Three pressing issues that are facing adolescent girls are bullying, substance abuse and eating disorders. Bullying is a pressing issue among adolescents in general and it is a growing worldwide phenomenon. Statistics Canada has reported that at least 1 in 3 teens have reported being bullied (Canadian Bullying Statistics, 2012). Teenage girls specifically resort to a different type of bullying and aggression than their male counterparts. Teenage girls resort to relational aggression to bully each other. Relational aggression includes some of the following behaviors such as gossiping, criticizing other females, manipulation of others, exclusion etc (Burton, 2010). Bullying has shown to have negative affects for both the bully and the bullied. …show more content…
The first type is traditional bullying. Traditional bullying is an act of negativity or aggression that is done on purpose toward one or more persons (Hemphill, Tollit, & Kotevski, 2012). This is the typical school-yard bullying. It can be making fun of someone, making them feel excluded and many other related type events. The second type is cyber-bullying which is some form of aggression toward a person that intends to cause harm via technology. (Hemphill, Tollit & Kotevski, 2012). So it could be sending a mean text message or posting an inappropriate picture of someone on Facebook, or perhaps exposing on social media someone’s deep dark secret. The third type of bullying is relational aggression. Relational aggression is the “harming [of] others through purposeful manipulation and damage of their peer relationships” (Hemphill, Tollit & Kotevski, 2012, pg. 100). Often times this type of bullying is seen in girls when they gossip about one another, or spread rumors to ruin someone’s social status and reputation. Relational aggression is often also referred to indirect aggression. Indirect aggression is often a change in behavior, it can be “ignoring or excluding another person from social interchanges” (Catanzaro, 2011, pg.84). So one day a teen girl could have a group of friends and the next day she could have no friends due to indirect or relational aggression. An example of relational aggression could be from the scene in the Mean Girls move where in the lunch room adolescents sit at tables either based on race, what they look like or what club they are a part of. There was certain people that one could not site with based on some clique