What is Social Bullying?

When someone is being bullied by his peers, we call it social bullying. The bullies are often girls. Bullies try to lower people's self-esteem. Common ways to social bully are sticking a mean note on someone's back like “I'm a loser”. They also judge people by their appearance (ex: clothing). They can also tell a shy girl that the popular guy likes her, as a joke. Social bullying is meant to humiliate someone in public. It's one of the worst kinds of bullying because everyone is aware of it.

Social bullying includes

There are two kinds of social bullying: nonverbal and psychological. Nonverbal social bullying happens when a group of people stare at someone or make faces at him, for example. Psychological social bullying happens when the target is ignored or excluded by her classmates, for example.
The effects of social bullying in a school setting can be quite extensive and often severe. Cliques and peer groups will often attack one another or members of other groups to make themselves look more powerful and in control.

What is Cyber Bullying?

Cyberbullying involves the use of communication technologies such as the Internet, social networking sites, websites, email, text messaging and instant messaging to repeatedly intimidate or harass others.
Cyberbullying includes:
•Sending mean or threatening emails or text/instant messages. •Posting embarrassing photos of someone online. •Creating a website to make fun of others.
•Pretending to be someone by using their name. •Tricking someone into revealing personal or embarrassing information and sending it to others.
Cyberbullying affects targets in different ways than traditional bullying. It can follow a victim everywhere 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, from school, to the mall and all the way into the comfort of their home - usually safe from traditional forms of bullying.

What is Verbal Bullying?

The definition of verbal bullying is when an individual uses verbal language (e.g., insults, teasing, etc.) to gain power over his or her peers. For example, a less athletically inclined peer may be called nerd or wimp. Unlike physical bullying, by definition verbal bullying is harder to see and stop. It tends to occur when adults aren’t around to stop it and the effects of it are not obvious. Verbal bullying can be very damaging and may have long term psychological effects on the target.

Some Effects of Verbal Bullying

Words alone do have power. While the effects of physical bullying may be more obvious at first, verbal bullying is more insidious and over long periods of time works to destroy a person’s self-image and self-esteem. This can lead to depression, anxiety and other mental health problems. In extreme cases, several well noted instances of teen suicide have been linked to prolonged verbal bullying of a classmate or peer.

What is Physical Bullying?

Physical bullying is when one person or a group of people picks on or harasses another person in a face to face confrontational manner. It can be subtle actions to casually degrade the person over time, or it can be a series of more aggressive and direct acts to purposefully hurt the person in a more immediate fashion.

But what is physical bullying exactly? What behaviour does it entail?

Physical bullying can include harassment like name calling or stalking behaviors, and more violent abuses like hitting or intimidating. Sometimes groups of young people will target and alienate a peer because of some adolescent prejudice. This can quickly lead to a situation where they are being taunted, tortured, and beat up from their fellow class mates. Physical Bullying can end tragically and therefore must be stopped immediately.

What is Emotional Bullying?

Emotional bullying is a deliberate attempt to hurt someone else or when someone tries to gain control by making others feel angry or afraid. Examples of emotional bullying include cruel teasing, talking viciously about people behind their backs, spreading humiliating rumours, and excluding people from group activities. It is characterized by verbal abuse such as name-calling, sarcasm, incessant teasing, threatening, mocking, putting down, belittling, ignoring, and lying.

Some Effects of Emotional Bullying

Because emotional bullying can be the most difficult type of bullying to cope with or prove, its effects can be devastating. In a recent study, researchers found that for males and females, frequent peer victimization and low social support contributed significantly and independently to relatively poor mental health.

Any person being a target may be forced to feel shame, embarrassment, guilt and fear which can result in depression, low self-esteem, shyness, poor academic or job performance, isolation, or threatened or attempted suicide.

Emotional bullying takes a tremendous toll on your health and self-esteem because such behaviour and attacks are as damaging to the mind and body as if they were physical. In other words, emotional bullying is a form of social violence.