English Part 1
Assignment 3 6

Bullying is an unfortunate, but seemingly inevitable human activity that occurs in all ages and all environments. This particular subject has been a critical issue in schools for decades that has affected a countless number of children all the way to adulthood. In its transcendence, the term bullying has shifted to drastic measures; bully no longer refers to the three year old “meanie” who swipes juice boxes or trips you when you're running across the playground or even the popular jock that shoves your books out of your hands as your walking to class. To put it lightly bullying has been described as a repeated verbal, physical, social, or psychological behavior that is harmful to another person, however, bullying covers a broad, complicated spectrum of activities that in essence represent placing unnecessary scrutiny, hatred and disdain towards an undeserving individual.

The inclination to survive, is instinctual and very common among all living things; we as society have developed this idea that categorizes two types of people that make world, the hunters and the hunted which suggest that you must kill or be killed. Since the beginning of time, life was seen as a competition due to the multitudes of species as a result of this competitive atmosphere we have developed an overwhelming need to out-do our opponent; our capitalistic society has made it so that we believe that success and wealth go hand and hand. This ideology has shaped a nation, so much so that bullying is unintentionally instilled into young minds as a survival tactic. In our formative years, schools teach students to always do their best so that they may succeed this seemingly innocent lesson, over time, coupled with overwhelming pressure from parents, teachers and peers can lead to creating monsters who live in survival mode and utilize those exact tactics constantly. Bullies are not born they are made, therefore, as these behaviors prove to be effective bullies construct a lifestyle from it; developing habitual use of these methods that eventually lead to those once young bullies negatively affecting their workplace in their adulthood.

Bullying at one point remained within the confines of school property. However, as society begins to grow more accustomed to the rapid revolution of technology and social media there is now no escape from the technological warfare between adolescence otherwise known as cyber-bullying. Cyber-bullying can occur in many different ways, imagine being bombarded with a slew of hateful and highly disturbing messages or having your personal email hacked and all your information out there for everyone you know to ridicule.

Justin W. Patchin and Sameer Hinduja, of the Cyber-Bullying Research Center conducted numerous studies to identify the characteristics of the new form of bullying. According to their results; cyber-bullying victimization rates have varied in the past few years, ranging between 18.8 percent in May 2007 and 28.7 percent in Nov. 2009 with a mean of 27.32 percent based on 7 different studies from May 2007-Feb. 2010. Cyber-bullying offending rates have varied in a broader spectrum than victimization rates, ranging between 20.1 percent in June 2004 and 11.5 percent in Nov. 2009 with a mean of 16.76 percent based on 7 different studies from June 2004 to February 2010 (Hinduja & Patchin,
2010g, p. 1).

Now that we understand that bullying is an epidemic that is plaguing the youth as well as its transcendence into the digital age; lets figure out what efforts are being made to help this problem.
Dr. Dan Olweus is credited for introducing the first bullying prevention programs. The Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, enacted by Norway’s Ministry of Education, develops methods of dealing with bullying on a variety of levels including school-level components, individual-level components, classroom-level components, and community-level. Along side Olweus, Dorothy Espelage and Susan Swearer’s