Research has found that approximately 40% of kids between the ages of 11 and 16 are targeted by bullies at least once a week for the way they look, furthermore, more than half of all children between this age bracket have been bullied about their appearance at least once. Specifically, these figures came from the YMCA England and Wales’s In Your Face report, that surveyed 1,006 children and published “comments and criticisms of young people’s appearance have become part of everyday life”, with 55% of children now being affected.
Within this survey the researchers have delved not just into how many children are bullied but what they are targeted for, in fact, the majority of bullying focuses on weight and body shape and it’s easy to see the terrible effects this kind of abuse has on the youth. As for what these effects are, we see that 53% of young people who experienced bullying based on their appearance had become anxious as a result and 29% had become depressed, not only this but one in 10 expressed they had had suicidal thoughts, 9% said they had self-harmed and 60% said they had tried to change their appearance.
The chief executive of YMCA England and Wales, Denise Hatton, stated that: “Bullying has always existed among young people, but this generation face increasing pressure to live up to unrealistic beauty ideals which they say come from celebrities, social media and the media.”
Going on to say that: “It’s crucial that we teach young people how to feel comfortable in their own body and that looking different isn’t a bad thing. Educating young people about the effects of bullying alongside body confidence will help to tackle this issue where it’s most prevalent, schools.”
What has really stood out amongst this research is that a whopping 51% of victims said that friends were, in fact, the culprits, maybe one step in the right direction would be informing kids at a young age that their jokingly made insults can, in fact, hit home to some of their friends, and although many people will claim that monitoring your kid’s online activity will make the biggest difference it was actually found that cyberbullying only made up 26% of cases, while 72% experienced the bullying in person.
However, this isn’t to say that social media makes no difference as even the report acknowledges that social media adds a new dimension to bullying, and stresses that platforms such as Snapchat and WhatsApp are not the cause in themselves but “merely provide a vehicle through which young people are bullied.”
YMCA England and Wales now implore schools to use its body confidence campaign toolkit, in which contains resources designed to tackle body image anxiety in young people. You can find it by clicking the following button.
