Bullying among children mustn’t be a secondary concern

THE General Assembly of the United Nations spent last week deliberating on the rights of the child, and more specifically on violence against children.

On Wednesday, the report of the UN secretary-general on Protecting Children from Bullying was presented and adopted by the General Assembly. To coincide with this, also in New York, the special representative of the secretary-general on violence against children released a study at a side event at the General Assembly on “Ending the Torment: Tackling Bullying from the Schoolyard to Cyberbspace”.

As these discussions on bullying were happening in New York, much closer to home, two horrible bullying incidents dominated the headlines. The acts of schoolyard bullying were captured on cellphone cameras and went viral on social media, bringing to the fore this insidious form of violence that is often left unrecognised and unaddressed until it results in very real physical harm or fatality.

Representative data on the extent of bullying in South Africa is scarce. In the 2012 CJCP National School Violence Study of 5 939 secondary school learners in South Africa, one in five (20.9%) reported having experienced some form of cyberbullying over the last year.

A 2012 Unisa study examining bullying among secondary school learners in Gauteng found that 34.4% of children had been personally bullied, 38.1% of children knew peers who had been bullied and 23.3% of children admitted to perpetrating bullying themselves. Data from the 2016 Optimus Foundation Study on Child Abuse, Violence and Neglect found that just over one in 10 (15.1%) of children between the ages of 15 and 17 years reported being cyberbullied over a one-year period.

The study shows that girls tend to experience cyberbullying more than boys, or at least are more willing to disclose their experiences: one in five females had experienced cyberbullying, compared to just over one in 10 males. Bullying, particularly what we think of as schoolyard bullying, is a form of violence that is often seen as a rite of passage growing up, something that happened to many of us at school, or something that can build character (like other, more institutional forms of violence such as corporal punishment).

Yet, like its newest incarnation, cyberbullying, it is a very real, very harmful form of violence that is strongly correlated with violent acts such as assault and sexual assault, and can have as profound an impact on both the person being bullied, and on society more generally. Importantly, there are common factors that make children vulnerable to different forms of violence, including bullying.

The recently launched Optimus Study on Child Abuse, Violence and Neglect by the Centre for Justice and Crime Prevention and UCT found that 36% of children who report being bullied also experienced some form of cyberbullying, compared to 17% of those who had not been bullied.

Similar findings are evident between cyberbullying and other forms of victimisation, including sexual violence. The same study shows that children who experience cyberbullying are three times more likely than those who have not, to experience some form of contact or non-contact sexual victimisation. Almost one in three of those children who had experienced cyberbullying reported they had “ever had an adult hit, kick or physically hurt (them) in any way”, compared to only 19% of those who did not report having been cyberbullied.

Similarly, of those who had experienced cyberbullying at some point in their life, 26% had also experienced psychological maltreatment, compared to just 14% of those who had not. This data shows that children who are bullied, or cyberbullied, are also at much greater risk of experiencing other forms of violence. This may not necessarily be a causal relationship, but is strongly symptomatic of and strongly correlated to wider violence and abuse.

This is in addition to what has been termed the “double-jeopardy effect” – the often increased risk of further marginalisation of children who have been or are being bullied, leading to further trauma and harm.

So, as we as a country consider ways to address the high levels of violence experienced by many South Africans, and seek to develop long-term solutions to reduce violent crime, let’s take care not to relegate bullying amongst children to a secondary concern. Let us also not focus purely on those incidents that grab the media’s attention, but rather ensure that our responses to prevent and respond to bullying form part of a systematic approach to eliminate all forms of violence against children.

Burton is the Executive Director of the Centre for Justice and Crime Prevention, and a contributing expert to the report of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence Against Children – Ending the Torment: Tackling Bullying From the Schoolyard to Cyberbspace