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Name: Teneka Brathwaite Class: U6-1 Subject: Communication Studies Topic: The Negative Effects of Bullying on Teenagers.

The Negative Effects of Bullying on Teenagers


According to bullyingstatistics.org, bullying includes behaviors that

focus on making someone else feel inadequate, or focus on belittling someone else. It includes harassment, physical harm, repeatedly demeaning speech and efforts to ostracize or exclude another person. It is active, and is done with the intention of bringing another person down. GlobalPost reports that teen
bullying is an intention from one teen to another to exert pain -- physically or emotionally. Over time, continual bullying can result in severe consequences for the victim. In the teen years, when social status becomes most important, bullying can be even more painful and can have a lot of negative effects on kids in todays society such as health problems, decline in grades and drug use. Someones appearance may be one of the reasons that can account for them being bullied. Just because someone may not look like how society wants them to, they may start to be ridiculed by others. If the person being bullied doesnt show any emotion to these ridicules, the bullies may start cyber-bullying. According to Kidshealth.org, cyber-bullying may be termed as the use of technology to harass, threaten, embarrass or target another person. It mainly occurs among young people. According to bullyingstatistics.org about 42 percent of kids have been bullied while online with one in four being verbally attacked more than once. Some bullies even take cyber-bullying as far as secretly videotaping someone doing personal things. The bullies then attempt to post these videos on the internet and if successful, can do a lot of harm to someone. This in turn can lead to health problems and it can also affect ones school work. According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) youth bullying is a major public health problem in America. It causes extensive and often damaging mental and physical health problems. depression can be one of these problems. Merriam-Webster defines Depression as a serious medical condition where a person feels very sad, hopeless, and unimportant and often is unable to live in a normal way. Depression in teens can be a serious problem

because it can lead to self-harming and even suicide. Teenagers start to think that they are not good enough or not worthy of being alive any longer and when a teenager starts to have suicidal thoughts, they may not what to do or how to react to these thoughts. On September 10, 2013, Rebecca Sedwick of Florida committed suicide after being continuously being bullied for over a year. Reports have said that she jumped off an abandoned concrete factory. She was only 12 years old. Most teenagers dont know how to react to suicidal thoughts but when the bullying becomes uncontrollable, they may act on it as in the case of Rebecca. Furthermore, bullying can also affect ones school work and ultimately, their grades. According to Staffordshire Learning Net, Children miss lessons or are too scared to attend school. They lose concentration when they do attend. The only thoughts that are going to be on a persons mind when they are in class are, Why me? or Is anyone waiting for me outside of class? When things like these pervade the mind of a child, it is very easy to lose focus on other things, especially school work. According to study in the February 2011 edition of the "Journal of Early Adolescence," A high level of bullying by schoolmates is consistently related to academic disengagement and poor grades. Researchers found that consistent bullying can be a significant factor in dropping grades up to a letter and a half over three years. Dewey Cornell, a clinical psychologist and professor of education at the University of Virginia, reported on his research study to the 119th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association that "a bullying climate may play an important role in student test performance." He and co-author Anna Lacey found that the more pervasive the bullying culture at a school, the lower the school's standardized test scores tended to be.

Substance abuse is another effect of bullying. According to the Center for Advancing Health, being the victim of bullying does indeed lead to higher risk of substance abuse. Being bullied causes teens to feel depressed, and using drugs is a common method of coping with depression. When one uses drugs, it makes them feel as if everything in the world is going to be fine and

that is one of the reasons why teens who are bullied use drugs. Experts at Ohio State University in America have found that high-school students (aged 13 to 16) who are both perpetrators and bully victims used intoxicating substances, suggesting that one deviant behaviour may be linked to the other. At the end of it all, According to Staffordshire Learning Net, some of the effects last long after the bullying, until they are adults. Hetrick-Martin Institute (HMI) in one study found adults who said that they still recalled bullying incidents from thirty years ago and considered that the effects remain with them. Whether or not you are being bullied, it can leave a lasting impression on you. If you are a bystander, you can feel compromised, helpless and guilty. Let us all get together and help to stop bullying!

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