Examples of Bullying

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To bring together the different types of bullying and give you an idea of the full spectrum of harassment bullied children experience, we created a quick index of examples of the different types of bullying. Keep in mind that most bullied children will experience a combination of these different tactics, if not all of them. When you stack some of these incidents on top of one another, it’s easy to see how bullying can become so destructive for those who endure it.

Examples of physical bullying

  • Several children grab hold of a smaller child’s legs and feet to throw him into a trash can
  • Tipping a child head first into a toilet
  • Kicking a target as they walk down the hallways
  • Knocking a child’s books down as they walk down the hall so that his school papers fly everywhere
  • Ripping up or taking a child’s homework assignment so that they cannot complete their schoolwork
  • Destroying artwork or other prized possessions that a child brings home from school
  • Stealing a child’s personal belongings

Examples of verbal bullying

  • A student has to walk down the hallways to get to class while a group of girls walk behind her engaging in a discussion (that they intend the victim to overhear) about all the ways their target is a worthless person
  • A boy is repeatedly called a “fag” or endures comments of “look out, here comes the homo” by different students as he passes tables to find a spot to sit in the lunchroom
  • Coming up with derogatory pet names for the victim (Stinky, Barbie girl, Tweetle dumb, etc.) and then getting all the other kids to refer to the victim by that insult

Examples of Gossip Bullying

  • · At one high school, every year the names of what were decided to be the four ugliest girls in school were written on a toilet door, with the list updated every year
  • At a junior high, a list is distributed among students that purportedly “outs” students in the school with STDs.
  • A former friend of the victim starts telling everyone she meets that so and so is pregnant
  • A boy asks a girl out and she rejects him, so in revenge, he starts telling everyone that she’s a slut who slept with him on the first date

Examples of Humiliation Bullying

  • “Depancing” or yanking down a person’s shorts/pants/underwear in front of a group as a means of embarrassing them
  • Telling a youth (falsely) that a girl really likes him and wants him to ask her out, so that they can watch him be humiliated when she rejects his offer
  • Using a camera phone to take an unflattering picture of someone without their permission and then distributing the picture to everyone in school
  • Talking a victim into saying something to someone else that the bullies know will cause a reaction in that person and bring ire or humiliation against the victim

Examples of Sexual Bullying
· At one high school, students organized to form the understanding that every Tuesday night was “gay-bashing night,” and would make it a sport to harass any student they suspected was gay
· Labeling a student as gay (whether they are or not) and then relentlessly insulting them with gay jokes and sexual name-calling
· Performing mock sex-acts against a student, such as coming up behind them and humping their back like a dog
· Groping or pinching a student in sexual ways; often a ploy used by same sex peers to tease kids they suspect of being gay

Examples of extortion bullying

  • Pressuring a child to “give” the bully their possessions
  • Charging a fee to use the bathroom or have access to a certain hallway
  • In one case, a bully pretended to be a hot girl in order to trick other boys into sexting him. Once they sent the pictures, he then used them as blackmail – threatening to release the pics unless the boys had sex with him. Several complied before one boy eventually went to his parents.

Examples of emotional bullying

  • A bully intentionally brushes against the victim in the hallway, and then turns around saying, “Oh my God, Hank, don’t touch me like that, you pervert…” putting on a scene for everyone in the vicinity.

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