peers surrounding them, and taunted by their own self-consciousness, often leading up to acquiring an eating disorder. When the eating disorder is acquired, it often had many damaging physical effects on the person’s body.

Not only does bullying have a negative effect of making young girls believe they are not good enough to live, it also sways them to believe that they must strive for the “perfect” body. In other words, trying to be as thin as possible and taking any means necessary to achieve that is almost a no brainer. It has been proven that bullying has a significant effect on disordered eating, essentially meaning that girls who are bullied based on their physical appearance are more likely to develop some form of an eating disorder. (CITE) Simply put, girls are starving themselves to attain what society thinks is the perfect body, and to gain the acceptance most people so desperately crave. In Marge Piercy’s poem “Barbie Doll” examples of how the main character tries to meet that goal of “perfection” is expressed using words like “exercise” and “diet” even though she is previously

Anorexia is considered a form of self-harm as it is a self-inflicted disorder which can severely affect both your mental and physical health. The symptoms of anorexia include an intense fear of gaining weight, a refusal to maintain a healthy weight and a distorted body image. (Smith, Melinda. 2016.) These symptoms can develop from the low self-esteem bullying incurs. The physical effects of anorexia are more evident as short-term psychological effects of bullying. Long-term psychological effects are also evident in those with anorexia nervosa. If the disorder remains untreated these individuals are at greater risk of developing body dysmorphic disorder due to the distorted body image. (Smith, Melinda. Feb. 2016.) One out of five suffering from anorexia loses their life to suicide. An example to this is in 2009 a mother filed a lawsuit against the Pittsburgh Public Schools, claiming her daughter developed anorexia because other students bullied her, about her weight and the schools didn’t do anything about it. Causing her daughter to become very ill. (Mandak, Joe. 2009) Another disease caused from bullying is bulimia

One of the major self-esteem issues that individuals suffer with is body image. People today look at celebrities in magazines and usually wish that they could look like them. Or, they see their friend with the nice muscles, or the toned legs and feel that since they do not have them, they are not as good as them. Because of this, it causes their confidence to drop. Along with body image, bullying is another way to lower an individual’s confidence.  For example, a nerdy kid gets made fun of when walking into class because their back pack is very big.  Since he feels that he is different from everyone else, his appraisal of himself decreases and he starts to feel like he is worthless. And finally, a way that society can reduce someone’s self-esteem is excessive criticism. Such as when a child is repeatedly told that they are no good. Because they are always being told that they are worthless, consequently, they soon start to feel this way.  When society is constantly pushing a body image that makes individuals lose confidence, or when someone is being bullied or being excessively criticised, then an individual’s self-esteem will decrease, which is negative because they feel like they do not belong in this society.

All forms of bullying are inhumane and hurt the victims as well as family members. These acts of violence carry long term effects. One way I feel that school officials can help prevent bullying is by requiring the perpetrators to have to attend mandatory counseling alone with their primary care giver. I feel that if we start holding parents accountable for their children’s actions there will be a lower chance of that child repeating the action. It will also show parents the devastation bullies victims experience, as well as help them determine the underlying cause of their actions. I also believe that the penalties for second or third offenses should be in the form of removing that individual from the setting. It may sound harsh, but why should

Adolescents at a young age might worry about dieting, weight, and their eating habits if they’re worried about being teased by their classmates. Teasing is common among younger children because during this time physical appearance and weight is usually the main focus. Children will often mimic what they have seen on the media and have conversations with their classmates about what they’ve seen. This creates a negative body image on children because of all the bad influences that are usually portrayed on social media and television. Peers often report back to their classmates and mimicing what they saw gives children the ‘ok” that it’s right to reflect back on these negative body issues that is shown publicly for the world to see. Children are so pressured to already fit into a certain ‘type’ they lose concentration of the primary reason they attend school just so their peers can accept them. According to Dr. Jacqueline Harding, an adviser of the Professional Association for Children and Early Years (PACEY) "By the age of three or four some children have already pretty much begun to make up their minds (and even hold strong views) about how bodies should look," she said. "There is also research evidence to

Bullying has always been an issue in schools, but it has taken off with social media and it affects people anywhere they go. Bullying affects people emotionally, but many would think of a child could suffer long lasting effects of bullying. Mental health is affected as well with the way people do things and it has come down to medication to fix the effects of bullying years after they were bullied. The physical out come has become a problem more than people think or care to notice, sometimes only one person will notice. School and friendships could be affected if someone was bullied and we don’t link low grades and being alone back to bullying. We assume that it’s just the child being lazy and not smart enough to know

“Studies have shown that more than half of girls and a third of boys as young as six think they need to be thinner, and about a quarter of children as young as seven have engaged in some sort of dieting behavior(“Body”).” Society must take action now to prevent any further issues with adolescent insecurities.

Through my research I have discovered also that teen’s social groups play a role on influencing body image.

Bullying is an unwanted aggressive behavior intended to hurt people. There has been bullying incidents in different places. The outcome of all victims who are bullied end up being physically or emotionally injured. Most suicides happen because of bullying. Negative consequences of blaming the victim include low self-esteem for the victim, denial of fear by the critic, and avoidance of responsibility on the part of the bully.

In the article by Puhl and Luedicke the focus is bullying on obese adolescents. The purpose of the study was to examine how those targeted for having larger BMI’s coped with the teasing and to gage their emotional reactions. To answer the questions a survey was conducted at two high schools from central Connecticut. Before conducting the survey, the authors already know some of the repercussion of weight based victimization. That included emotional and physical damage and a decline in academics. “These consequences include risk of depression, anxiety, poor body image, social isolation, suicidality, maladaptive eating behaviors (e.g., binge eating, eating disorder symptoms and avoidance of physical activity” (Puhl & Luedicke, 2011, p. 2). The study also noted that academics suffered due to weight based bullying. Often the student being bullied would not come to school to avoid the conflicts. With this new study there were several specific goals and research questions that were to be examined at the high schools. “To identify specific coping strategies endorsed by adolescents in reaction to experiences of weight-based victimization, examine affective responses in reaction to weight-based victimization among adolescents. Based on recent research documenting vulnerability to negative affect (e.g., depression, low self-esteem) among obese youth who have been teased about their weight Second, the study aimed to examine links between weight-based victimization and school

Among different phrases of life, self perception of body image had been found to have strongest impact on one’s psychological well-being during adolescence (Aliyev & Türkmen, 2014). Body shape and weight are two critical determinants of self-esteem in adolescence because physical attractiveness is frequently associated to interpersonal success (Koyuncu, Tok, Canpolat, & Catikkas, 2010). As a result, negative body image, or body dissatisfaction, could be very dangerous as it could potentially lead to eating disorders (Thompson, Heinberg, Altabe, & Tantleff-Dunn, 1999) and depressing (Johnson & Wardle, 2005). Starting in adolescence, juveniles, especially girls, demonstrate high awareness to their appearances as they would respond to weight and appearance concerns by going on extremely strict diet restriction and severe weight control effort, such as self-induced vomiting, laxatives,

Other experiences with peers that may impact body dissatisfaction and eating behaviors are stigmatization and marginalization by peers as teasing and bullying. While teasing refers to comments about appearance, that maybe or not intentionally hurtful. Bullying is used to describe intentional, aggressive acts that are directed toward a victim who cannot readily defend himself or herself, and that are repeated over time. Indeed, children’s and adolescents’ peers are the most common perpetrators of both appearance shaming and bullying. Traditional, face to face bullying peaks in late childhood and in the early phases of adolescence. With the emergence of the Internet and mobile phone devices as important platforms for social interaction between peers, however, it appears as if online bullying continues longer, well into the middle phases of adolescence (Tokunaga, 2010).