Bullying and Its Influence Over a Personality

Background and aim of study:

During the first four years of the life, a child perceives 25% of the information he will perceive within the whole life. That is what forms a child’s behaviour and worldview. If a child grows up and sees only the scandals between his parents, the scratched walls, and the violence, if a child has got through humiliation by his classmates there is a high probability that he will strive to suppress the weaker children in order to compensate for his own lack of confidence and fear. That is why nowadays everything is being done to prevent bullying at schools worldwide and in Ukraine in particular. The name “bullying” derives from the English word “bully”, which means a hooligan, a troublemaker, a person who uses his power and authority to scare or harm other people. The word “bullying” means the aggressive behaviour of one person in relation to another in order to cause him mental or physical damage, to humiliate him in such way for asserting the authority over him. The purpose of the article is to determine the features peculiar to bullying, which influences over a teenager, and its consequences affecting an adult personality in future.

Results:

The phenomenon of bullying and its form cyberbullying are spreading both in Ukraine and throughout the world. According to the Human Rights Information Centre, as on July 2017, 67% of the Ukrainian children faced with the problem of bullying within the previous three months. 24% of the children were harassed, and 48% of them did not tell anyone about such cases. In addition, in the late November of 2017, the Ukrainian Institute of Research of Extremism found that eight of ten children faced with a manifestation of bullying. According to the studies, 24% of the Ukrainian children came across the harassment at school just once. Less than half of them told about their experience to their parents, relatives, and friends. Bullying very often leads to irreparable consequences and therefore, there is much talk worldwide about how to stop school violence. The social environment has a leading role in juvenile delinquency. The specificities of age just strengthen the importance of the influence of the environment but they should be certainly taken into account in the criminological characteristic and preventive work with minors. The age peculiarities have an effect on all substructures of the personality: on the biological state and the relevant mental state, on the life experience of a minor, on the formation of a system of personal values and the criminogenic orientation of the personality.

Conclusion:

Teachers and parents, of course, are not constantly able to protect children from others. It concerns cyberbullying especially in the circumstances of today because even if we protect a child at school and at home, none can protect him in the social networks. The problem of cyberbullying becomes more relevant since teenagers are having a thorough knowledge of technical means and use them for various purposes. The very important work on legal literacy is conducted by the students and cadets among the pupils of general education institutions. As the students and cadets are equipped with theoretical knowledge, they inform the teenagers about opposition to bullying among the minors in such educational institutions. It would be advisable to introduce also so-called “Big brother protect” (info by Danchenko K. M.), which would allow the wishing students and cadets to take patronage over the pupils who have suffered or may suffer from bullying. This program could have a bilateral effect because it would help to form the correct communication skills in students, on the one hand, and to reduce the level of bullying among teenagers, on the other hand.

DOI and UDC:

DOI: 10.26697/ijes.2018.3-4.28; UDC: 316.624.2

Information about the authors:

Danchenko Kateryna Mykhailivna – Senior Lecturer of the Department of Criminal Legal Disciplines and Operative Investigating Activity, National Academy of Internal Affairs, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine.