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Bullying
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the Wikipedia guidance essay, see Wikipedia:WikiBullying

Bullying is detrimental to students’ well-being and development.[1]
Bullying is the use of force or coercion to abuse or intimidate others. The behavior can be habitual and involve an imbalance of social or physical power. It can include verbal harassment or threat, physical assault or coercion and may be directed repeatedly towards particular victims, perhaps on grounds of race, religion, gender, sexuality, or ability.[2][3] If bullying is done by a group, it is called mobbing. The victim of bullying is sometimes referred to as a "target".
Bullying can be defined in many
The It Gets Better Project was started in 2010 to combat gay teen suicides, and Lady Gaga announced the Born This Way Foundation in partnership with Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society in 2011.
A 2012 paper from the Berkman Center, “An Overview of State Anti-Bullying Legislation and Other Related Laws,” notes that, as of January 2012, 48 U.S. states had anti-bullying laws, though there is wide variation in their strength and focus. Sixteen states acknowledge that bullies often target their victims based on “creed or religion, disability, gender or sex, nationality or national origin, race, and sexual orientation.” Each of the 16 employs a wide array of additional parameters, the paper notes, ranging from age and weight to socioeconomic status. Of the 38 states that have laws encompassing electronic or “cyberbullying” activity, 32 put such offenses under the broader category of bullying and six states define this type of offense separately, the authors report.[15]
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Characteristics
Of bullying in general
Bullying consists of three basic types of abuse – emotional, verbal, and physical. It typically involves subtle methods of coercion such as intimidation. Bullying behavior may include name calling,verbal or written abuse, exclusion from activities, exclusion from social situations, physical abuse, or coercion.[10][16]
U.S. National Center for Education Statistics suggests that bullying can be