COVID Shaming: The New Face of Bullying in School?
COVID Shaming: The New Face of School Bullying?
The classroom door opens and an administrator or advisor calls out a name. This was formerly known as "Ooooh! You're in trouble and you're going to the office!” Now there's silence and sideways glances. Everyone knows that the student faces a two-week quarantine. Across the country, schools still conducting face-to-face classes are having to deal with notifying close contacts of COVID-positive classmates.
Unfortunately, calling on a student in class often leads to the spread of gossip as well. Children are naturally curious. You wonder who was exposed. Has anyone tested positive? Who else did they give it to? But the curiosity doesn't stop there. It turns into COVID gossip, teasing and bullying at school.
COVID restrictions create pressure to conform
Some of the gossip flies under the radar when kids snapchat, text and DM each other. They are trying to find out "who put them in quarantine". Other cases are more openly gruesome and invoke certain individuals. Students who knew they had symptoms but attended school anyway seem to have it the worst. With the number of children who have contracted COVID-19 during the pandemic just topping the million mark, the problem is unlikely to improve anytime soon.
Michael Kinsey, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist and author based in Manhattan. He's not too surprised by these incidents and other issues related to COVID-19. "It's natural for kids of all ages to mimic angry displays of dominance that they hear on the news, on social media, and possibly at home," he said, noting that these incidents are the result of adults' fear and "hyper." are "politicized" discourse.
He said students are working to figure out what they can control, or their "agency" in this situation. He also discusses the struggle that adults and students wage between the expression of individual rights and the protection of public health and the common good. "...People differ on which of these take precedence, given the limited and imperfect data that exists (or that each person knows and understands)," he said. A student can pressure another to wear a mask to protect public health. Another may pressure others not to wear them to assert their individual rights. In the end, what matters most is that students “court for social status”.
Increasing privacy to protect against gossip
Some schools are working to soften the flow of information by increasing privacy during these quarantine conversations and beyond. Eric Hartfelder, principal of Eakin Elementary School in Nashville, TN, is aware of the potential for gossip and rumors about children being quarantined. He has a conference room where soon-to-be-quarantined students are waiting, and he says he's aware of the social cues others glean from small details surrounding this practice. Students know someone is inside when the door is closed. As the door opens, he strategically places the waiting child so that other students cannot see or identify them.
"If it was my son, I wouldn't want people to ask, 'Is that someone who's infected?'" he said. Also, his school does not participate in video calls with quarantined students. The goal is to protect their privacy and the privacy of others in the classroom. Instead, tasks are online.
Ignorance leads to more bullying
High school students seem more interested in finding out who came to school potentially or actually exposed and whether or not they were aware of their symptoms. One high school student, Madison Koroschetz, 15, from a suburban high school near Cincinnati, OH, explained, "A lot of people definitely want to know who it was... and when they find out, it's usually a negative reaction. I think most of it is because they assume the person has Corona[virus] didn't play by the rules."
She's also seen social media posts defending the person in question, saying, "Guys, it's not your fault and you can't be mad at them for it." She attributes much of the issue to ignorance how the coronavirus works, including the fact that it can be asymptomatic, and says kids "just don't know or haven't tried to figure it out, or look it up and research it because they don't care and think it does not affect them.”
Finally, Koroschetz attributes the negative reactions to a larger problem with other students not wanting to quarantine: “A lot of people fall behind during quarantine. One reason is that you lose motivation. You don't go there every day, meet your friends, do things that you normally do," she said. The social and emotional challenges of quarantine can be challenging.
The Long-Term Effects of COVID Shaming
Kinsey warns that this era of shaming and speaking negatively of other students could have long-term repercussions. “...Much more attention needs to be paid to the socio-emotional consequences of masks, quarantine and distance learning compared to face-to-face learning. The public health implications for children arising from public fear of COVID, deviations from established practices in socio-emotional development, and learning disabilities could be significant in the years to come.”
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