In recent months, bulling has come to the forefront as one of the nation’s major public health problems. It’s a particularly disturbing, as behaviors go, since it falls into the realms of both mental and physical: Not only do kids (and adults) beat each other up physically, but they can do so mentally – and the emotional fallout can persist for years.
Bullied people have greater risk of anxiety, depression, and suicide. And very new evidence suggests that bullying, like other childhood traumas, can lead to premature aging at the level of the cell.
And while bullying is often thought of as a straightforward kid problem, recent events, like the bus monitor who was verbally abused by the kids she was supposed to be watching, suggest otherwise. There are a lot of strange subtleties of bulling, and this very fact underlines how very backwards and un-adaptive it is, as behaviors go.
When Evolution Backfires
In the most basic terms, bullying is about dominating – and we come from ancestors who were big into the dominance hierarchy.
Read more at Forbes.
