Sexual Orientation Affects Risk of Bullying In Teens

If there’s anything that people remember throughout their lives is the time they were picked on in school. Yes, bullying is rampant in school even today despite all the precautions and measures that are taken to ensure that these incidents can be avoided.

What makes this cruel activity even more potent is that it occurs mostly in our teens when we experience physical and emotional changes thanks to those raging hormones. One indicator that the teen years are upon us is puberty, making it a time that is anything but a comfortable time for most. A time when we begin to understand (and in most cases, experiment with) our sexuality out of sheer curiosity that can be traced back to the raging hormones.

With all these hormonal changes kicking in; one’s sexual orientation might also meander into areas that their parents might not necessarily approve of as normal, such as gay, bisexuality and lesbianism. And these teens are the most susceptible to bullying while amongst their peers, with gay teens facing a greater risk while it almost triples for lesbians. Not surprisingly, bullying seems to come naturally to teens that are bisexual in nature.

Study lead author Elise Berlan, M.D., of Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio says that “kids who are different – who are perceived as weak and falling out of the mainstream – are more vulnerable to bullying.”

Most of these insights were derived from a 2001 study called the Growing Up Today Study (GUTS), an on-going study of American adolescents, using data collected from almost 7500 children of female registered nurses to find out whether there is a link between sexual orientation and bullying.