Bullying is a form of violence and is considered to be a relationship problem. It involves negative physical or verbal action, which has hostile intent, results in distress to the victim, is repeated over time and involves a power difference between the bullies and the victim (Olweus, 1991).

Bullying is a subset of aggressive behaviours, characterised by a power imbalance. With repeated bullying, the power relationships between bullies and their victims become consolidated: bullies increase in power and victims lose power. In such a relationship, young people who are being bullied become increasingly powerless to defend themselves. Pepler and Craig (2000) have examined bullying from a developmental perspective and argue that this type of aggressive behaviour merits attention because it underlies many problems related to interpersonal violence. From this perspective, the lessons learnt in bullying within peer relationships can be applied to other developmentally significant relationships.

The use of power and aggression found in playground bullying is an indicator of future sexual harassment, marital aggression, child abuse and elder abuse (Pepler et al, 1997).

Victims of bullying also experience a range of problem behaviours, such as depression and anxiety, even suicide in extreme cases (Craig, 1998; Olweus, 1991; Mills et al, 2004). Victims often miss a lot of school, become under-achievers, display poor self-concepts and run away from home (Olweus, 1994). Thus, understanding and preventing bullying during adolescence has important implications for the immediate health of young people, as well as long-term societal health (O’Moore, 2000).

What is Cyberbullying

Cyberbullying is bullying that takes place using electronic technology. Electronic technology includes devices and equipment such as cell phones, computers, and tablets as well as communication tools including social media sites, text messages, chat, and websites.
Examples of cyberbullying include mean text messages or emails, rumors sent by email or posted on social networking sites, and embarrassing pictures, videos, websites, or fake profiles.

Why Cyberbullying is Different

Young people who are being cyberbullied are often bullied in person as well. Young people who are cyberbullied have a harder time getting away from the behavior.

• Cyberbullying can happen 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and reach a kid even when he or she is alone. It can happen any time of the day or night.
  • Cyberbullying messages and images can be posted anonymously and distributed quickly to a very wide audience. It can be difficult and sometimes impossible to trace the source.
  • Deleting inappropriate or harassing messages, texts, and pictures is extremely difficult after they have been posted or sent.

   

  Reports:
  

  • Anti Bullying Prevention and Intervention Strategies Resource Materials for Teachers PDST 2013
  • R U Bin Bullied? Tips 4 Teens Meath Child & Adolescent Mental Health Service.
  • Parenting Postively Helping Teenagers cope with Bullying FSA Barnardos (revised 2013)
  • Action Plan On Bullying Report of the Anti-Bullying Working Group to the 2013 proposed action plan on bullying launched by Irish Minister for Education and Skills January 2013
  • A guiding framework for policy approached to school bullying and violence.pdf OMoore
  • Making_a_Difference_in_Bullying.pdf  Pepler and Craig
  • Assessing Bullying: A Guide for Out-of-School Time Program Practitioners. (2009). This October 2009 brief from Child Trends provides information on who is most likely to be a bully or victim, how to know when conflict has turned into bullying, and ways to reduce bullying. It includes specific questions to assess students' tendencies to bully others, to be victimized by bullying, and to be pro-social and help others.

  Links:

  • Anti-Bullying Forum: A Forum on Anti-Bullying took place on the 17th of May 2012 at the Department of Education and Skills,  to explore ways to tackle the problem of bullying in schools. Links to various presentations.
  • Watch Your Space is a website devoted to empowering and supporting young people as they take action to address bullying, in particular cyber bullying, in their local communities. The site is run by Webwise, the Irish Internet Safety Awareness Centre, which is part of the PDST Technology in Education and is based in Dublin City University.
  • The Anti-Bullying Research and Resource Centre (ABC) was founded in 1996 . ABC is a national research centre based in DCU that undertakes research on school and workplace bullying
  • Barnardos This section of the website addresses a number of issues from a young persons perspective including bullying
  • Bully 4U : A good Irish resource site
  • Olweus Organisation : Good source of research
  • Break through the cloud of bullying an anti bullying campaign: A teacher orientated member site with tools resources etc for addressing bullying across various age groups.
  • Cyber Bullying, New technologies have many positive benefits for your children, from developing crucial IT skills to providing a source of entertainment and fun. Unfortunately, the internet, mobiles and other devices have also created a new channel for bullying. Known as cyberbullying, this can be extremely upsetting for children and teenagers – especially as the scale, speed and 24/7 nature of the digital world means it can take place anywhere and at any time. (Vodafone site)
  • Tackling school bullying in UK Dept of Ed 
  • True Tube is a UK resource site with film and lessons by young people on issues that effect them including bullying
  • Stop Bullying US based website with a wide range of useful resources .

  Video:

  Minister for Education and Skills Anti-Bullying Forum

   

  Reach out  Video with  Dr Rachel O'Connell is an internet safety expert and talks about how to prevent cyberbullying.

   

   

  A Conversation with Dr. Dan Olweus About the Olweus Bullying Prevention Programme

  
  
  An Overview of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Programme
  
  
  Bullying:

   Professor Christina Salmivalli has been responsible for the development and evaluation of the KiVa anti-bullying programme, now widely implemented in Finnish schools. The breakthrough in Christina's research was to understand the role of bystanders, children who neither bully nor are bullied but are present when bullying takes place. Below is a presentation of Kiva Model.