Why do we love to pick on each other? This has been a hot topic over the last couple of years. In the news we hear about children committing suicide from being bullied at school and on social media. Bullying doesn’t stop at the steps of school. We also know about Hollywood bullying, especially after the Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey scandals. It’s also in politics, Washington D.C. has had the right and left at it for years. And cable news networks like CNN, MSNBC and Fox news seem to be in a race to see who can be the biggest bully on TV. The negativity abounds.
Bullying can come in many forms, verbal attacks, rumors, cyber-bullying and physical abuse. In one large study, about 49 percent of children in grades 4–12 reported being bullied by other students at school at least once during the past month, whereas 30.8 percent reported bullying others during that time. A Forbes article from 2016 reported as much as 75 percent of workers report being bullied. Cyber-bullying has been getting more attention in the news lately but only accounts for approximately 10 percent of bullying in school ages. Boys are more likely to be involved in physical bullying than girls. Verbal and social bullying are the most frequent types of bullying. Most bullying takes place on school or work grounds but with the invention of the internet, bullying can now take place anywhere at anytime by anyone and can be done almost completely anonymously.
What is bullying? Is there a definition we can all agree on? Isn’t bullying just kids messing with other kids as part of the normal growing up process? Is bullying illegal? Isn’t bullying just another way of saying harassment? But isn’t harassment illegal? If I punch someone is that “bullying” or did I just assault them? Laws have been slow to develop in the area of bullying. Most states, however, now have adopted some kind of “anti-bullying” law. Here in Texas we have David’s Law, which was passed in 2017 and makes certain aspects of bullying, like cyber-bullying a crime. It treats bullying more like harassment under the law. There is still a First Amendment protection of speech, though. You can legally be “mean” to someone in what you say to them or about them and you are protected by the First Amendment. There is a grey area here, though, that is open to interpretation when bullying goes beyond just teasing to becoming illegal. Punching someone was already illegal, if you didn’t already know that.
