Are we nurturing a generation of narcissists and bullies?

We often question the many ills of society such as bigotry, misogyny, workplace bullying, road rage and gender-based violence.

What we fail to realise is that all of these behaviours emanate from decades of what society deems as “normal”, where power relations and gender differences become traits of permissible norms. These behaviours are inculcated in us as children. We learn to be bigots, misogynists and narcissists in childhood, through parents and the environment.

The bullies are clearly differentiated by the school system. Within the private school system, it all about privilege and we don’t often hear of publicized incidences, as it is generally not good for business in the world of the private academy.

It is within these walls that over-permissive parents, and children who are left unsupervised, often with unlimited use of digital devices, exist. A new type of bully is emerging from the competitive bully parent. These are parents that encourage bullying as healthy competition. Parents of these bullies’ snigger at emotional bullying where their children incite groups to torment vulnerable children for the clothes that they wear, the manner in which they speak and exposure to obscenity and expletives.

With the current generations at school being Generation Z and Generation Alpha, the narrative of bullying is transforming. The traditional statistics that the highest incidences of bullying occur between Grades 2-4 and boys are more aggressive than girls, have become expeditiously obsolete. 

Gen Z is our first generation of digital natives and these generations participate directly in covert bullying (cyberbullying) as they are entrenched in the digital space. The current Gen Z learners are grades 6-12 and Gen Alpha are the grades 5 and below. These generations are born in a 4IR space consumed with technology, one of the greatest contributors to bullying in contemporary society. They are tech savvy, with AI being their reality. Their learning is highly personalised and they overtly break the rules.

Being more tech savvy than their parents or care givers, they blatantly use social media to ostracise other learners. The questions that often surface are what age is social media interaction permissible, considering the social predation that is prevalent. The reality is that children as young as 10 have their own social media accounts because of peer pressure from other children with overly permissive parents.

Not having the best electronic devices, access to social media and being restricted by screen time allocations immediately targets these children to be bullied. Publicizing privilege of elaborate summer vacations, and likes and followers on varying platforms, seem to be the defining characteristics within private education children. Bullies are digitally brazen and continue to taunt their victims by inciting their larger group of followers, irrespective of the overt digital footprint. There is a direct relationship between suicide rate and cyber bullying.

The parents of bullies’ overlook and reward behavior, deeming it as healthy competition and ‘real’ world survival techniques. They remove accountability from themselves and rely on the school to discipline their children. The parents choose to ignore the deviant behavior of their children, and constantly spotlight them as ‘angels’.

This is where the narcissistic tendencies come into play. As parents, we are forging future generations and keep concepts like toxic masculinity and gender-based violence alive, because we are raising those perpetrators.

In the current school system this age-old toxicity continues. A lack of empathy and emotional intelligence, demonstrating feelings of entitlement and self-absorption, struggling with self-image and social comparison and a lack of moral compass, make for a future generation of narcissistic bullies. They are spurred and protected by their parents who set a trend to continuously rescue their child, or to completely ignore that their child is the wrong doer. Parents who exhibit power in their own behavior and attempt to bully other parents set an example and become poor role models to their own children.

Parents need to recognise their role and should endeavour to create independent and balanced children with high emotional intelligence and cognisance of human values. Parents often see bullying as a ‘normal’ part of a child’s life and this complacency maintains this vicious cycle. Schools and parents must steer away from the blame game. The power held by the schools are limited to incidences within their ambit of the school day. They have a key responsibility to manage incidences within the school and continuously inculcate learnings around bullying and its severe impact on all stakeholders.

Parents play the most significant role in that the core values begin at home. Incidents at social events including parties outside of school times cannot be dealt with by school authorities. Parents have an extremely difficult task of having to balance discipline and boundaries with the so called ‘rule breaker’ generation. Parents should seek guidance from experts on responsible parenting to keep their children safe and guide them into growing up into young and responsible adults who are mutually inclusive and humane.

If bullies or victims are identified, it should never be ignored as a phase that will pass. There are a range of educational psychologists that will assist, but the best sourced method is a triangulation of interventions by all stakeholders.