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Bullying is, according to the media, "on the rise". You only need to a simple Google search to find an army of articles dated 2010 that make this claim. Is it

by Legion 16y ago

Bullying is, according to the media, "on the rise". You only need to a simple Google search to find an army of articles dated 2010 that make this claim. Is it true? It's my outsider's perception that there is some truth to it. It's my perception as the husband of a schoolteacher that it is. But my eyes cannot gaze upon all the schools in the country. However, the combination of the anecdotal evidence of my wife's school combined with the national media suggests to me that I am not far off. (Even though I recognize the media's fondness of latching onto a story that is guaranteed to draw attention) Nowhere did I state that this trend has caused bullying. I am only saying that it has affected bullying. I am also not necessarily putting a timeline on when things changed. I simply don't have the data for that. But I am looking at schools as they look in 2010 and I am seeing a lot of examples/stories of bullies operating with impunity. And it seems at least to be much more so than in my school days. The one thing I can state as an absolute fact is that bullying is an extremely hot topic among teachers and school boards. I have to think that there is more than just bully status quo behind that.

TallGuyShort 16y ago
I'm not sure that it's on the rise. I haven't studied hard data on the issue enough to really make a statement like this, but personally I suspect that other changes in society have left kids less able to deal with bullying, and that's why it's prominence in the media is on the rise. There are so many diagnoses of mental and emotional illnesses, medications to fix them, etc... I think the prominence of things like this just teaches kids that it's not their problem, it's just a "syndrome" they suffer from. While some of it may be true, we've lost a sense of how to "deal with it". I think that spills over into how people deal with bullying. They can't handle the fact that they're being bullied, and that ends up pushing them in the direction of suicide, which I think is horrible. (I mean no disrespect to the families of those who have recently been through this). I don't think bullying has gone up, but I think children are now being raised in an environment where they haven't learned to deal with their problems head on. I was bullied a ton as a kid, and I was always told to "tell and adult", or just ignore it, but this guy is right - there are some bullies who want to hurt you, and you ignoring it or telling and adult just makes them want to hurt you even more. I learned to change the way I did some things so as not to attract the attention of bullies, etc... and solve some problems non-violently, but there absolutely was a time when I had to have enough of a back-bone to make a solid decision about when enough was enough. That fixed the remaining problems - but I still look back at that as an experience I could have solved much sooner if I had just been smarter about it. The bullies shouldn't have done what they did, but it was my problem and I needed to deal with it.

by Legion 16y ago

TallGuyShort 16y ago

I'm not sure that it's on the rise. I haven't studied hard data on the issue enough to really make a statement like this, but personally I suspect that other changes in society have left kids less able to deal with bullying, and that's why it's prominence in the media is on the rise. There are so many diagnoses of mental and emotional illnesses, medications to fix them, etc... I think the prominence of things like this just teaches kids that it's not their problem, it's just a "syndrome" they suffer from. While some of it may be true, we've lost a sense of how to "deal with it". I think that spills over into how people deal with bullying. They can't handle the fact that they're being bullied, and that ends up pushing them in the direction of suicide, which I think is horrible. (I mean no disrespect to the families of those who have recently been through this). I don't think bullying has gone up, but I think children are now being raised in an environment where they haven't learned to deal with their problems head on. I was bullied a ton as a kid, and I was always told to "tell and adult", or just ignore it, but this guy is right - there are some bullies who want to hurt you, and you ignoring it or telling and adult just makes them want to hurt you even more. I learned to change the way I did some things so as not to attract the attention of bullies, etc... and solve some problems non-violently, but there absolutely was a time when I had to have enough of a back-bone to make a solid decision about when enough was enough. That fixed the remaining problems - but I still look back at that as an experience I could have solved much sooner if I had just been smarter about it. The bullies shouldn't have done what they did, but it was my problem and I needed to deal with it.