Has Bullying In Schools Increased?

With cable news networks trying to fill so much airtime, they invariably keep bringing up situations like this. I don’t know the statistics but it’s obvious the media has more coverage over more areas than ever before.
If there’s a school suicide, an armed crazy person with guns, or a murder/suicide anywhere in America, American cable news is all over it.

I’m not so sure it’s increased (although it probably seems like it has when you hear a bunch of news stories about it), but I think it’s taken a different form. I would guess that online/tech bullying occurs more than or just as much as physical bullying. Especially since social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace have really taken off. Also, computers and cell phones with video cameras make it easy to record and spread information or video of fights and online conversations.

No, but bully education has. Thank goodness for the land of the free, where one can homeschool

(when you look at the link, you’ll notice 44,300,000 links to “bully education”)

I agree that there are definitely different forms. But according to my parents, bullying was relatively ignored back in their day. It was always “boys will be boys” and such. People seem to be more strict about it now—more zero tolerance. And of course the media loves to overblow things and focus on the negative.

In the age of open talk every social issue seems more prevelant but I am I strong believer that such things have always existed. I think we talk about things so much now (which I have yet to weigh if it is for the good or not) that they seem overblown. What use to be a fight between two kids that would make up the next week has now become harassment punishable by exposion.

I have to agree with @DominicX on this one.

When I was in school it could be fucking brutal. Thank God I smoked cigarettes and was, therefore, accepted by my peers.

I don’t think it has increased, but it is no longer an open secret. Kids aren’t allowed to “take it outside” any longer and schools teach anti-bullying techniques in large part because we have way more attorneys than we need and parents who are too willing to play the law suit game.

In the “old days” bullying happened in every school and in every classroom. The bullied either sucked it up, called out the bullies and attempted to beat the tar out of them, or secretly thought of evil things that should happen to the bully. Sometimes kids even killed themselves over it.

I hope not. Didn’t Columbine teach bullies anything?

It taught a few particular bullies a thing or three. . .

Thank you for your responses. I agree with the consensus, it probably hasn’t increased dramatically, I think just more attention paid. At least I hope that is the case. I hate the think the world is getting more cruel.

I’m currently in high school. Honestly if there is any bullying going on it’s not the kind that is portrayed with the ideals of physical abuse. It’s usually to where peeps at school will tease someone about what they wear or just how they’re appearance is. And every school is different filled with a lot of different people and backgrounds. As far as real bullying goes…that disappeared way back when because I really haven’t seen it.

I am not sure if this is new ( I hadn’t really paid much attention to bullying until it became popular in the news recently) but this is how I find things different today as compared to simple name calling and physical abuse.

Today, bullying is more of back-stabbing friends, manipulating, omitting the truth, lying, verbal abuse, stalking, rumor-spreading, mind games, denying ( “I don’t know what you are talking about”) and lots of implying. These “bullys” are popular among other students and will get decent to good grades and go off to college (they do study however cheating is prominent). There activities are known among a circle of kids and are mostly aided by group of these kids in their activities against a target. It can end up as everyone in the social environment of the target versus the target. It is also possible for the target to get manipulated and end up doing actions that can be seen as incriminating. If trying to report the bullying, its possible for the victim to sound crazy as a common counter argument is that the victim is assuming and wrongly deciphering the implications, gestures and other non verbal hostility displayed especially if the bullys seem to have a better social status than them (popularity, better grades etc, support/familiarity with teachers)

Basically its a “White-Collar” bullying system. Sometimes its hard to take notice of the dirt in it by observing it from the outside.

When I hear this argument used, I think we must bear in mind that since the beginning of humankind there has been the haves and the have nots. So I wonder why suddenly this has become the reason for virtually everything wrong with society. If anything, I believe that fact has less impact than it did before. If you were not a blue blood or a member of whatever ruling family you had very little chance of progressing in status now however it is true that if you work hard, have a certain amount of luck but more importantly a positive outlook, ambition and tenacity you can become prime minister or president or even Bill Gates.