Disturbing bullying video goes viral, but why didn’t anyone step in?

An upsetting video of a teen with special needs getting shoved and slapped at school by a fellow student is igniting anger across the Internet.

The minute of footage, shot by an unidentified observer, shows teens walking from a high school to a neighbouring career and technical centre at a Pennsylvania high school in the US.

The video – which has blurred the faces of the minors so they can’t be identified - was posted by Pittsburgh news anchor Kelly Brennan on Facebook, where it has gotten more than 770 shares and 400 reactions and comments since Monday.

“A student in the Connellsville School District was bullied on Friday by another classmate — who is seen in this video physically attacking him, twice,” noted Brennan in her post, in which a girl in a red hoodie is seen charging a boy from behind and shoving him, after which other students can be heard saying “push him again” to her.

“The male student, according to the district, is a special-needs student. The female aggressor was suspended and charged by school police.”

“The superintendent says the investigation isn’t over — while the incident was reported to them Friday, the district didn’t know about the video until today,” she added.

The school’s superintendent Philip Martell told local TV that his school is ‘better than that’.

“We have to make them aware of these situations, how hurtful it can be to an individual and to families, and that if they do choose to go down this path, we won’t accept it and they’ll be immediate consequences and that’s what we did in this case.”

Martell said that officials took immediate action after the incident and the perpetrator was suspended and charged by police within an hour, but that it’s likely more students will face disciplinary action.

One of the most striking parts of the video is how not a single one of the roughly 10 other students witnessing the attack stepped in to prevent it or to support the young man.

According to adolescent psychologist Barbara Greenberg, that’s due to a combination of factors — including ‘diffusion of responsibility’, a socio-psychological group phenomenon during which everyone assumes somebody else will do something, so nobody does anything. “It’s also called the bystander effect,” she said.

But beyond that, Greenberg told Yahoo Lifestyle, is a trait that’s particular to adolescents who are ‘extremely self-conscious’.

Because of that, she explained, “They don’t step in to help. They’re afraid that if they get involved they’ll be the next victim — or that they’ll make a fool of themselves.”

But not all kids would react with such complicit silence. And raising one who feels emboldened enough to stand up for what’s right, Greenberg stressed, “has to start at home, where you teach a kid that it’s a brave and wonderful thing to do.”

If the personality of your child is not quite suited for such heroics, she advises, at least “tell them to immediately look for an adult” if they notice a classmate being bullied.

“You have to work with that kid’s personality and temperament,” she said.

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