Bullying

Social/Relational aggression among high school kids is harmful and dangerous. An argument can be made that kids will be kids and that bullying is just another one of those character builders that kids must face. Social/relational aggression has evolved with the evolvement of technology. What use to be teasing in the hallways, something that happened that a victim would put behind them, has now turned into something much larger. With text messaging victims of bullying can be continually harassed and their peer’s negative opinions of them can quickly spread in and out of school. An embarrassing encounter between a bully and a victim can now easily be video taped. What was once just gossip through the school can now easily be published on the internet. These technologies give an entirely new dimension to bullying and the degrees to which bullies are able to impact their victims. One could argue that social/relational aggression is not as harmful as physical aggression; however, after dissecting the outcomes of both types of aggression, in terms of the impact it has on its victims, we can reasonably conclude that bullying in any form is harmful.