Content Warning: This video contains mentions of bullying.
Bullying is a form of victimization that takes many forms. Dr. David Conant-Norville, a board-certified child and adolescent psychiatric physician, explains how bullying has evolved in recent years through the advent of the internet and social media.
Learn more about Dr. David Conant-Norville.
Content Warning: This video contains mentions of bullying.
Bullying is victimization. It’s not just a conflict. It’s really somebody trying to play and hurt somebody else. And probably 20% of high school students say they’ve been bullied. And with cyber bullying, there’s no accountability. And so it really leaves folks vulnerable. The challenge that social media presents, thing is it takes on a life of its own because it’s not between two people, it’s with the cyber sphere. And so it creates all sorts of rumors and innuendos that aren’t true. And then if you’re an athlete or you’re a young person in general, you feel helpless. I mean, what can I do? Because, your social identity is being a very important part of your life. And people are saying false things about you, and you really don’t have enough ego strength or confidence to fight it all the time. And so that chronic stress leads to anxiety, it leads to depression and it leads to what do I need do?
Which leads to suicidal thinking. And those have been the high profile things, but that’s not uncommon with a young person’s simplistic escape. This is the only thing I can do, I’ll show them. Building confidence early on is really important, if your child has had a lot of success and some failing, and I’m always on the 80/20 rule. 75%, 80% of your efforts should meet expectation. 20% should fall short. That helps the brain cope with, ‘This is stressful. I can do it.” So it’s not a hundred percent success. Oh, you’re great everything. It’s not 50/50. You build that capacity and you build that internal narrative in that child. Now, when you get to middle school, that’s the land of bullying.
That’s where people going all through the transition into adolescence, and they’re not feeling great about themselves. And so oftentimes the solution is to put down somebody else so you feel better. And if you’ve helped kids early on, they just go, “Oh yeah, that’s just whatever.” As long as it’s not violent, there’s a weapon involved or they can identify it and then go to those in authority that can do something. In a school, you want to talk to the administrator. If you tell the teacher and the teacher does nothing, you go up the chain of command to the superintendent. I mean, this becomes a legal issue. On the lower side, however, for kids that are doing this, oftentimes parents talking to parents is enough. You certainly just don’t let the kids work it out.
That’s a recipe for failure, it’s been shown over and over again. And it’s not about mediating the problem, it’s about stopping the problem. And so one parent says, “I’m really concerned about… This as what happened as according to my child, and you should probably talk to your child because this can’t happen anymore.” And you don’t overly punish the bully because bullies probably have been bullied to you. You help the bully to like, “Are you trying to say something? This is probably not the way to do it. And this is going to cause all sorts of other problems. It’s not going to make your life easier.” It’s important to identify and combat bullying immediately and not let it fester. If you’re a teacher, if you’re a coach, if you’re a parent and you see bullying, you need to take action and you need to take definitive action. This is not something that can wait because it only gets worse.
