After a 2-year dip, experts say bullying's increasing — and its harms can be long-lasting
Bullying can affect physical, emotional health well into adulthood, professor and therapist say
With children back in school and socializing with friends more since pandemic restrictions lifted, experts say bullying has also returned and it's impacting kids mental health.
"We know that, generally, pretty serious bullying is happening at least around once a week," said Anthony Volk, a professor in the Department of Child and Youth Studies at Brock University.
"Bullying has come right back."
Volk said recent studies showed there was anywhere between a 25 per cent and 50 per cent decline in bullying during the pandemic, which he said correlates with how much general socialization was down. But as soon as things began to return to normal, Volk said so did bullying.
"It's pretty common and this is behaviour that, as I mentioned, is not minor. It's not simply saying one bad thing to somebody. What we see in bullying is really harmful behaviour that's really hurting the emotional well-being of our adolescents," Volk said.
Volk said a survey conducted by his team suggested that while bullying decreased while children weren't physically at school due to the COVID-19 pandemic, incidents of bullying appear to be back to pre-pandemic levels. The survey started back in the 2018/19 school year, but took a three-year break due to COVID-19 before continuing this past fall.
Volk's team surveyed more than 650 students in Grade 5-9 at five different elementary schools in the Niagara region that feed into the same high school, and followed up with those same students — now in Grades 8-12 — this year. The students answered questions about their peers, their social groups and themselves.
Despite years of raising awareness around the issue through anti-bullying weeks and Pink Shirt Days, the problem remains persistent, Volk said.
"The number of kids who are being victimized has stubbornly remained the same, despite a lot of these education campaigns that we have to try and prevent bullying," he said.
According to Public Safety Canada, 47 per cent of Canadian parents have at least one child that has been a victim of bullying. It also stated that one third of teenagers have been bullied recently.
Long-lasting effects
Volk said it's a myth that bullying teaches children life lessons about standing up for themselves and dealing with conflict.
"It's very severe. The emotional trauma," he said.
"There is long-term data showing that bullying 10, 20, 30 years later, causes changes in your stress response, your inflammatory response, your immune response. So it's very harmful for victims."
Carolyn Klassen sees the impacts of bullying everyday at her Winnipeg-based practice.
Klassen has been working with clients for three decades and said for many people, the impacts of bullying last well into adulthood.
"They talk about being bullied as a kid," she said.
"I say 'what was the name of your bully?' Instantly they know the name decades later. They have not forgotten what that person's name was, what they looked like, how they spoke, what they said, the names that they were called. It's just stored in there so clearly."
She said children are also struggling with navigating bullying more these days, after not being exposed to it as often while they were learning remotely.
"We're finding that kids are often behind in their social development," she said. "I think our kids need extra support because they've had less exposure to all the things, including bullying."
What parents can do
Klassen said it's important for parents to make it safe for kids to talk about their experiences and to let them know that any topic is open for discussion.
She said parents need to normalize having awkward or uncomfortable conversation, and that demonstrating that with kids will help later in life as well.
"It's not one-size-fits-all about what is the right way to deal with schoolyard bullies," she said. "So it's really working with parents in a creative way to say, 'I am empowered because my parents gave me the ability to make choices so that I can do this well.'"
She said often a parent or guardian's first instinct is to get angry when they hear their child is being bullied, but that it's important to take a deep breath and remain calm.
"Our mama bear comes out, or papa bear and we just want to get in there and take care of it. But then now we're taking care of ourselves rather than really taking care of the child," she said.
"Take that offline and make the child the centre of the story and really figure out what a child-centred approach is."
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