What is bullying?
Bullying is a complex social issue that harms people. Teachers, parents and carers, students and the whole school community need to understand what bullying is so that if it happens, they can recognise, report and respond to it quickly and effectively.
Bullying is when someone repeatedly and intentionally uses their power or status to harm, upset or intimidate someone else. It can cause physical, social or psychological harm.
Bullying can happen anywhere – at home, online, at work or at school. It can involve individuals or groups, and it can happen to anyone. Bullying No Way focuses on bullying between students, usually called student bullying, student-to-student bullying or school bullying.
The definition of bullying
There is a nationally agreed definition of bullying that all Australian schools use:
Bullying is an ongoing and deliberate misuse of power in relationships through repeated verbal, physical and/or social behaviour that intends to cause physical, social and/or psychological harm. It can involve an individual or a group misusing their power, or perceived power, over one or more persons who feel unable to stop it from happening. Bullying can happen in person or online, via various digital platforms and devices and it can be obvious (overt) or hidden (covert). Bullying behaviour is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated, over time (for example, through sharing of digital records).
Bullying of any form or for any reason can have immediate, medium and long-term effects on those involved, including bystanders. Single incidents and conflict or fights between equals, whether in person or online, are not defined as bullying.1
Australian Government (2021)
Elements of bullying
There are three main elements that separate bullying from one-off incidents or other types of conflict.
- Bullying involves a real or perceived (felt) imbalance of power between the person being bullied and the person bullying them.
- Bullying happens repeatedly or could potentially be repeated (like with online behaviour).
- Bullying consists of intentional acts that are aggressive, negative or harmful towards another.
1. Power imbalance
Bullying involves an imbalance of power between the student who is bullying and the student being bullied. This power imbalance can be social status, age, physicality or someone being seen as ‘different’, for example. It can be real or feel real to the person being bullied. Because of this power imbalance, students who are bullied are often unable to defend themselves effectively.
2. Repetition
Bullying occurs repeatedly over a period of time, meaning it is both ongoing and repeated.
Using threats to imply that the bullying will happen again also counts as repetition because these threats create fear and distress in the person being targeted.
In online or cyberbullying, repetition isn’t just about how often something happens. It is also about the potential for it to be repeated and how this affects the young person who is targeted. They might reasonably worry that a post or message could be shared and keep spreading online.2
Something hurtful that is shared online (like an image, post, comment or video) can be seen by many more people than a face-to-face bullying incident. Additionally, others can share it, which means the incident can keep going, potentially forever.
3. Intentional harm
To meet the definition of bullying, the behaviour must also be intentional and harmful. This means the bullying student (or students) intends for it to hurt or harm the person (or people) they target. This harm can be physical, social or psychological, or a combination of these.
- Australian Government. (2021). Australian Government response to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee report: Adequacy of existing offences in the Commonwealth Criminal Code and of state and territory criminal laws to capture cyberbullying.
- UNESCO & French Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports. (2020). International Conference on School Bullying: Recommendations by the Scientific Committee on preventing and addressing school bullying and cyberbullying. UNESCO Digital Library (p. 2)