· 3.7 million youth engage in bullying each year (American Medical Association)
· 3.2 million youth are victims of moderate or serious bullying each year (American Medical Association)
· Bullying has been declared a violation of civil rights in some cases
· Numerous lawsuits (victims suing school systems) and criminal cases
· Bullying occurs in every school (20% or more are victims of bullying)
· Bullying happens every 7 minutes on elementary playgrounds (Pepler, Craig, and Roberts, 1998)
· 160,000 students per day stay home from school because of bullying (National Association of School Psychologists)
· 7% of eighth graders stay home at least once a month because of bullies (Banks, 2000)
· Bullying creates a fearful environment that impacts learning. Approximately 14% of 8th through 12th graders and 22% of 4th through 8th graders surveyed reported that bullying diminished their ability to learn in school; (Hoover and Oliver, 1996)
· A study by the
· Over 90% of school shootings involved young boys who were relentlessly tormented and bullied because they were considered unmanly or not aggressive enough. (Michael Kimmel)
· Bullied children seek acceptance and a sense of belonging by joining and/or forming gangs, cults, hate groups, and drug groups.
· Bullying causes post traumatic stress in some victims (Kinchin, 2001)
· Bullying causes “toxic shame” that creates lack of trust and hopelessness (Garbarino, 1999)
· 30% of youth suicides are because of bullying (Hawker and Boulton, 2000)
· Victims often engage in self-mutilation “to release the pain of being bullied”
· 10% of dropouts do so because of repeated bullying (Weinhold and Weinhold, 1998)
· Bullying causes children to runaway
· Bullying causes eating disorders
· Bullying causes low self-esteem
· Bullying causes withdrawal, depression, and anxiety disorders
· Bullying is a root cause of discipline problems: Bullied children often become behavior problems after the bullying and those problems get worse (Schwartz, McFayden-Ketchum, Dodge, Pettit and Bates, 19998)
· Bullying causes long-lasting harmful emotional effects (Olweus, 1993; McMaster, Connolly, Pepler and Craig, 1998) – may affect their work performance as adults
· Hostile kids are more likely to have diabetes and heart attacks in the future (Matthews, 2002)
· Hinders full inclusion of students with disabilities
· Bullying may even cause teen pregnancies – to have someone to love and to love them unconditionally
· Bullying creates societal problems
o Bullies identified by age eight are six times more likely to be convicted of a crime by age 24 and five times more likely than non-bullies to end up with serious criminal records by age 30 (Olweus, 1991)
o 60% of students characterized as bullies by grade 6-9 had at least one criminal conviction by age 24 and 40% had three or more arrests. (Olweus, 1991)
o Bullies grow up and often abuse their spouse, children and co-workers.
Compiled by Allan Beane, Ph.D.
Bully Free® Systems, LLC
(270) 227-0431