Bullying, Social epidemic by Desiree Stiles

            After finishing up your school lunch, you head towards the restroom for a break, but suddenly a taller boy than you appears with a look of despair. You asked to get by, but this random boy decides to throw you against the wall and belittle you by calling you a twig. Confused on the interaction you just had, you inform your teacher, but she just brushes you off as if nothing happened. Imagine this fearful altercation happening every day of a nine-month period but does only stop but continues to progress. This is a life of a victim of bullying. Bullying is a horrific social epidemic that is an act of aggressive/intentional behavior towards others. This is considered an epidemic because of the harm it causes to many children in schools. There are many types of bullying including cyber, physical, verbal, and social (Types of bullying). Any of these types of bullying can cause serious problems in a child’s life and can have either short or long-term effects upon an individual. These effects may involve self-harm, suicide, low self-esteem, depression or aggressive behavior. These dangerous causes of bullying are serious and should be addressed by adults to better enforce the non-bullying standard. The victims of bullying have many opportunities ahead of them with school, fun, family and friends, and these should not be disrupted with bullying. There should be a standard implemented for teachers in the school system so that this worldwide social epidemic can be solved. Constant checkups on the teachers discipline efforts regarding the bullies should be maintained and the victim’s well-being must be observed continually.

            How someone becomes a bully stems from the start of life at home to adolescents. From the famous author, “Hurley” there are many factors that can contribute to the growth of a bully, which are inner anger, insecurity, bad social skills, lack of discipline, lack of empathy, academic stress, child abuse, a victim of bullying themselves and estranged parents (“The secret life of bullies: Why They do it-and how to stop them”). When a child is brought into this world all he/she does is absorb everything like a sponge, from accents, style, phrases, language and behaviors (1). If not managed correctly, a child can absorb the wrong things to sprout into something terrible (1). The most common ones are bullies. For example, if a child constantly sees parents screaming at each other, he/she begins to feel that this is normal behavior (1). Obviously, this is not normal and should not be reenacted into a situation with another child. Unfortunately, this pattern occurs many times. Growing up around these toxic acts shows a child the only way to handle conflict is by screaming and fighting. This can be potentially very dangerous because as a child grows up to adulthood, he/she can do inflict more damage upon another person. Then those adults have their own children, and the toxic cycle continue, and more people exchange this epidemic (1). Basically, parents are supposed to be the example for life for their children, but unfortunately some fail and create bullies.

The epidemic for bullying thrives in society due to the constant gossiping, sharing and talking. Bullying is a very popular social effect in towns, inner circles, community’s, nations and the world. From the latest girl who tripped herself at school to nations talking about a president, there is big and small bullying everywhere. The most common places of bullying are inner circles, that could be in a school or work environment. From coworkers excluding others from fun or to gossip shared around the school, bullying is alive and well, thriving in these toxic habitats. In smaller towns or communities, there is usually bullying happening more in adults due to the lack of excitement because of the size of town. Basically, everyone knows everything that’s going on. As for nations and world, online bullying is very popular. The person being bullied is usually a very famous or well-known person and thousands to millions of people contribute through their computer to share their hateful opinions. There is a scale of bullying of high to low, but any kind of it is bad for these types of societies. The only outcome of this is hate and sometimes worse such a suicide, depression, addiction and educational drop outs.

            Instances of bullying is a bit tricky to break down due to it being around since the dawn of time. The bullying epidemic has been around for centuries and is a popular human behavior that appears in some individuals. Another early instance in human history of bullying is about a soldier named John Flood (“Bullying: A historical Case”). John Flood was in the British army in 1862, who was remembered as a kind, obedient soldier while his other not so kind army peer John O’Dea was aggressive, violent and angry (1). Flood was a victim of bullying from John O’Dea, who frequently humiliated and physically attacked him (1). Although there was a justice system in place for crimes, John O’Dea found ways to set John up and make others believe he was the bully. Flood fell into a depression and considered taking his own life while serving, but one day everything changed (1). John would often get drunk to ease the pain away from depression, but one day O’Dea decided to torment him for his own personal fun (1). Later Flood had finished his bottle of alcohol and grabbed a rifle and shot O’Dea in the heart, killing him (1). This was a very popular case back then and the queen of England herself, overtook the case (1). She then concluded to sentencing Flood to life imprisonment (1). Although this accidental crime of passion occurred, he was held in prison for eternity (1). Although the misconduct he committed was wrong, there shouldn’t have been any bullying occurring in the first place (1).

A personal example of bullying I’ve witnessed, is towards my younger sister Alicea. Alicea is seven years old and enjoys playing outside with her dogs, you can always find her with a smile on her face. Things suddenly changed when she started attending school. From getting more aggressive towards our family, bad attitude and unhappiness. My parents begin suspecting something was going on that we weren’t aware about. After constantly searching for answers, we later discovered Alicea was a victim of bullying from another classmate. Our whole family was shocked to imagine the torment our family member was enduring. Immediately we went to prevent this to ever happening again from informing the teacher, ignoring the bully, communicating with Alicea and having the bully punished. My family felt angry that this could ever happen to someone close to us but also relieved to have caught this before it could have got worse. There are many causes for bullying including the bully having lack of empathy, attention seeking, anger or rewarded bullying. These factors instilled in someone as a child continue to grow to destructive behavior towards others. Today, there are many laws and policies put into place to prevent bullying all throughout the world. For all types of bullying including physical, cyber and verbal. These policies/laws have helped my sister from the bullying epidemic and push for stricter rules/disciplinary actions towards bullies. Without them, bullying would still be alive and well but now it is barely hanging on to life. This progress sets the standard for more generations to come and helps put a stop to bullying.

After extensive research conducted, the best solutions to deal with a bullying situation is to pay attention, not ignoring the problem and to deal with the bully/victim individually to learn about the situation. Taking these precautions to grab ahold of the problem, greatly affects the rate of bullying to make it become less common. Not ignoring the problem, will make the situation a priority to stop. Noticing the issue can be the start to containing the problem, from either to spreading the negativity or enabling the bully. By paying attention, carefully watching what each students’ actions are and identifying the problem. With this, can determine the stem of the issue. Seeing exactly the issue will help for the first step to ending the problem. After determining the problem, you can take a step towards dealing with the situation. Verifying the victim and bully, now watch out for those individuals. Seeing how they act together and exactly what happens in the interactions. Taking the bully individually and communicating the wrongs he/she is doing to others and the harm there inflicting. Now taking disciplinary actions towards the bully to end the bullying. Contacting parents of the victim/bully to talk and understand the behavior of their child at school. By inconveniencing the bully by moving them to another classroom, detention.

            Research done by Leslie University, “targeted children often suffer from poor performance in school, sleep issues, anxiety, and depression” due to the bullying they must endure. According to Leslie University research to prevent these outcomes, there are six key steps into preventing bullying. From teaching kindness, participation in simulations, minimizing concentric circles, using arts to create context, watch for identify gateway behaviors and opportunities in connection (“6 Ways Educators Can Prevent Bullying in Schools”). By teaching kindness, you are showing others how to act and react to peers around them in a kindly matter (1). This helps prevent the spread of anger or rudeness towards others. With participation of simulations teaches faculty/staff on how to handle these situations and the possible outcomes of them (1). Doing this prepares staff on how to deal with these problems and how to manage the conflict accordingly. Minimizing concentric circles is for staff to not bring their negativity onto others (1). Either having a bad day or interaction with their own peer and pushing off their anger towards others only shows students a way to act to others. The cycle continues for anger/bullying for teacher to student to student. By the teacher containing their emotions and dealing with them outside of class can help prevent the spread of bullying. Using arts to create context is a visual way to learn that bullying is wrong. This is used to show how bullying is wrong in either movies, literature or music. This gives a different perspective on it rather than just repeating “bullying is bad”. Watching for identity gateway behavior, this is used to locate potential bullies (1). Like children who exhibit back talking or eyerolling already, begin showing signs of disrespect. These children usually push to see how far they can act out to others. If stopping this before the problem grows, can end the problem all together. As for creating opportunities for connection, this technique instructs students, teacher or other peers to speak up when bullying is occurring. This shows how to not be bystander to the bullying occurring and to take a stand and speak up to put a stop to it.

The famous author, journalist, philosopher Albert Camus popularized the belief of absurdism (“Camus and Absurdity”). This is because absurdism is the belief that a human existence in our universe is meaningless. Our universe is chaotic from new plants being discovered, new people being born, famous people living, death, war or peace. All these chaotic things can make an individual feel as if they’re insignificant while all these actions are happening (1). As well as the inevitable process of death. To describe this mentality more is that basically life is short, and you individually are meaningless because of all these disorderly things are occurring. The effort to prevent bullying is the complete opposite due to the efforts of us human beings endure to stop it. Bullying is the act of hurting others physically or mentally where it effects people greatly. From decrease in academic performance, low self-esteem, depression and suicide. Furthermore, we cannot fit the absurdism mentality into this because you cannot care about anything in this.

Due to Camus mentality, he probably would have believed that the bullying social epidemic is meaningless and shouldn’t be a priority due to humans not having meaning. This is because his main philosophy is absurdism.

Additionally, the bullying epidemic is alive and thriving to the point where it can affect anyone. From yourself, a family member, a neighbor, coworker or friend. Bullying can inflict people from all ages from zero to one hundred. It is very important now to teach others the effects/results of bullying due to the destruction it causes. Either from depression, suicide, self-harm or negative effects of mental health. By putting effort towards this now can assist future generations to come to shave down the number of cases of bullying.

Work Cited

“10 Steps to Stop and Prevent Bullying.” NEA, 2019, www.nea.org/home/72595.htm.

“6 Ways Educators Can Prevent Bullying in Schools.” Lesley University, 2019, lesley.edu/article/6-ways-educators-can-prevent-bullying-in-schools.

Weinberg, Rivka. “Why Life Is Absurd.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 11 Jan. 2015, opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/why-life-is-absurd/.

Marguire, Laura. “Camus and Absurdity.” Philosophy Talk, 2019, www.philosophytalk.org/blog/camus-and-absurdity.

“Bullying in History.” Tutor Doctor, 19 Oct. 2016, www.tutordoctor.com/blog/2016/october/bullying-a-historical-case/

Hurley, Katie. “Bullies Are Not Born, They Are Raised.” KevinMD.com, KevinMD.com, 18 Apr. 2012, www.kevinmd.com/blog/2012/04/bullies-born-raised.html.

Lehman, James. “Why Do Kids Bully? Understand Bullying Among Children.” Empowering Parents, 2019, www.empoweringparents.com/article/the-secret-life-of-bullies-why-they-do-it-and-how-to-stop-them/.

“Types Of Bullying | National Centre Against Bullying.” NCAB, 2019, www.ncab.org.au/bullying-advice/bullying-for-parents/types-of-bullying/.