Bullying among Young Adults
Bullying occurs most commonly among Teens and Young adults during the prominent years of going through puberty, physical changes, cognitive changes, and emotional development. Bullying looks at aspects such as physical harassment, verbal insults and threats, and most recently cyberbullying. The introduction of social media has increased bullying in the online world. Kids are no longer safe when they're at home because of this.
Vygotsky's sociocultural perspective looks at how bullying affects our interactions with others in the current moment, but also later on in the development of adolescents into their young adult years. The teenage years are important years of development. Bullying can lead to more antisocial behaviors within an individual or may be more of a risk as someone may feel like they don’t belong or are treated differently. Adolescents at risk can lead towards self harm, suicidal ideation, eating disorders, or risk seeking behaviors towards others.
Teachers and Bullying
In a study conducted in China, bullying does not only stem from peers, but can be the cause of teacher's praise or criticism towards students. They looked at researching 9449 students aged 14 to 15 years old, the researchers found that boys were three times more likely than girls to bully their peers. Bullying tended to be associated with behaviors such as fighting and swearing, substance use, and being antisocial from others. Bullying also comes from internal and external factors that affect each individual differently. The study looked to examine how teacher behaviors influenced bullying and bullying behaviors, showing that praise from teachers correlated negatively with bullying, while criticism from teachers correlated positively with bullying. It shows that both praise and criticism from teachers impacts the individual and peer factors on bullying. The results show the role of teachers in bullying prevention, suggesting that positive interactions with students and timely interventions can reduce bullying among students/peers
(Li et al. 2022).
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Parents/Coaches with Bullying
​Bullying can also stem from praise and criticism relating to coaches and parents as well. There were two studies that were conducted within this research. It shows that the effects can differ based on how long the player has been with this coach, number of years playing the sport, and autonomy support of parents and coaches can affect the performance.The studies found that support from coaches and the parents contributed to increased well-being of athletes, while only support from coaches contributed or was linked to athlete performance. Although there is still more research to be done, this research helps highlight the importance of autonomy-supportive relationships of the mental health and well-being of adolescents and young athletes especially in environments that can already be high stress (Lemelin et al. 2022).
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