Our Mission

The Beyond Bullying initiative seeks to move societal attitudes past the idea that bullying is some type of normal rite of passage and to raise awareness that bullying is instead a damaging interpersonal experience that can precipitate toxic stress and trauma at any point during the lifespan.

Definition and Components of Bullying

While there is no standardized definition of bullying, bullying researchers generally rely on three, distinct, defining features of bullying established by international bullying researcher Dan Olweus (1993):

1. Repetition – bullying occurs repeatedly over time
2. Power Imbalance – the perpetrator has more social and/or physical power than the victim
3. Intent to Harm – the perpetrator engages in aggression that is intended to physically and/or emotionally harm the victim

These three definitions were recently expanded by the CDC to include three additional key elements: bullying is unwanted, occurs between youth who are not siblings or dating partners, and likely causes the victim distress or harm

Bullying causes harm to one or all of the following: victim, bystanders, environment, culture and climate. However, we agree with the CDC that bullying is always unwanted and that this should become part of the formal definition of bullying.

Bullying is: Unwanted behavior that occurs between a more powerful perpetrator(s) and wekaer victim and usually occurs repeatedly over time; the behavior is intended to harm the victim and does cause harm to the victim, bystanders, and/or culture and climate within the environment where the bullying dynamic occurs.

We say a student is being bullied when another student, or a group of students, say or do nasty and unpleasant things to him or her. It is also bullying when a student is teased repeatedly in a way he or she does not like or when he or she is deliberately left out of things. But it is not bullying when two students of about the same strength or power argue or fight. It is also not bullying when a student is teased in a friendly and playful way (World Health Organization, 2012)

A Few Examples

“Drink bleach and die.” “Why don’t you go kill yourself?” “You’re ugly.” “You should die.” These are a few of the phrases 12-year-old Rebecca Sedwick heard every day for a year from at least 15 of her classmates. When the harassment moved from in person to online, there was no escape and Sedwick could not take the abuse any longer. In 2014 she jumped from a silo tower to her death.  

At age 10, Daniel W. Smith was routinely beaten up by his older brother. Put in a headlock or stranglehold, Smith’s brother would punch him repeatedly. Fighting back made it worse, so Smith just took the beatings and waited for them to end.

Forms of Bullying

Bullying includes direct aggressive behaviors that occur in the presence of the victim and indirect aggressive behaviors that occur when the victim is not present, but are still intended to cause harm. Direct and indirect bullying behaviors are classified into four types:

1. Physical bullying is physical force intended to harm the victim such as hitting, kicking, or pushing;
2. Verbal bullying is oral or written communication like name calling, teasing, or threatening;
3. Relational bullying is any action intended to harm the victims’ reputation and social relationships such as spreading rumors, excluding, or making embarrassing images of the victim public through the internet, cellphones, or other means; and
4. Bullying by property damage includes stealing and/or destroying the victim’s property

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) consider electronic bullying to be a form of verbal and relational bullying executed using electronic means (e.g., e-mail, instant messaging, chat rooms, web sites [e.g., Facebook, Twitter], gaming sites, cell phones [e.g., applications such as Instagram, Snapchat, text messages]) to harass, insult, exclude, and/or ostracize victims. Electronic bullying includes behaviors ranging from harassing text messages or pictures sent via cellphone to creating defamatory websites intended to embarrass or humiliate the victim.