Bullying is a conscious, willful, and deliberate hostile activity intended to harm, induce fear through the threat of further aggression, and create terror. It is any repeated, unwanted or unwelcomed attention that creates discomfort, emotional distress, or a hostile environment. There are four types of bullying:
1. Verbal Bullying: This includes name-calling, taunting, belittling, cruel criticism, personal defamation, racist slurs, and sexually suggestive or sexually abusive remarks. Anonymous notes, phone calls, and/or graffiti containing threats of violence, untruthful accusations, false and malicious rumors, and gossip are additional examples of verbal bullying.
2. Relational Bullying: This includes ostracizing another child, psychological manipulation, and/or systematic actions to isolate, shun, exclude, or reject others. This type of bullying can involve subtle gestures such as aggressive stares, rolling of the eyes, sighs, frowns, sneers, snickers, and hostile body language.
3. Physical Bullying: This includes aggressive acts such as hitting, slapping, choking, kicking, spitting, pushing, biting, poking, pinching, twisting of limbs, and may also include the destruction of clothing and/or property.
4. Cyber Bullying: This includes actions associated with one or more types of bullying, utilizing e-mail, instant messaging, social networks, text messages, or other means of electronic communication.