Facts About Bullying

INTRODUCTION
A compilation of some bullying facts and statistics which will tell you why it is considered to be one of the most severe problems in the society today. Continue reading for more information on bullying in schools and at workplace.

One of the most notorious forms of abuse, bullying is typically characterized by intentional use of physical or psychological aggression to enforce one's power on another person. The definition of bullying also suggests that a rare incident may not necessarily qualify to be bullying, but persistent hurtful or threatening behavior does qualify for the same. While the problem is most often regarded to be form of child abuse as it is quite common among children and teenagers in schools, bullying at work is not a rare phenomenon at all. If bullying facts and statistics are to be believed, approximately 3.7 million students studying in 6th-10th grade engage in bullying, while 3.2 million students are victims of the same every single year. Before we move on to more of such startling facts about bullying, let's go through some more information about this form of abuse - which will you help you protect your child from teasing and bullying.

Types of Bullying

Bullying can be broadly categorized into three different types - physical bullying, psychological bullying and emotional bullying. In physical bullying, the victim is repeatedly subjected to physical harm in form of hitting, kicking, pinching, shouldering etc. This is one of the most common form of bullying in schools, especially among boys. The second form - psychological bullying involves calling names, racist remarks, repeated teasing etc. Though this is more often restricted to school - among boys as well as girls, it is also observed at workplace in varying degrees. The third form of bullying is emotional bullying, wherein the victim is subjected to humiliation, excluded from the group, intimidated with dire consequences etc. While this form of bullying is quite common in workplace - wherein a person is bullied repeatedly by his senior colleagues, the same among teenagers and children cannot be ruled out. There also exist other forms of bullying - one of the most prominent among which is cyber bullying - wherein the victim is subjected to hostile behavior on the Internet.

Bullying Facts and Statistics
Has your child been making excuses to miss school lately? May be he is one of those 160,000 school children in America who miss school intentionally to avoid being bullied by fellow students. The problem of bullying in schools is much more serious than we can possibly imagine. While physical form of bullying is quite common in schools, psychological and emotional forms are very common in school as well as at workplace. Some startling statistics on bullying given below will tell you how vulnerable you or your children are to this form of abuse.
According to recent statistics on bullying, at least 5.7 million children are involved in bullying directly every year - either as bullies or as victims.
Around 75 percent of the American children are victims of various forms of bullying, including cyber-bullying at some or the other point of schooling.
Every seven minute one child is subjected to bullying on the school playground. What's more shocking is the fact that 85 percent of these cases go on without any intervention from fellow students or teachers.
Every half an hour, one child attempts suicide as a result of being bullied, which means that the number of children attempting suicide as a result of being bullied is 19,000 children every year.
The fact that the rate of school violence has gone down over the last few years is a bit misleading considering that even though the instances of physical violence have reduced, bullying in psychological and emotional form continues to exist and in fact has increased by 5 percent.
Around 42 percent of the American teenagers have been subjected to cyber bullying at least once in life. More importantly, around 58 percent of these children who are subjected to cyber bullying do not report such incidents to adults.
While 44 of the 50 American states have anti-bullying laws in place, only 5 of these states have provision for anti-cyber bullying laws.
According to the statistical data on bullying at work compiled by Workplace Bullying Institute around 71.5 million people are affected by bullying in the United States of America every year.
As in case of children missing school, around a million US workers miss work daily as a result of stress associated such workplace harassment.
According to the 2010 National Prevalence Statistics on bullying compiled by the Workplace Bullying Institute 8.8 percent of the working professionals are being subjected to bullying regularly, while 25.7 percent have been subjected to bullying at some point in past.
It is very difficult to assess the seriousness of the issue owing to the fact that more than half of the cases of bullying go unreported. Even though the problem is quite common, the victims seldom report the same owing to embarrassment or fear. If you yourself have been facing this problem of late, the following articles about dealing with bullies can be of some help for you.
How to Handle a Bully
How to Deal With Bullies
How to Deal with a Bully
Those were some bullying facts which highlighted the seriousness of this issue. Even though the effects of bullying range from undermining the confidence levels of the victim to poor performance at academic level, at times these effects can be severe enough to prompt the victim to attempt suicide. There have been such cases in the past, and the chances of history repeating itself cannot be ruled out and that's the reason we should work towards eradication of this problem.