- Bullies and their victims have a lot in common, all of it bad.
- The effects of bullying can linger into adulthood for both bully and target.
- Cyberbullying is different but may cause even more harm than schoolyard bullying.
People who are bullies and the people they bully have a lot more in common than most folks realize. But research shows that the links are pretty much all bad news.
Both bullies and the people they target have higher levels of anxiety and depression, lower self-esteem, reduced academic performance and more absenteeism, elevated suicidal ideation and other challenges.
“It’s bidirectional,” said Robin Kowalski, psychology professor at Clemson University and an author or co-author of books including “Complaining, Teasing and Other Annoying Behaviors,” and “Cyber Bullying: Bullying in the Digital Age.”
“Longitudinal research shows that, clearly, involvement in either type of bullying does magnify these effects. But we also know that kids who have some of these tendencies — anxiety and depression and things like that — also can set themselves up to be involved in bullying others.”
The consequences of bullying in childhood and adolescence also extends years into the future, Kowalski said of research that suggests the cycle can be replicated in adulthood in realms like the workplace or even at home.
And speaking of home, Kowalski was part of research that found 80% of siblings who were studied had been bullied by a sibling.
Two types of bullying
The schoolyard bully who picks on someone at school or a sibling who does that at home are “traditional” bullies. And parents who have a child involved in traditional bullying, whether as the bully or the victim, should wonder seriously whether the behavior spills over into the second type, which is cyberbullying, said Kowalski. And in that, too, someone can be in either role. One can be the bully or the one being picked on.
“Let’s say that you have a child or adolescent who’s a victim of traditional bullying and maybe they can’t fight back in that world because they’re smaller or whatever. But in the online world, they can retaliate by cyberbullying,” she said.
Someone who’s been targeted may find their own form of power online, where anonymity can help as well, Kowalski added. “So there’s overlap and involvement in the two types of bullying and then enmeshed within that is that you’ve got people who are perpetrators of both types. And you’ve got people who are victims of both. Or a victim of one type who perpetrates the other type.”
The outcomes of both traditional and cyberbullying are similar and include the previously mentioned problems.
There are also some gender differences, but girls may get away with bullying more than boys do, though they can inflict just as much harm. Boys are more likely to engage in physical bullying, and girls are often more indirect, gossiping and spreading rumors or engaging in similar “mean girl” behavior.
In cyberspace, it’s not clear who bullies more based on gender. Cyberbullying would be a “more natural carry for girls than it is for boys” because of its nature, per Kowalski. But it actually depends on who’s gaming and who’s not more than other factors.
Bad behavior online
Nobody likes to think their kid’s a bully, said Ron Kerbs, CEO of Kidas, a cybersecurity company that wants to enhance online safety of young gamers. It operates on a subscription basis or is embedded without branding in some platforms and provides alerts to parents and Discord administrators about worrisome bullying behavior among gamers. The company also monitors for online predators and other threats to minors in real time.
Kerbs knows that many parents are in denial. He said he’s had experience with irate parents who don’t believe their kids would ever engage in bullying. They’re not that kind of kid, he’s been told. But, he warns, “competition definitely sparks it,” so gaming isn’t an unusual place for bullying to occur.
One perhaps unusual sign a child is being bullied while gaming could be a big increase in time spent gaming in order to “get better at the game and reduce the chance of being bullied,” per Kerbs.
There’s a difference between bullying, even in cyberspace, and just being toxic, according to Christine Waanders, a psychologist on Kidas’ scientific advisory board who also consults with the Center for Violence Prevention at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Bullying is targeted and happens again and again, whether it’s online or in the school yard. In gaming, for instance, a bully goes after the same username over and over or is playing someone familiar and picks on that person.
Waanders said that cyberbullying may have greater impact than traditional bullying. “It makes kids more anxious because they can’t escape it. In person, you can go home.”
Online, kids replay things over and over, share them, stream them, bring them up repeatedly, Kerbs said. You change schools and someone finds what happened online and it follows you.
That it’s worse online assumes, however, that the traditional bullying isn’t physical. Regardless, bullying doesn’t have positive effects.
Why kids don’t tell
Often, kids won’t tell their parents they’re being bullied, whether it’s in person or in cyberspace. Kowalski said some young people may not even realize they are being bullied or that they’re in reality bullying others. They may consider harmful behavior in cyberspace benign, though it’s not. But research clearly shows that kids who experience cyberbullying do not tell their parents and many parents do not know how to see what’s going on “or even how to search the local history of their kid’s computer,” she said.
Parents are sometimes very poor at monitoring or recognizing harms.
For cyberbullying, kids don’t tell for a lot of reasons, including fear of restrictions or being told not to engage in the online games they love but where they get bullied. So parents have to pay attention. Kowalski said that focus groups she’s done with young people revealed clearly that they’re “OK with supervision, but not with ‘snoopervision.’”
While parental monitoring is recognized as protective for cyberbullying, overdoing it can itself be a punishment. And it’s also not easy to keep track of what’s going on, especially with kids who are gaming. “There’s a lot of — for lack of a better way of putting it — mutual perpetration and victimization going on and it’s considered normative. I think that’s one of the problems of recognizing that they’re perpetrating the behavior,” Kowalski said.
Tackling bullying is also a way to teach children about sportsmanship, said Waanders. In sports, including online, for instance, trash talking can be light and funny and not go after a person’s characters. Or it can be demeaning. Children must learn social skills to do the former.
Taking away the right to play ignores that young people today are digital natives and that’s one way they socialize — “for better or worse, this is how they communicate with each other. To remove that venue, however protective that might be in the short term, is in essence sort of revictimizing the child, especially one who is a victim,” Kowalski added.
Is there a cure for bullying?
Kowalski refers to “psychological mattering” as a remedy for many aspects of troubled behavior. It’s one of her areas of expertise and refers to helping people of all ages, not just kids, realize that they are significant.
“How do we go about doing something I really believe is such a critical component of how we deal with any of this?” she asks.
She believes that helping others feel like they matter could reduce mass shootings, where individuals often say they never felt seen or significant, though she’s quick to point out that folks who feel overlooked rarely commit such acts.
“But I believe that people who feel like they matter certainly don’t bully other people because they want to facilitate mattering in others,” she said.
Schools are one place a difference could be made, added Kowalski. Schools are naturally protective or a risk factor for bullying of either type. “If we can do more to promote mattering within the school system, then I think while we’re never going to get rid of bullying entirely, certainly, we can go a long way toward reducing the frequency with which people perpetrate it.”
As for shootings and violence, Kerbs notes that research has debunked the notion that children who play shooting games are likely to become real-life shooters.
What parents can do
Waanders wants parents to realize it’s their job to help their children get comfortable in the online world and to set boundaries. Too often, she said, parents use online time for the kids as a way to get time for themselves.
“We stick them with an iPad and then we get stuff done. It’s extremely understandable, but it’s such a missed opportunity because we have to show them when they are young that we are really interested in their online world and have helpful knowledge about how to navigate that world safely and with boundaries and what kind of behavior to put up with and with what kind of behavior we should log off and say this is not for me or I need to find other people to game with,” she said.
Parents should also keep gaming equipment, computers and in general the online lives of children and teens in places where they can be monitored. “Try to keep them in an open space until they get older,” Waanders said. “You’re there and can kind of hear the chat, what kids are talking about.”
But don’t just pooh-pooh a kid’s passion for gaming, said Kerbs, who notes that valuable skills can be developed with such pursuits. He points out that many schools have competitive gaming and about half of universities and colleges have some type of e-sports. Roughly 800 colleges offer gaming scholarships. “It’s a growing market and parents should be aware and at least understand the rules and what kids are doing there.”