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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 cyber bullying).
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). Of course, bullying doesn't just take place among peers at school. It also happens fairly frequently among siblings. Children who bully other students at school are more likely than other children to also bully their siblings at home. Similarly, children who are bullied at school are somewhat more likely than other children to be bullied by siblings at home.
The fact sheet entitled, What we know about bullying contains more information about the prevalence of bullying, bullying among girls and boys, and consequences of bullying.
Why should family members be concerned about bullying?
It is very likely that a child or adolescent in your family either has:
been bullied,
bullied other children, or
seen siblings, friends, or acquaintances being bullied
Get an in-depth look at why adults should care about bullying.
Why bullying is 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 being 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.
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