by Richie Bernardo
In the next 7 minutes, a child in the U.S. will be bullied.
It may be the son or daughter of someone you know or, worse, it may be
your own. Meanwhile, only four in 100 adults will intervene. And only 11
percent of the child’s peers might do the same. The rest — 85 percent —
will do nothing.
According to the National Education Association, more than 160,000
children miss school every day out of fear of being bullied. Bullying
takes many forms, ranging from the seemingly innocuous name-calling to
the more harmful cyberbullying to severe physical violence. It happens
everywhere, at all times to the most vulnerable of kids, especially
those who are obese, gay or have a disability.
Besides the physical, emotional and psychological tolls it takes on
victims, bullying produces adverse socioeconomic outcomes. The
Association for Psychological Science recently found
that those who are bullies, victims or both are more likely to
experience poverty, academic failure and job termination in their
adulthood than those who were neither. In addition, the affected
individuals are more likely to commit crime and to abuse drugs and
alcohol.
Even our schools take a financial hit from bullying. According to a National Association of Secondary School Principals report,
the average public school can incur more than $2.3 million in lost
funding and expenses as a result of lower attendance and various types
of disciplinary actions.
In light of back-to-school season, WalletHub’s analysts measured the
prevalence and prevention of bullying in 45 states and the District of
Columbia to help bring awareness to the harmful effects of such
pervasive violence not only to America’s young people but also to
society as a whole. In order to conduct such a comparison, we examined
each state based on 17 key metrics, ranging from “bullying-incident
rate” to “truancy costs for schools” to “percentage of high school
students bullied online.”
Read the full study here.
