Life-Long Term Consequences Of Bullying And Cyberbullying

Bullying. It has been around since the classroom was first invented and is overall thought of a rite of passage children had to suffer through. After the Columbine massacre in 1999, everyone including school administrators, educators, and parents started paying more attention to the harm bullying can cause. Mental health experts warn about the life-long consequences that can result from being a victim of bullying. Because of this, most states now have laws that require schools to take both higher precaution and action to prevent not only bullying, but cyberbullying as well. The term cyberbullying is used to mainly describe the electronic posting of mean spirited messages about other people, typically about a specific person or group. Even though

Like bullying, cyberbullying can result in the same way. Cyberbullying can cause negative impacts on students such as long term health consequences; in turn, schools need to hold students more responsible for their actions but in the case that fails, there should be laws in place for the victim to be able to turn to when school rules fail. Both bullying and cyberbullying are harmful to anyone who experiences it. According to a survey conducted by The Journal of the American Medical Association, “nearly one of every three U.S. children in 6th through 10th grade is affected by bullying” (Bullying/Cyberbullying Timeline, 2017, para.5). Bullying can lead to catastrophic events including suicide, homicide, and in some cases, both. Cases of such instances have attracted the attention of national media due to its horrible

In order for a school to be able to take action, there must be an obvious disruption to the learning process taking place or a clear representation of threat. The concept of [public] schools restricting student’s speech off campus is exceedingly important as cyberbullying becomes a more common problem nation-wide. Both school administrations and society as a whole must take past cases into consideration in addition to current legal standards of what entails a learning disruption or a true threat when creating a strong, preventative program that is useful. For example, “Kentucky’s statute addresses students in a local school district and makes it a violation if the student disrupts the operation of the school; or creates a hostile environment by means of written communication that a reasonable person under the circumstances should know what would cause another student to suffer fear of physical harm, intimidation, humiliation, or embarrassment” (Enoch, 2017, para.16). These guidelines demonstrated by a school district in Kentucky are describing what a bullying/cyberbullying violation consists of in that area. Also as technology progresses, both local and nation-wide anti-bullying strategies and laws must remain consistently upgrading at parallel rates. Many issues and concerns faced by federal and state governments regarding