The effects of bullying can be catastrophic. Being harmed or getting told that you aren’t enough or experiencing things you don’t permit to are all instances that can tear someone apart, especially a teenage child. As a teenager, you are learning to become yourself, you’re still figuring out who you want to be so being treated like that isn’t enough or right can emotionally affect you. Being a victim of such a careless, disheartening act can cause a child’s mental health to decline. HelpGuide.org, explains it as a feeling of hopelessness and shame as well as fear and loneliness. These feelings confuse teenagers and can build up and lead to even more severe emotions and actions. Many children who are victims tend to develop depression which commonly leads to a decrease in physical health. Children with deep depression can start to participate in other unhealthy actions such as eating too much or too little, giving in to drugs and alcohol, self-harming, and skipping school to escape the source of all their pain. Victims often become suicidal. “Bully victims are between 2 to 9 times more likely to consider suicide than non-victims, according to studies by Yale University” (bullyingstatistics.org) this statistic is more than just numbers. These are the lives of children. People who have yet to actually live. The fact is, suicide is the third leading cause of teenagers and a majority of those deaths were kids who experienced bullying. These numbers are slowly and lightly being impacted by the solutions to bullying that have been introduced into school systems.
This ongoing problem has forced school systems and the government to implement solutions in order to decrease the severity of students' health. A variety of solutions have been introduced into education and to the staff of a school, students, and parents. There has been a recurrence of failed attempts that hardly affect the amount of bullying that goes on. The idea of just informing parents and adults on how to deal with bullies or bullied victims. It has been determined to be unproductive and useless to just say parents and teachers should pay more attention. A parent can be the most observant parent and still miss the signs of their kids being bullied or their kids being bullies. There must be further resolutions in order to fully touch on the matter.
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One of the most common solutions that have been introduced to almost every high school is an anti-bullying program or policy. An anti-bullying program consists of making information clear and accessible. These programs commonly have posters, fact sheets, and parent resources, and provide helpful resources such as the crisis hotline. Anti-bullying policies are simply rules put in place that tell students how they are expected to behave, inform them of what unacceptable behavior consists of, and give possible consequences for certain behaviors. While this all is a step in the right direction, the impact unfortunately is little to known. “Bullying in Schools: The State of Knowledge and Effective Interventions'' is a journal that explores how effective certain solutions are on bullying in schools. The article explains that these anti-bullying programs and acts have little to no influence on children and in most cases, aren’t delivered properly to the student body. “They can decide to not implement the program as it was designed to be implemented.” (Theadvocate.org) So although there are these policies and rules and programs that are set in place, teachers tend to not properly deliver the information correctly. This could be for multiple possible reasons such as the teachers don’t have the qualifications or little training on the topic or that some teachers don’t make it a priority as it should be. This results in no effect and no assistance to those victims who desperately need it. The effects were studied by researchers; Evans, Fraser, and Cotter. They recorded the minor effects in schools that owned an anti-bullying program and policies and their records presented that out of all the studies in multiple high schools, around 45% of them resulted in little to no effect on bullying acts in schools and they also discovered that 30% of the programs had absolutely no effect on the victims of bullying. Many variables could have resulted in these discoveries but either way, almost half of the schools who take part in anti-bullying programs don’t actually get positive effects which means a majority of students continue to play a part in negative and hurtful acts or continue to be targets for bullies. Concluding that the programs that have been put in place are ineffective and there needs to be further research to find ways to tackle this issue. It is determined that you can’t expect parents to just be more involved and schools can’t continue to neglect programs and policies so there must be. So the questions are, what more can be done, what is missing from the programs, and how do you alter a school’s environment to make it safe enough for all children?
In response to the previous finding, schools have determined ways to help their students. There have been advanced programs and training, advanced technology, and more student involvement. These solutions have proven to be far more effective than previous solutions and have been providing a safe environment that students no longer fear or dread going to or using.
The instant reply to recent failing programs in schools was to step it up. Schools continued to have programs but have implemented drastic measures to ensure that they will be of help to their students. After researching the failing programs, other researchers investigated the situations and determined the parts that made the program fail and the parts that created success for the program. They concluded, “the intensity (such as number of hours) and duration (number of days/months) of programs is related to their effectiveness” (Bullying in Schools: The State of Knowledge and Effective Interventions) The longer and more intense training for parents, students, and staff is the leading cause of effectiveness. Forcing all people to participate in the training and education of the program will positively affect all participants. This was proven to be successful according to the journal but another feature was included and that was the education for students and spreading awareness about the effects of being bystanders. This education and topic were tested in a school in Finland. The program is called KiVa and focuses on educating and inserting the importance of empathy and self-efficacy in bystanders in hopes of making students more willing to help their victimized peers. Teaching these students to educate others was found successful in Finland. The KiVa program resulted in almost 98% of students reporting that it helped their bullying situations. (KiVaprogram.net) The intense program that teaches kids to be educators on the topic is concluded to be almost 100% effective in lowering the rate of bullying acts inside the school’s environment.
In evaluation, this program has been the most effective way to reach teenagers across high schools. Although this program is effective, it must be in every school in order to lower the rate of bullying but the program has only been in two other countries; Finland and Italy. If practiced in all schools, this program would solve a majority if not all issues bullying-related. There are many positive outcomes and factors for this solution. This program involves all students which is crucial because it is created to affect all students and it forces students to be proactive. This program teaches kids people skills such as how to communicate effectively and how to work with one another. Finally, this program creates a healthy place for students and builds healthy relationships. The only negative factor that this program has is that in order to be 100% effective, all students must be willing to participate. Schools in Finland have found ways around this issue but it still stands for other schools as well. Overall, this idea of getting students involved has transformed the concept of anti-bullying programs and policies in high schools.
The second solution was proposed by the government of the United States. Applying harassment identifiers on social media platforms. One of the most common forms of bullying is cyberbullying. Children, most school-age, have found ways to attack and harass their victims even when they are not with them. Name-calling, spreading rumors, and distributing pictures are all forms of bullying that are present online. It is unreasonable to ask every parent of a teenager to monitor exactly what goes on online and on their phone, but, it is logical to enforce rules for social media users. Attack the problem of bullying right at the source. U.S. House of Representatives documents stated the five-point action plan that U.S. Congressman Josh Gottheimer set in place to “improve data and incident reporting” (U.S. House of Representatives Documents) This step of action forces social media companies such as Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook to add a feature that blocks any negative, bullying or harassment posts/messages. 15% of school-aged kids report being bullied through social media outlets. Although there are no numerative stats about the situation, bullying has been tamed due to kids no longer having access to or the ability to post negative things without being reported and taken down and the five-point plan also punishes those who choose to participate in the act of bullying.
These rules and punishments address the cause of bullying which is kids believing they can get away with it. Now whatever they post is evidence and or gets blocked before spreading further. Parents don’t necessarily have to monitor their child’s phone with these rules or this app which is a plus in the situation. The negative factors are that these solutions only address online behavior and have little to no effect on physical bullying.
Relating to the previous solution, there has been an app that was created to block all negative messages. Discovered and recorded in the journal, A Tool for Schools to Download to Help Prevent Online Bullying, this app is called Reword and can be installed on any smartphone. The app connects to all social media platforms and is able to detect when something is typed that is considered bullying. The app then stops the user and asks them to reword or delete what they wrote. A red line crosses out any inappropriate or intimidating words and encourages the person to “not create another victim”. This app was launched in Australia and deemed successful after studies showed that almost 80% of people who installed this are willing to use it and reward their message or post.
This solution also connects and helps solve the cause of bullying by stopping kids in the act. Most continue bullying because nothing and no one is stopping them. With this app, children now have something that is telling them that their behavior is unacceptable. This app once again only affects online bullying, although that could be a pro and con to it. It’s focused on cyberbullying and not the bullying that occurs at school but on the other hand, it is stopping the one type of bullying that follows kids home even after they leave school.
The final solution that has been observed to be unsuccessful is incorporating healthy activities for the student body. This experiment was observed and recorded in the Health Research Journal, “Evaluating Healthy Schools: Perceptions of Impact Among School Based Respondents”. In theory, this should have helped the school environment, and for primary schools, this did positively affect their relationships but for secondary schools with teenage students, they shared that there was no change. An experiment was conducted across thirty schools including both secondary and primary. Interviews were also conducted to gather information to determine if the experiment had an effect on the schools. These activities consisted of things such as setting up a student council or redoing their playground. The focus of this was to build positive relationships between peers and between students and staff. One student that attended a school that had healthy school activities stated that “Teachers aren't really interested in bullying…sometimes they sort it out straight away but other times they just ignore it…” (Health Research Journal) No matter how many activities are placed in the school, it does not directly touch on bullying, therefore, the bullying continues as students don’t receive punishment.
Unfortunately, bullying has been and might just always be prevalent in society as not every person will understand their actions, and due to cultural differences and each person's environment, some people will always choose to be hurtful and negative. That does not mean that these solutions can or should just be pushed aside. Schools, the government, and families should always be fighting and working towards creating a safe environment for their children. Implementing the solutions described would be forcing kids to become educated and aware of the effects bullying can have. The solutions that are used to fight cyberbullying would also be a deterrent for most bullies which ultimately would limit the harassment kids receive online. Most attempts to solve this issue haven’t been proven to have any success in the past. They create little to no impact on children and the bullying continues. When a child doesn’t receive punishment then they don’t believe they have anything to lose. This goes for a child getting attention for his or her actions. Forcing social media to take action is basically asking them to be one step ahead of their users. The user will have something stopping their bullying ways and will also receive a consequence such as their posts being blocked or their accounts being suspended. This solution is more effective as it stops the bullying right there and then rather than the consequence being delayed or the child being lectured after the fact. Enforcing programs in schools proved to fail in the past but with certain factors such as having students become the educators of the topic, the program path succeeds. This eliminates the attention bullies get. They will no longer be praised for their actions but instead looked down upon by their own peers. The statistics on all the effects of bullying are disheartening. Teenagers go through enough just being in school and they don’t need to feel unsafe going to school or going on their own phones. Some solutions aren’t as effective as others but if there are chances to stop a bully from shoving that kid in the hallway or harassing that person on social media, then they need to be enforced because every bully or every victim that these solutions touch is another life that could be saved or another person who will feel a little less alone or another student attending school.
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