1. Introduction

School bullying has become a hot issue, which has such features as diversity, concealment, repeatability, unbalance and severity [1]. In 2016, China imposed “Circular of the Office of the Education Steering Committee of the State Council on the implementation of a special program on school bullying”, in this policy, school bullying was defined as a bad behavior which happened in the campus or around the campus, students bully, insult other students deliberately one or many times, which will cause physical and mental damage or property damage to others, less serious than school violence [2]. This definition will be adopted in this paper.

Many students are involved in school bullying, according to a 2019 survey from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, about one-third of students experienced bullying at school. A research conducted in the USA found that physical violence occurred in 48 % of public schools and that weapon bullying victimization occurred in 9 % of the schools [3]. In 2016, the follow-up poll on schooling in China found that 14.08 % of pupils had encountered cyberbullying, 18.4 % had experienced physical bullying, and 49 % had experienced verbal bullying [4].

School bullying can pose tremendous harm to children, including subjective well-being [5], sleeping disorder [6], depression [7], low self-esteem, anxiety [8], academic performance, suicide [9], perceived difficulties [10], confidence interval, bed wetting, headaches, tummy aches [11], psychological distress [12], mental disorders, commit crimes [13]. and so on, so it has arisen widespread concern around the world.

Since there have been a lot of researches on school bullying, so many scholars have done a literature review on this topic, and different scholars have different emphasis on the review. For example, the review of Dake et al. described the severity of school bullying and the characteristics of children who involved in school bullying, and explored the relationship between bullying and some related issues, as well as the role of school personnel in bullying prevention [8]. Rose et al. focused on school bullying among disabled students in their review, they summarized the researches on bullying events happened on disabled students, discussed the possibility of bullying of disabled students and non-disabled students, and concluded how different types of disabilities impact students being bullied, and gave some advice [14]. In 2019, Jia et al. used CiteSpace software to analyze the school bullying domain in the core database of Web of Science from 2008 to 2018. This paper showed the main countries focusing on school bullying, high-frequency keywords, high-cited journals, the authors of high productivity and high citation, and also carried out mutation word analysis, briefly explained the current situation of school bullying research in China. [15].

This paper will use the literature research methodology and focus on the existing research on school bullying. We will first look for and study articles regarding school bullying from websites like How Net, Baidu Academic, and Web of Science. After that, we will summarize the main findings of the study that has been done and draw conclusions regarding the influencing factors of school bullying and its countermeasures through reading and interpreting domestic and international academic literature. The paper will also provide a conclusion about the existing study in the end. We anticipate that our study will increase awareness of this problem and urge governments, schools, and parents to take action to address it. Also, we expect to provide some useful reference sources to further follow-up research.

2. Influencing Factors

After several years’ study, scholars around the world have found a wide range of factors related to school bullying. Through reading, analyzing and organizing those literatures, we divided the causes into four aspects – individual factors, family factors, school-related factors and social factors.

2.1. Individual Factors

We cannot ignore the factors of victims or bullies themselves. Demographic factors, including gender, age will affect the bullying situation obviously; also, being fat, disabled etc. can make students become the minority so that they are much easier to get bullying; some personality traits like low self-esteem, impulsivity or dissocial can get them involved in bullying too; finally, teenagers are at a special developing period, which will provide the potential of school bullying.

It is necessary for us to pay attention to the demographic factors. Wang and Yao conducted a questionnaire survey at six junior middle schools in a Chinese city, finding that compared to the girls [16], more boys were involved in school bullying. Also, Xu et al. found more boys were involved in physical bullying and verbal bullying, while more girls were involved in relation bullying and cyber bullying [17]. Maybe it is because of the different characteristics between boys and girls – boys tend to be stronger and more impulsive, while girls tend to be less powerful and more sensitive. Bullying is also associated with age. Warner et al. indicated that the rate of victimization was highest in junior high school, then senior high school and elementary school [18].

Becoming the minority due to some features may arouse social rejection [19], making students more likely to be bullied since they seem so different and in total isolation. There is a research finding ethnic minorities are more likely to be bullied [8]. Students who are precocious or late-developing [20], disabled, overweight or skinny, sexual minority [21,22], as well as students with some diseases like ADHD are more likely to get bullied [23].

The characteristics of students themselves can be a crucial factor of school bullying. Students who are low self-esteem [24], dissocial, lack of confidence [25]. are more likely to become victims. Bosworth et al. adopted Texas Depression Scale, A four-item scale developed specifically about impulsivity, and The Aggression Scale to conduct a survey to 1,361 students, finding that students who had high levels of impulsivity and feelings of depression were more likely to become bullies [26]. Ji et al. conducted a questionnaire survey to over 14,000 students from Taiwan, finding that negative personal traits, including students’ attitude toward violence, impulsive control and trait anger temperament will make students easier to bully others [27].

Since students are in a special age stage – a turbulent period of personality development, they are going through the contradiction between physical maturity and mental childishness, so they tend to be energetic, impulsive and emotional [7], which leads them to become easier to bully others. Strindberg et al. [28] conducted same-sex focus group interviews at two public primary schools, the students said that bullying made them look more cool and they tended to think bullies having high social status, so they tended to resort some cruel violence to earn prestige. In this study, students also indicated that sometimes if they did not join in bullying, they might become victims, so they had no choice.

Some students even have abnormalities in the brain’s central circuitry, they can not control themselves [20], and bully can make them satisfied and get comfort. Heavy stress from low academic grades can also trigger student to bully others [18], according to Agnew’s theory – general strain, some students will ease the tension by mocking, belittling and torturing others [29].

Students are easily influenced by their peers, so those who show involvement with at-risk peers have higher potential to become bullies [27]. Mucherah et al. announced students who have more friends are less likely to be bullied [30], so we can suppose those with less friends can be easier to get bullied since there are less peers to protect and stand for them.

2.2. Family Factors

Family factors are really important. The environment where students grow up is a crucial background to explain their behaviors. Students come from disadvantaged family backgrounds are more vulnerable to bullying [31] Unusual family structures, awful family environment, unsuitable family education and low quality, violence of parents all can increase their kids’ risks of being involved in school bullying.

Ada M conducted a research in Nigeria about many factors related to school bullying. Among these, he found that students who involved in school bullying was related to the family structure [25]. For example, students coming from single – parenting family tended to be more likely to be involved in school bullying. Other scholars also found students who are left behind [32], students from reorganizing families will be impacted too. That is because the children in these families often do not receive the care and education they deserve, so they are prone to become withdrawn, distant, sensitive, suspicious, and lack the sense of security and trust, and they even have some psychological problems, which lead them to become more vulnerable to be involved in school bullying [33].

Awful family environment can also trigger children to become bullies or victims. That family members engage in bullying and other criminal behaviors can increase the risk for children to be involved in school bullying. Fighting and disagreement of parents [25], lack of communication [22], negative relationship between parents can also convey the message of indifference and violence to children, thus play a negative role.

Apart from these, parents do not care and do not show love and attention to children [34], or weak parental supervision can make them at the risk of school bullying. Georgiou S N found overprotective behavior towards children can make them potential victims of bullying, since those children would become negative and submissive, attracting damage and laugh because of their weakness [35].

As we all know, parents are children’s first teachers, so how they educate their kids is of great significance. Inappropriate family education like excessively permissive parenting can make children easily become the victims of the school bullying [35]. Ahmed and Braithwaite carried a survey to 1401 students from grade four to seven among 32 schools in the Australian Capital Territory, finding that authoritarian parenting might be one of the causes for children to become bullies or victims [36]. Ji et al. adopted the data from “Prevention and Control of School Violence in Taiwan”, finding that students who had a low level of parental monitoring tended to be more likely to be involved with at-risk peers [27], and teenagers were easily influenced by peers, so they were more likely to bully others.

Moreover, poor socio-economic status [25], low quality [37], low academic qualification, low professional status of parents will increase their children’s likelihood of being bullied [38].

Holt et al. conducted a survey to 205 fifth-grade students and their parents, finding that some parents did not even know their kids are bullying others or being bullied [39], such situation would exacerbate bullying events. When bullying happens, some parents tend to give their kids some ineffective strategies like ignoring and retaliation, which may worsen the situation [40].

2.3. School-related Factors

Apart from family, school is where students stay the longest, also the place where school bullying happens, thus, school have an important impact on students. Nowadays, many schools belittle moral education and pay no attention to school climate and school bullying, lack professional teachers who take bullying seriously, which will exacerbate school bullying.

Education is the primary task of schools, but there is a prevalent educational phenomenon – value intellectual education and belittle moral education. Curriculums about laws, mental health [37], emotion management and school bullying [17] are really few. As a result, students know little about those aspects, so they possibly can not tell right from wrong and lack of knowledge of protecting themselves, which improve the risk for students to be involved in school bullying. Also, only focusing on intellectual education will impose some bad impacts on students, like mental and physical exhaustion, thus, students may adopt ways like bullying others to find relief.

Mucherah et al. conducted a survey to 3 schools in Kenya with the questionnaire Adolescent Peer Relations and My Class Inventory, indicating negative school climate could also raise the possibility of school bullying [30]. The transmission of rumor about a student like “he is disgusting” can arouse other students’ hostility and make others to bully that student [41]. Worse still, many schools even don not realize the severity of school bullying [42], and do not have some target restrictions to prevent or control this issue [16]. Horton P referred that schools paid little attention to institutional construction, and it was in this context that bullying took place [43]. From those above, we can realize how crucial the school environment is.

From the teacher’s perspective, there are few professional teachers disposing school bullying, and due to their wrong interpretation of laws and the wrong understanding of educational concepts, some teachers do not dare to criticize students [42], which lead students become naughtier even more aggressive. Also, along with the increasing stress of heavy teaching assignment, teachers have less time and energy to care other things like bullying in school [43], without enough supervision, bullies tend to be more unruly.

Ji et al. found poor student – teacher relationship has a strong effect on school bullying [27], and insufficient support [45]. from teachers can also increase the potential of school bullying. Moreover, teachers ‘dereliction of duty, negative evaluation will give children negative psychological suggestion, making children give up self-discipline and bully the weak to vent their emotions [45].

2.4. Social Factors

The social context also has a significant impact on bullying, even can be the most crucial factor, because the social context can influence family, school and individual deeply. Imperfect legal system, unhealthy social environment and bad social atmosphere will affect children adversely and provide them some inappropriate concepts, those can make children to be involved in school bullying, especially bully others.

Xia mentioned that in developing countries, in the process of social transformation and accelerated economic development, serious social anomie is generally accompanied [46]. Mainstream culture excludes some students, and those students may adopt some extreme methods to fight back [30], which will cause school bullying. It is from those underachievers that some unhealthy cultures, including “anti-school culture” [47], “escape culture” emerge [48], which can influence students adversely and make them develop some wrong concepts. The popularity of media has made students be exposed to violence and pornographic films [25], which supports them to hold a belief that violence is the tool to tackle everything. Also, students are deeply affected by the belief crisis and moral decline brought by economic and social development, including money worship, corruption, lack of justice [37], then become selfish and regardless of the feelings of others. Even worse, due to the awful public order management around some schools, students are much easier to be exposed to such wrong concepts and bad culture.

Cold relationship, bystander effect and herd mentality lead no one to stop existing bullying behavior, which make the situation of bullying event worse – the presence of bystanders reduces the likelihood of an individual helping a victim, in addition, the passivity of others further discourages onlookers from offering help.

Laws and policies are necessary measures to regulate people’s behaviors, however, there are still gaps in this respect in dealing with school bullying. The lack of perfect laws [16]. and effective punishment mechanism [37]. makes students do not aware the severity of school bullying and have low cost of committing bullying. For example, in China, teenagers under the age of 14 shall not be investigated for criminal responsibility for any act that endangers the society, and teenagers between 14 and 16 will only be investigated for criminal responsibility for eight serious crimes, while abuse, extortion, battery and other behaviors which can cause tremendous harm to others are not covered [47]. Due to this above, those young students do not have to worry about the consequences of bullying, so they become unscrupulous.

3. Countermeasures

Nowadays, there are a lot of studies focusing on the countermeasures of school bullying, also, many countries have imposed several policies and laws against school bullying. Kai claimed that it requires the joint efforts of judicial authority, educational administrative, school, parents and other subjects to prevent and deal with school bullying [49]. According to the influencing factors from different aspects, after reading, analyzing and summarizing, in this paper, we will give corresponding countermeasures in four aspects.

3.1. Individual Countermeasures

Students are supposed to respect others, control their emotions, put themselves in others’ shoes and cultivate empathy. Moreover, it is necessary for them to be aware that school bullying is an act which will cause irreversible harm to others and themselves, at the same time, it will pose severe harm to society and public order. Except, we expect bystanders to be brave enough to challenge bullying behaviors.

Apart from this, students should learn more about how to protect themselves [50], mastering the right methods can be really helpful. Wong and Dennis claimed in their paper that it was useful for victims to tell the truth [51], by doing so, they can make more people care for school bullying and receive help.

To achieve those above, students need to attend relevant courses, learn and think carefully, they should also shift their mindset to some extent. They are supposed to realize that intellectual education is neither the only nor the most important work, and achieving high grades is not the only goal. It is extremely necessary for them to learn other courses to fulfill themselves, including laws, emotion management, pressure management and so on, to grow healthily as a physically and mentally healthy person with strong sense of morality.

A lot of students get bullied because of their cowardice and concession, so they are supposed to develop a strong character, to become much braver and more independent [51]. When students show their mighty attitudes and dare to fight against the unjust treatment from bullies, they tend to be more likely to prevent themselves from school bullying. Meanwhile, they should try to make some good friends and be away from those at-risk peers, manage relationships well and build a nice relationship with others.

Tzani-Pepelasi et al. conducted a study towards “peer buddy approach”, which is an approach that let students aged from 9 to 11 act as mentors and support their mentees who were younger. Results presented that this measure can be effective, with the support and guidance from mentors, students could feel a sense of safety, became braver to fight back and learned to find their friends or teachers to get help when they were bullied [52]. Maybe we can consider to promote this program to more schools.

3.2. Family Countermeasures

Chan and Wong mentioned that parents were very crucial to reduce school bullying [53], they should raise their awareness of anti-bullying. Every parent should shoulder the responsibility of educating their children, including avoiding the phenomenon of absence of educational subject, giving enough care and love to their kids, etc. Parents need to keep a close eye on their children’s behavior and status [50], if they notice anything unusual, they should get to know more about it and take action to deal with the relevant things.

Apart from those above, parents should reconsider their educational methods, giving up the violent authoritarian upbringing parenting [7], excessively permissive parenting and overprotective behavior of parents is not advocated too. Meanwhile, parents are supposed to lay emphasis on cultivating the good qualities of their kids, educating students to become friendly and kindhearted. Giving kids such education from the time they were little will plant kind seeds in their hearts and form correct outlook on life and sound personality, which can eradicate the breeding rotten soil of school bullying from the ideological source, to prevent the emergence of bullying behavior [33].

Parents are supposed to improve their educational background and self-quality, as well as create a positive family environment [16], since the behavior of parents can strongly influence their kids subconsciously and a good family climate can help cultivate mentally healthy, emotionally stable kids. They should be very careful not to participate in bullying or other negative events, and not to have violent arguments in front of their kids. After the argument, they need to care for the kids’ psychological state, and make necessary psychological counseling for the kids, preventing leaving psychological shadow to the kids or planting the seeds of violence and darkness in their hearts. Healthy parent – child communication has been proved to be effective [40].

Parents are supposed to actively cooperate with the school’s anti-bullying program since they can make the program much more efficient [54]. Parents must give up those outmoded concepts like “education is just a matter of school” [16], but participate in preventing and intervening school bullying actively. When their kids are bullies, they cannot tell them to tolerant from beginning to end. When their kids are bullies, they can not cover it up even promote it. Heavy load of anti-bullying is on parents’ shoulders.

3.3. School Countermeasures

Report shows that school-based anti-bullying programs can be useful [54], so it is necessary for school to take action to prevent and control school bullying. Moreover, Swearer et al. mentioned the whole-school anti-bulling efforts was the most effective [55], many anti-bullying programs have confirmed the effectiveness of whole-school anti-bulling approach [53]. So it is important for schools to promote school-wide anti-bullying campaigns in a long time, including teachers’ training, anti-bullying policies, cooperate group work of students, playground supervision and so on [53].

When dispose school bullying event, school had better adopt non-punitive intervention, because giving up punitive interventions can prevent revenge against victims from bullies, help bullies to build empathy and stop bullying, at the same time, will encourage bullies to reintegrate into the school community [56].

Apart from whole-school anti-bullying programs, maybe we can pay much attention to individual bullies and victims and develop an effective program [54]. Targeting at the particularity of each involver to solve problems is a good way to deal with school bullying. Moreover, an independent, open and fair school anti-bullying organization is needed to cope with the unharmonious between victims and bullies specifically [49].

School can also adopt some effective approaches to create a positive school climate to reduce the occurrence of school bullying. For example, things like responding to students’ needs, permitting students to participate in school decision making, providing a sense of belonging can help school climate to become more positive, also, having a transparent and fair school system and excellent school order is helpful too [57].

An extremely important part of school anti-bullying system is to develop relevant courses to educate students, including laws, emotion management, mental health and school bullying, rather than only focus on intellectual education and put huge pressure on students, which may improve the risks of school bullying. Frey et al mentioned that cultivating social emotional skills can help children protect themselves and earn others’ support [58]. Countries like America, England, Australia have put Social and Emotional Learning into school curriculum. If students own relevant knowledge about laws, school bullying and protecting themselves, maybe school bullying can be reduced.

A crucial factor to reduce school bullying is teachers’ competent handling of bullying incidents [59]. It is important for teachers to figure out how to deal with school bullying and put it into practice in specific classroom environment or school climate [60], so improving teacher’s professional ability of coping school bullying is necessary. Government and school should provide relevant training for teachers, and teachers are supposed to learn the knowledge and skills seriously.

In Ireland, Christoph et al. said in their paper that an authority-based approach used by teachers is important in many prevention programs, and if teacher adopt it with other non-punitive intervention, it can be very effective, while it may be detrimental to long-term bullying prevention if used alone [59]. So it is a practical way for teacher to combine authority-based approach and non-punitive intervention in anti-bullying program.

Except of efficient coping methods, teachers need to be responsible enough to notice unusual phenomenon among students and follow up. When school bullying happens, teachers should fulfill their duties to deal with it.

3.4. Society Countermeasures

It is really important to pose some authoritative and effective polices. A wonderful systems-level policy provides the basis and guidance for each district, each school and other communities to implement more targeted approach [61]. Since that above, much more efforts of government should be paid to make a feasible anti-bullying policy according to the situation of local bullying.

The formulation of laws should include three stages of school bullying –advance, present and subsequent management [49]. Authoritarian rule is not always effective or even counterproductive, while Ahmed and Braithwaite mentioned that restorative approach of justice can be an effective way to protect people from bullying [62]. Thus, when make a law, the lawmaker should consider the severity of the law, to make it can serve as a deterrent but not be too arbitrary, discipline should be in place, but not excessive. Also, the educational community should define the boundaries of bullying and identify the types of bullying that are common among students at different stages [49], which can provide a basis for better prevention and management of bullying.

Apart from those above, a good policy are supposed to define the responsibility of each subject, also provide a reasonable and feasible procedure to prevent and deal with school bullying. Norway has a famous anti-bullying program based on Social Psychology called “Zero Tolerance Project”, which was introduced in 2003 and covered over 146 schools. The project generally includes warning and intervention two stages, it has a clear, operational arrangement for every step of prevention, monitoring, and handling to bullying, also makes a clear definition of the roles of schools, parents, and others. The project has earned wide support and engagement around the world and has achieved good result so far [64].

Peer interventions is useful [8]. Ttofi and Farrington conducted a research to observe the effectiveness of intervention program, finding peer mediation and peer mentoring is effective in preventing school bullying, and bystander’s intervention can be useful too [54]. So encouraging bystanders to stand up against bullying is needed.

There is a study showing that young elementary students are more likely to adopt positive actions than older secondary school students as bystanders. So strategies that foster positive bystander responses in bullying situations may be more effective for those young primary school students [55]. Society should pay attention to it and encourage bystanders to play a positive role.

Anti-bullying organizations in society are also of great significance. For example, in San Francisco, America, there has been a nonprofit organization, which was founded by a licensed therapist in 2003, he implemented a no-bullying system and provided clinical supports to deal with school bullying [56]. Moreover, there should be an anti-bullying program certification system to confirm whether an anti-bullying system is up to code, of high quality and effective enough [54].

On the societal level, it is a very vital thing to arouse the awareness of the public, make all sectors of society notice the universality of school bullying and the importance of dealing with this issue. Raising public awareness is a basis for mobilizing all sectors of the community to tackle school bullying, thus, every subject of the society can be encouraged to assume their obligations of anti-bullying, then gain joint efforts.

Hong Kong focuses on raising the awareness of bullying in the community, encouraging everyone to pay attention to this issue is of great significance. Moreover, in Hong Kong, policemen play a really important role in anti-bullying [51]. These measures can also give us some enlightenment, which can be considered to be adopted in more districts.

It is a judicious and effective way to use media and networks to publicize and report on school bullying [63]. At the same time, the government should standardize the network environment, control the violent and pornographic films and games, and becoming firmly about the rating of the films, which can also help create a healthy social atmosphere for teenagers ‘growth.

All in all, society, schools, families and individuals should all take action to fight against school bullying and develop joint efforts to provide kids with a safe and peaceful environment to grow up.

4. Conclusion

Through searching and sorting through the literature, we can find that the study about school bullying is mature enough to some extent and can make us know more about school bullying and adopt some useful methods to tackle this issue. However, there are still some deficiencies waiting for us to improve them.

4.1. The Definition and Scope of School Bullying is not Uniform

There have been tons of definitions from different scholars, many differences exist among the definitions of the objects and places of school bullying. For example, only bullying that occurs in school is called school bullying, or off school but as long as it happens between students is also called school bullying; only bullying happens between students is called school bullying, or bullying happens between teachers and students should also be called school bullying… In future study, scholars can try to eliminate such controversies, making the definition much more precise, which can promote the research of school bullying and develop more efficient countermeasures.

4.2. The Perspective of Discipline of Some Studies is Single

The problem of school bullying must be integrated with the knowledge of different disciplines, researching from the perspective of different disciplines will also get different outcomes. However, nowadays, most studies only focus on one discipline, and mainly focus on education and psychology. Although there are some studies based on the law, sociology and other disciplines to study school bullying, they are in a very small number, and the study of school bullying lack interdisciplinary integration and communication, which will limit the broader development of research and be detrimental to find more effective methods to tackle school bullying.

So we hope that in the future, more and more studies will integrate the knowledge and methods of various disciplines to study school bullying and put forward some suggestions on the management of school bullying from a multi-disciplinary perspective. Maybe it requires the comprehensive ability of scholars or the communication and cooperation among scholars in different fields.

4.3. Communication among Countries is Limited

Many countries are proposing research of school bullying, developing anti-bullying strategies and promoting anti-bullying programs alone. It is reasonable to some extent since there are many differences in national conditions, national systems and other aspects among different countries, but school bullying is a worldwide issue, isolated research is not conducive to the worldwide study of school bullying and is not conducive to solve this problem.

Countries can exchange information about school bullying in their countries and conduct collaborative research, also, anti-bullying programs can be promoted in many countries to tackle school bullying. Different countries have different advantages, and learn from each other is a good way to unite the nations of the world to fight against school bullying. For example, the United Nation always organize scholars from different countries to finish a report of school bullying, and use HBSC and GSHS to conduct a survey all around the world [65]. In this way, the basic situation of school bullying around the world can get fully understood, and it is beneficial to integrate the wisdom of different countries to solve school bullying.

4.4. Some Homogeneity Existing in Research

There are a lot of researches focus on the same aspects of school bullying, use similar methods, and many researches present the same ideas, while few studies have creative aspects, methods and ideas, some researches are even very superficial. All of those above make this research area lack of vigor and vitality as well as constructive outcomes, and it is difficult to come up with some efficient coping strategies to deal with school bullying.

Future research is supposed to go deeper and broader, and we hope more creative perspectives will appear, creative methods will be adopted and eye-opening ideas and strategies can be put forward. To achieve this, researchers should work even harder and pay more efforts.

In conclusion, studies of school bullying have made tremendous achievement, but there is still a long way to go. We hope more effective studies can be conducted to arouse the attention of the public and more useful strategies can be promoted to tackle school bullying.