What is bullying?

A bully is someone who seeks to harm and/or intimidate someone who is perceived as vulnerable. Bullying is when someone continually intents to hurt someone either physically, psychologically or emotionally. There are many reasons behind why someone chooses to bully someone else, and there are many types of bullying, such as:

• Physical assault
• Emotional /social bullying
• Prejudicial Bullying
• Threatening behaviour
• Cyberbullying
• Sexualised bullying

Birmingham is ranked number 1 for the worst city in the UK for bullying 2021 according to the research Perpetual fostering carried out. They analysed where the term “Bullied at school” was searched the most in the UK in2021. And it was searched the most in Birmingham. As well as the term “Bullying online” in which Birmingham ranked 2^nd and Manchester ranked 1^st (See References for the link to their research)

There are many different factors as to why young people h may bullying another young person. Typically, young people who are happy at home and at school, do not bully. Meanwhile, those who are not happy, feel unsafe or feel like they have no sort of support, tend to direct their pain onto others. There are many factors as to why a young person my become a bully.

Why do some young people bully?

1. Peer factors

• To dominate and control their peers
• To try and fit in with new peer group and ‘prove’ their allegiance
• To try and increase their popularity and status in front of their friendship group
• To exclude people out of their friendship and let them know they do not want them to be a part of their group

2. Family factors

• Some youth that bully come from families where there is bullying, violence or abuse at home
• May have parents or guardians that neglect them and their emotional needs
• May have parents or guardians that are not present or highly involved in the young person’s life.

3. Emotional factors

• May be insecure and project their insecurities onto others to cause problems for others and distract themselves from their own problems.
• Do not know how to control their emotions and take it out on others
• Might have been a victim of bullying in the past

4. Educational factors

• May bully in school where the school is not properly monitoring and addressing bullying to their students
• Might not enjoy or feel accepted at school so they take out their emotions on other students

How does bullying effect young people?

There are different ways young people can be involved in bullying. They are either the bully, the target or a bystander.

Young people that bully others can become dangerous and violent in adulthood. They are more likely to:

• Decreased in academic achievement (more likely to drop, miss, or skip school).
• Get into fights, cause trouble for the community, trash other people’s belongings.
• Develop toxic behaviours and become abusive in future relationships.
• Become criminals or engage in criminal activity.
• Abuse drugs and alcohol
• Engage in early sexual activity

Young people who have been targets of bullying are more likely to:

• Have mental health problems. Develop anxiety or depression
• Sleep problems such as nightmares
• Suicidality and self-harm
• Develop an addiction to drugs or alcohol

The Bystander Effect
Struggle with expressing themselves as young people and/or as adults.

A Bystander is someone who is not actually the bully but the person who witnesses the bullying and does not help to stop it. Bystanders are normally people who follow the crowd, they may not get involved and challenge the bully, as they may be just as intimidated or do not know how to act, so they just watch.

This can really affect the mental health of the victim because the victim are seeing people watching them get bullied and if no one helps, it may make them feel like no one cares about them, often leading to increased depression, anxiety or suicidal thoughts.

Bystanders are a massive part encouraging the bully to continue bullying. For example, there are a lot of bystanders in aggressive groups or gangs. In gangs there is a hierarchy and normally the leader of the gang are the bullies to the newer members of the gang, to scare them into criminal activity. The bystanders, are the gang members in-between the leaders and the newer members. They witness everything that is happening but out of fear of confronting the leaders, they do not stand up for the newer members and may actually be encourage to also become a bully as well.

Bystanders a more likely to:

• Become a bully in the future
• Have mental health problems including anxiety and/or depression
• Feel guilty for not standing up and protecting others
• Low self-esteem and lack of confidence
• Anger issues or can become aggressive in future friendships /relationship

How do you know someone is being bullied?

• Difficulty sleeping or having nightmares
• Self-destructive behaviours such as self-harming or mentioning about suicide
• Sudden change of eating habits. Skipping meals or feeling really hungry when coming home from school (they may not have had lunch at school)
• Having injuries that are unexplainable
• Not wanting to go to school, socialise or grades begin to slip

How do you know someone is a bully?

• Have friends who bully
• Become more aggressive and get into fights
• Have extra money, clothing items or belongings (may have been taken from others)
• Getting into more trouble (at school, home and in the community)
• Care too much about their popularity

How can we prevent bullying and protect our youth?

As a community interest company, we at Activating Creative Talent, offer our services in schools to present in assemblies or offer 1-1 mentoring with students who are struggling at school and/or at home. We also run courses for parents, teachers, social workers, police officers and many more key community members to enhance their knowledge about youth crime and gang violence, and how to prevent it.The target, the bystander and the bully all need educating on bullying and the effects of bullying, so they are aware on why bullying happens and how they can prevent it. Bystanders may not know they are bystanders until they are educated on what bystanders are, the effects and their role in bullying. As parents, educational systems, and community members, we all have an important role in preventing the amount of bullying that takes place in our cities.

Some more of our programmes and services are:

• Behaviour Intervention Services
• Critical Wrap-Around Support (Bespoke Pupil and Family Support)
• ACTYVE (Youth Violence Education and Prevention Programmes)
• Social Emotional Learning programmes
• PSHE Solutions
• Leadership Programmes
• Employability Programmes
• Enterprise Programmes
• CPD Staff Training
• Impact Measurement Reports

For more information click here: http://www.actcic.org.uk/schools/

For more information on our courses, click the links below.

Youth crime and gang violence course (certificate): http://www.actcic.org.uk/gangscourse/

Youth crime and gang violence course (award): http://www.actcic.org.uk/working-with-gangs-youth-violence-award-course/

Some more important facts.

There were over 24,000 Childline counselling sessions with children about bullying in 2016/17

55% of children who have been bullied will develop depression

Research has shown that young people who have an ethnic minority profile were at a much higher risk of being bullied than a young Caucasian person

More than 16,000 young people are absent from school due to bullying

(Information from Aggregate Industries. Available from: https://darkroom.leicestertigers.com/original/2626887647c63a92b4744445d58441e7:7f9e69af2aa9b02297cf54f84deac24f/bullying-facts.pdf )

References

Stop Bullying [Online] Available at: https://www.stopbullying.gov/bullying/effects

Bullying at School [Online] Available at: https://www.gov.uk/bullying-at-school

Support and information: Bullying. [Online] Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5Ffpz77jVbLvjsFj9GvKd8l/information-and-support-bullying

9 Shocking Statistics About Bullying in the UK [Online] Available at: https://darkroom.leicestertigers.com/original/2626887647c63a92b4744445d58441e7:7f9e69af2aa9b02297cf54f84deac24f/bullying-facts.pdf

What is Bullying. [Online] Available at: https://www.bullying.co.uk/general-advice/what-is-bullying/ Bullying Statistics UK 2021 [Online] Available at: https://perpetualfostering.co.uk/insights/bullying-statistics-uk-2021/