Negative Impacts of Bullying on Children
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Introduction
In society today, bullying, as we know it has evolved and has taken to social media platforms, commonly known as cyberbullying. Most times, bullying takes place in a school setting where students of different ages interact. It is usually the students who appear weak that are picked on by bullies. Bullying has negative effects on the growth of the child and can consequently have lifelong impacts on how the child turns out in the future. Bullying as an act is inhumane and should be strongly condemned in any setting because of its impacts on both the physical, emotional, and mental state of an individual.
There is evidence supporting the fact that bullying affects the physical condition of children. Most times, the bullied children are injured in school fights where they are beaten into submission by bullies. Due to the young age of the children, most of them are usually unable to understand what is going on and why they are being bullied. These children often suffer from the physical and mental trauma that sometimes continues to build up into their adult years. In some cases, children who are bullied when they have a higher chance of developing a form of mental illness at some point in their lives. A report by the International Journal of Mental Health Problems revealed that despite the fact that more females undergo bullying than their male counterparts, more males than females reported to have developed a mental illness as a result of being bullied in their childhood (“Mental health problems both precede and follow bullying among adolescents and the effects differ by gender: A cross-lagged panel analysis of school-based longitudinal data in Vietnam,” n.d.). Cyberbullying has led to the development of anxiety, depression, and ideations of suicide, especially in teenagers who value how others perceive them. However, unless the child being bullied harms themselves physically by either trying to commit suicide or other forms of bodily harm, cyberbullying often goes unnoticed.
Bullying also negatively affects the ability of children to socialize and have some form of stability in their lives. This is mainly attributed to the fact that bullying often lowers the child’s self-esteem and worth. After a child has been bullying for a long time, the child starts to believe that they are not worth anything and cannot amount to anything in life. Bullied children often feel shame even when it is unwarranted, especially in public gatherings. Bullying children often lack the stability needed to interact with their peers in social settings. It is very easy to notice a bullied child in a public setting because the child will tend to keep to themselves. Such children also have adjustment challenges later on in life. Social trauma affects how the child interacts and interprets the environment around him/her. Children who are bullied are often reported to have an identity crisis in adulthood as a result of failing to get the required stability that is required for a child to form their own identities. Identity crisis often arises when the bullied children are forced by their immediate to suppress their personalities and, in turn, hide behind their fears o being bullied (Hinduja & Patchin, 2010). When being bullied, such children feel rejected by their societies, and if no one comes to their aid when they are being bullied, then it is possible that such children might group up to be bullies or develop suicidal ideations or other forms of negative thoughts.
Bullying has a negative impact on the academic performance of the victim. The United States Department of Health and Human Services reports that approximately 160000 children fail to go to school every day because they fear that they will be bullied (Fullchange & Furlong, 2016). Such students often lag behind in their academic studies, and the effects are seen in their academic performance results when they sit for assessments and examinations. There are serious cases where bullying has led to students leaving school for good because they are unable to cope with the bullying that takes place in school. Bullying affects the ability of the child to concentrate in class, which causes such students to reduce their participation in discussions in class and a general decline in their overall grades. When children are often referred to as being “dumb,” they end up believing that they have no academic abilities and end up not putting any significant effort in their studies for fear of being ridiculed by their peers in school. Academically gifted students who are bullied often fail to put any effort into their studies because of their fear of standing out from other students. As a result, bullied students generally have poor academic performance as compared to the other children who are not being bullied.
Conclusion
Bullying has short term and long term negative effects on the life of the child. It for this reason that bullying should be strongly condemned, especially in learning institutions. Any form of bullying should be reported immediately reported to the relevant authority. Children who are bullied suffer from mental, physical and emotional trauma, social segregation and instability as well as poor academic performance.
References
Fullchange, A., & Furlong, M. J. (2016). An exploration of effects of bullying victimization from a complete mental health perspective. Sage Open, 6(1), 2158244015623593.
Hinduja, S., & Patchin, J. W. (2010). Bullying, cyberbullying, and suicide. Archives of suicide research, 14(3), 206-221.
Mental health problems both precede and follow bullying among adolescents and the effects differ by gender: A cross-lagged panel analysis of school-based longitudinal data in Vietnam. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://ijmhs.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13033-019-0291-x