I’ll definitely be discussing this with my boys. Both so they can avoid being on either side of bullying, and so they can understand what can happen to their friends who are.
Created by: OnlineCounselingDegrees.net
In text form:
Are Jerks The Future Of The Internet?
Studies have shown that bullying is a predictable psychological behavior; its effects are significant and ripple through well into adulthood.
Social media is now both an avenue for hateful acts and a trigger for suicide, and the age-old question still stands: is it nature, or nurture?
Bullies develop at a young age.
Bully-like aggression can manifest at age 2 if language skills don’t develop properly.
Low verbal intelligence leads to
- Inability to empathize and relate with others.
- Deriving satisfaction from harming others.
- Producing lower levels of testosterone in puberty.
- Endorsing revenge.
However, the #1 predictor of bully traits is poor academic performance.
As they enter adolescence, bullies now exploit social media to victimize.
- 33.2 million teenagers in America are using social media.
- 90% of them use Facebook.
- 15% have been targets of online meanness.
One Pew Center study asked teens to describe how people act online:
- Rude
- Mean
- Fake
- Crude
- Over Dramatic
- Disrespectful
And teens are not cyberbullied equally.
Girls are almost 30% more likely to perceive their social media experience to be unkind compared to boys. Yet boys engage in significantly more bullying offline than girls.
And according to a Pew study, 31% of black teens perceive their social media experiences as unkind.
- White: 20%
- Hispanic: 9%
Also, one study reveals that LGBT students are cyberbullied nearly twice as much as heterosexual students.
Really, teens don’t give a tweet about other teens.
90% of social media-using teens who witnessed online cruelty say they ignored the mean behavior. And 66% of them saw others join in the harassment at least once before.
Those bullied are:
- 2x more likely to attempt suicide.
- On track to see a 30% decrease in GPA in one subject.
As they grow out of adolescence, victims often recover to live normal lives. Yet bullies do not.
As they reach adulthood, aggressive children statistically have higher rates of:
- Driving offenses
- Alcoholism
- Mental health service usage
- Erratic work history
- Court convictions
- Family abuse
Only 14 states in the U.S. include the word “cyber bullying” in their state laws and policies, and nearly 150 million teens around the world are victims of cyberbullying.
Yet, more often than not, the hardest-hit victims are the bullies themselves.
Sources:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200910/big-bad-bully?page=7
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100708160937.htm
http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/Teens-and-social-media.aspx
http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/STTable?_bm=y&qr_name=ACS_2009_1YR_G00_S0902&-geo_id=01000US&-ds_name=ACS_2009_1YR_G00_&-_lang=en&-redoLog=false
- note this link is outdated and has moved to: http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ACS_09_1YR_S0902&prodType=table
http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/Teens-and-social-media/Part-2/Section-1.aspx
http://www.cyberbullying.us/cyberbullying_and_sexual_orientation.php
http://www.cyberbullying.us/cyberbullying_and_suicide.php
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/bullying-linked-to-lower-school-achievement/2011/09/01/gIQArmQw4J_story.html
http://www.cyberbullying.us/cyberbullying_emotional_consequences.pdf (PDF warning)
http://www.cyberbullying.us/Bullying_and_Cyberbullying_Laws.pdf (PDF Warning)
Saintless 