Scientific Writing and Professional Development
How Bullying Affects Students Anxiety and Their Motivation to Come to School
Victoria Duncan
School of Psychological Science, Gardner-Webb
Scientific Writing
Dr. Thompson
October 25, 2022
How Bully Affects Students Anxiety and Their Motivation to Come to School
Bullying is a big problem nationwide but especially in the United States. Bullying is when a victim is targeted over a period of time, bullying is not something that happens one time like a fight that happens once or teasing that stops after a couple hours. Bullying happens over a long period of time and causes mental or physical harm to the victim. In this paper I will talk about how bully affects students’ ability to come to school and how missing school can affect their grades.
There are four different types of bulling Physical, Verbal, Social, and Cyber (NCAB). The definition of bullying according to the National Center Against Bullying is “bullying is an ongoing and deliberate misuse of power in relationships through repeated verbal, physical and/or social behavior that intends to cause physical, social and/or psychological harm” (NCAB). Physical bulling is when someone is being bullied by hitting, kicking, punching, damaging of person property and many other ways of hurting someone physically. Physical bulling can cause short- or long-term damage to the person or their stuff. Verbal bullying is when the bullies are name calling, saying insults, teasing, homophobic or racist remarks; these are just a few of the ways that someone can be verbally bullied. While most of the time verbal bullying starts off with just teasing it can quickly turn into targeted attacks which can hurt the victim in the short or long run. Social bullying is when the bullying harms someone’s social reputation or causes the victim to be humiliated in front of a lot of people. This type of bullying has short, and long term affects also. Cyber bullying is the act of bullying someone online through social media, text, images, videos, or on a website. Cyber bullying is the most common type of bullying that is seen today, this is because of the unrestricted access that pre-teens and teens have to the internet. They have no one to stop them from posting something about someone no matter how harmful. My main focus throughout this paper will be on how cyber bullying affects victims’ mental health and their ability to come to school.
Cyber bulling is dangerous because of the digital footprint that to leaves behind. This can be detrimental for victims that grow up and are trying to get a job when the employer finds the victim’s name or photos or videos from when they were younger. This could lead the employer to ask about the bullying, which in turn, could bring up the old trauma. The footprint of the bullying could also affect the aggressor. If the employer were to check the employers name and saw what they had done in the past, it could affect the aggressor’s ability to get a job or even get into college. Something that has been seen a lot on social media is when the aggressor is exposed for past bullying it’s not often by the company, they work for it’s either by the victim or someone on the internet. When kids are young it is hard for adults to really talk to them about a digital footprint, kids don’t understand that when their name is tied to something it will never go away especially in today’s world where with a quick google search you can find someone’s whole life. One quick twitter search and I was able to find a tweet about an NHL player that bullied a student his name is Mitchell Miller and one quick google search and you can see his victim’s statement and how he lost his whole career from one tweet.
Victims can often turn into the bullies themselves. According to Health Day, victims that are being bullied can turn into the bullies and exhibit more aggressive behaviors to others. Research found that victims that experience cyber bullying are more likely to be more aggressive in person(cite). According to Dr. Andrew Adesman “These behaviors may involve retaliatory measures against their aggressors, acting aggressive in order to fend off future bullying attempts, or worse, learning by example and engaging in bullying of previously uninvolved peers" (Macrynikola, et al. 2020).
Bullying can cause anxiety in students. When an adult sees bullying happening and reacts appropriately by stopping the behavior this can cause the bullies to back off or stop completely (S, Gordon, 2022). When an adult doesn’t notice what is happening or choses to ignore it this can then cause high anxiety in the students. The top four anxiety disorders that teens being bullied are most likely to experience are post-traumatic stress disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, and panic attacks (HRSA, 2022). The reason that victims of bullying develop these anxiety disorders is because the fear of being bullied every day. This fear can cause massive amounts of stress that can then result in anxiety disorders.
Social anxiety is what is most likely to make students school. Social anxiety isn’t immediately recognizable, and it can be seen as teens being dramatic or acting out. When the victims are getting punished for what teachers and adults it can make them not want to come to school and this leads them to missing school (J, Tucker, 2022).
The social anxiety that comes from the bullying can affect victims’ schoolwork because they are not able to learn the material or get the work that they are supposed to do. This is not a problem if they only occasionally miss school but when the students miss a lot of school to the point that it starts affecting their grades. Obviously, is when it can become detrimental to their studies; putting them at risk for failing the school year, having to stay for summer school or being expelled. Students that are considered chronically absent when they miss fifteen or more days of school a year. Overall, the students that are missing the most school are minorities, this is because they are at risk most for being bullied. Students that are immigrants or come from immigrant parents are more likely to be bullied (R, Predit, 2022). Black children are more likely to be mistreated when it comes to cases of bullying and thus, they are seen as more violent and more touchy than other races. This can cause administrators or teachers to not see the signs of bullying among these groups (J, Tucker,2022).
This paper is meant to show that bullying can affect students’ anxiety and their ability to do schoolwork. I think that the more that bullying is talked about it can make more of a difference but how it is currently talked about needs to change. I remember being in High School and having to go to anti-bully campaigns and just being bored the whole time, I think if the adults going around to different schools changed their campaign styles that it could help students understand better why bullying is bad and how it can affect both the aggressor and victim. From what I remember in High School the campaign speakers were always older people in their forties and fifties. It’s hard for young students to relate to these campaigns because of how different the times were; if you were to put a student around the kids age to tell them about bullying it would help them understand better about how this can affect the victims.
References
Bullying - advice. NCAB. (n.d.). https://www.ncab.org.au/bullying-advice/
Definition of bullying: National Centre Against Bullying. NCAB. (n.d.). https://www.ncab.org.au/bullying-advice/bullying-for-parents/definition-of-bullying/
Frank Seravalli, FS[@franl_seravalli]. 2022 Nov,15 https://twitter.com/frank_seravalli/status/1592609221337841664
Gordon, S. (2022, July 22). The connection between bullying and anxiety. Verywell Family. https://www.verywellfamily.com/bullying-and-anxiety-connection-460631
Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). (2022, October 12). Stop bullying home page. StopBullying.gov. https://www.stopbullying.gov/
Preidt, R. (2022, May 30). Bullying can turn victims into bullies. HealthDay. https://consumer.healthday.com/kids-health-information-23/bullying-health-news-718/bullying-can-turn-victims-into-bullies-710378.html
Tucker, J. (2022, March 31). Social anxiety may be causing teens to Skip School. Moms. https://www.moms.com/social-anxiety-may-be-causing-teens-to-skip-school/
Xu, M., Macrynikola, N., Waseem, M., & Miranda, R. (2020). Racial and ethnic differences in bullying: Review and implications for intervention. Aggression and violent behavior. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7453877/