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ABSTRACT
Current definitions of bullying, crafted by policymakers and researchers, raise questions about the ways in which adult constructions of bullying reflect, or fail to reflect, the lived realities of adolescents. In particular, the narrow scope of “bullying,” as currently defined, may over-simplify adolescents’ experiences with relational aggression, which often sit in the space between bullying, discrimination, and harassment. This study investigates adolescents’ talk about bullying on an online message board, as one effort to better understand whether adolescents’ constructions of bullying are aligned with those of researchers and policymakers, and where these youth constructions may overlap with ideas about discrimination and harassment. Conducting a content analysis of data from an online, teen message board, we find that participants frequently use the term bullying to describe adult or familial aggression, and often describe bullying behaviors in ways that reflect elements of discrimination and harassment. We conclude with suggestions for future research and practical approaches that might better bridge gaps between research and practice.
Notes
1. While these adolescent volunteers are trained by adult clinicians, they operate without adult intervention.
2. This statistic was determined through personal communication with adult administrators of the program.
3. The terms ‘suicide’ and ‘suicidal’ came up 137 times across the 451 bullying-related posts.
4. Examples of these terms present in the current study include bullying, discrimination, harassment, and abuse, as well as more specific behavioral labels (e.g., teasing, fighting, beating up, gossiping about).
5. Because adults and older siblings almost always have more power, harmful adult and/or sibling behaviors are logically labeled ‘bullying’ by youth. Yet, the implications of these experiences—and the strategies best used to address them—are often quite different. Accurately capturing and understanding the nuanced differences in the types of bullying that students experience may vastly improve our ability to prevent negative outcomes; at the same time, if we continue to insist that bullying cannot be perpetrated by adults, we risk negating students’ experiences with adult-based relational aggression.
6. The significance of aligning language cross-generationally cannot be understated when it comes to issues of relational harm. If adolescents use the phrase bullying to describe identity-based harassment or discrimination, they may unintentionally diminish the weight of their experiences in the eyes of adults. At the same time, if adults presume that adolescents’ interpretations of words are the same as their own, they may unintentionally silence students who do not see their experiences as fitting within specific categories. In addition, the term bullying—frequently used in school-based interventions—risks irrelevance if students themselves do not buy into the construct. In this sense, the utility of our adult interventions may depend on the local relevance of the words and constructs that we use. Finally, if youth definitions of bullying do not align with those of adults, our research may not accurately represent the information that we hope to reflect. Asking students to talk about one set of experiences as distinct from the others, risks suggesting to them that certain types of victimization matter more, or that the effects of one experience are not influenced by the existence of another