Causes of Bullying in Teens
What Causes Bullying? Types, Triggers, and Risk Factors
Understanding the causes of bullying in teens is important, because we often hear the saying, “Prevention is better than cure.” Therefore, prevention is the best way to avoid many unpredictable events. Bullying is one of them. To keep teenagers away from bullying environments and prevent them from becoming bullies or victims, it is essential to understand the underlying causes of bullying and the effects of bullying matters on teens.
Why Do Teenagers Start Bullying Others?
Bullying In Teens During childhood stage (Ages 5-9)
Childhood refers to the developmental stage from infancy to adolescence.
During this period, infants or children do not yet know how to express themselves effectively and communicate their opinions through behaviour, such as crying loudly and persistently, or refusing to follow instructions. Sometimes, they may even seek their parents’ attention by engaging in physical conflicts with other children or damaging personal belongings. The victims may be their siblings or classmates.
Bullying In Teens During the adolescence period (Aged from 10-19)
Adolescence refers to the stage of development between childhood and adulthood. The most common forms of bullying during adolescence include mocking others’ weaknesses, shouting out nicknames, spreading gossip about others’ behaviour, social isolation and exclusion, coercive behaviour, and spreading rumours about others. Other forms of physical harassment include repeated fighting, pushing, tripping, damaging or destroying others’ personal belongings, or taking others’ property as one’s own.
Bullying in adolescence often starts on an individual basis. To enhance their status, bullying gradually develops into group behaviour. They attract people to join in various ways, such as establishing close relationships, offering benefits to become fair-weather friends for long-term trustfulness and being supportive in case of facing any difficulties.
Bullying During adult period (After ages 19)
In adult world, bullying activities will be escalating from school to workplace and performing to more advanced bullying activities. They are:
- Social isolation can make you feel lonely and helpless.
- Lack of cooperation in the workplace can hinder you from completing work on time.
- Deliberately ignoring someone’s presence.
- Intentionally undermining or interfering with the victim’s interpersonal relationships.
- Provide you with error messages, guide you to execute incorrect instructions, and then blame the results owing to your own fault.
- Selectively choosing to disregard your demand or requisition.
- Authoritarianism in the workplace refers to strictly obeying certain directives without any dissenting voices, lacking one’s own mission, vision, and desires, casuing you to despair
Adolescents’ participation in bullying behaviour is influenced by many factors, one of which is peer pressure. There are three types of peer pressure:
- Environmental Factor – Poor environment
- Social Factor – Bad culture
- Psychological Factor – Intimate in the pursuit of power
Environmental Factors – Poor Environment
Intimidate with poor environment
Everyone is the same. They either imitate others or follow established instructions, lacking a strategic plan grounded in self-mission, beliefs, vision, or desires to create genuine value for themselves. Their decisions are influenced by successful people or the surrounding environment. They do not realize an important strategy: different people approach methods differently.
Scenario:
- One indicator of a restaurant’s food quality is to observe the number of people waiting outside, but this does not indicate the food quality they are offering.
- More likes on social media may indicate the quality of a product or service, but that does not take into account individual interests, experiences, and desires.
- Colleagues are voting to choose the best restaurant to celebrate someone’s birthday, and peer pressure can make you go along with their decision, ignoring your own opinion.
- In today’s life and work culture, there is a famous saying: quantity is valued over quality.
- People do not pursue the facts. When someone hears a rumor for the first time, they do not believe it. If a second person spreads the same rumor, you might still not believe it. Eventually, your mindset may slightly change, beginning to accept this rumor as fact. However, the truth is, they do not fact-check to ensure the authenticity of the event.
Humans fear being alone. It is because this is an instinctive behaviour, and people want to follow what other people are following and approaching to do. If someone tempts you to smoke, the first time you will refuse without hesitation. When there is a second person who entices you again, you may hesitate to refuse. Once peer pressure outweighs your mental will, you will be unable to resist smoking.
Social Factors – Bad Culture
Intimidate with bad habits
Let me tell you my story:
I have a brother who suffered from cardiovascular diseases and performed the Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery (CABG) a few years ago. After the surgeon had successfully completed it, he had given up smoking in the first-year rehabilitation period at home. After he went back to work, he started smoking again.
Peer pressure is a key factor that influences your tendency to imitate others’ habits, whether they are good or not. The nature of the work environment we create significantly affects the level of intimacy displayed in behaviour. We simply refer to it as the environmental cultural influences.
Scenario
- People who work in a smoking culture may have a high chance of becoming smokers.
- People who use coarse language in the workplace may find it easy to communicate
- with others in this way. People who work long hours in a bookstore may unwittingly become bookish.
- People who work in a clichéd environment may unwittingly work in a lackadaisical manner.
Psychological Factors – Intimate in the Pursuit of Power
In society, people often focus obsessively on gaining and enhancing authority, prestige, status, respect, recognition, and praise. In the same industry, there is no significant difference between a person with ten years of experience and one working with five. It is because experience is not the main focus of people’s success. Credibility, authority, and industry-recognized qualifications are becoming essential tickets towards a successful future. The higher the status and prestige you establish, the more admiration and praise you receive. You will be receiving more chastisement and praise.
Scenario:
- In the online world, people decide their purchasing choices through comments, short videos, insights, and interactions on social media platforms. They do not investigate product specifications, nor do they compare each product’s features and performance to select the one that delivers the best results and meets customer needs.
- So far, we all have a clear idea in our minds. We all learn from celebrities about their success stories. We are just imitating their successful strategies. We are merely envisioning ourselves as the next success story and fulfilling our desire for achievement.
Peer pressure plays a huge role in bullying especially when teens seek social approval. This is closely related to the principals explained in behavioural economics, where human decisions are shaped by incentives and social content.
Conclusion
Bullying is a habit, and it does not appear suddenly without any warning. From the bully’s perspective, bullying behaviour may begin to gradually emerge in early childhood.
We can divide bullies into three groups according to the developmental stages of adolescents: the childhood stage (from 5 to 9), the teenage stage (from 10 to 19), and the adult stage (after 19). Different stages of adolescent development are associated with different bullying behaviour.
Frequently Asked Questions About Causes of Bullying in Teens
Q1: What are the causes of bullying happened in childhood?
During childhood, bullying behaviours can emerge in the early stages of a child’s development. If bullying behaviour is not addressed in time, it may gradually develop into serious bullying. Children’s bullying behaviours include fighting over toys or crying loudly to attract their parents’ attention, with the ultimately desire to satisfy self needs.
Q2: What are the causes of bullying happened in adolescence?
During this stage of life, teenagers are highly susceptible to peer pressure, adverse environments, unrestricted social media use, harmful habits, and a desire for power. Bullying provides no real benefits and instead leads to serious harm, causing victims to feel depressed, irritable, and unhappy and to experience many other emotional and psychological symptoms.
Q3: What are the causes of bullying happened in adults?
If we do not stop their bullying behaviour during childhood and adolescence, it may extend into the family or workplace.
Moreover, in the workplace, such behaviour could not only hinder colleagues’ work and cause loss of self-esteem. Furthermore, it could also damage interpersonal relationships. Finally, it may also harm the victim’s own reputation in the eyes of superiors.
The aim of the bully is to enhance their standing with their superiors or improve their self-reputation.
Q4: What are the main causes of bullying causing bully intimate with their behaviour?
