Tip Sheets
ALL ABOUT BULLYING
What Do We Know About Bullying?
What Is Bullying?
Bullying is aggressive behavior that is intentional (not accidental or done in fun) and that involves an imbalance of power or strength. Often, bullying is repeated over time. Bullying can take many forms, such as: hitting or punching, teasing or name-calling, intimidation through gestures, social exclusion, and sending insulting messages or pictures by mobile phone or using the Internet (also known as cyberbullying).
How Common Is it?
Bullying is more common than many adults realize. Most studies show that between 15-25% of American students are bullied with some frequency (i.e., "sometimes" or more often).
Click here to view a Tip Sheet entitled What We Know About Bullying for more information about the prevalence of bullying, bullying among girls and boys, and consequences of bullying.
Why Is Bullying Sometimes Hard for Adults to Detect?
Unfortunately, although bullying can be very harmful to children, adults are often unaware of bullying problems. Why? Often, bullying takes place in areas of schools, homes, or communities that are not well supervised by adults. Even if bullying happens near adults, sometimes we miss it because bullying can be subtle or hard to detect (e.g., social exclusion, note-passing, threatening looks).
Adults also are often unaware of bullying because many children and youth don't report it. They may fear retaliation by children doing the bullying. They also may fear that adults won't take their concerns seriously or will act inappropriate to deal with the bullying.
