3 Types of Bullying in Schools + 1 Immense Social Challenge

Q: Is cyberbullying a separate type of bullying?

Cyberbullying is commonly discussed as a distinct form of bullying because it occurs through digital communication and can extend beyond school hours and physical school grounds. It can include verbal, social, or psychological behaviors carried out through texts, social media, messaging platforms, games, or other digital tools. Legal definitions and school responsibilities for cyberbullying vary by state law and district policy.

Q: Does a one-time incident count as bullying?

Under the definition used by StopBullying.gov, bullying involves unwanted aggressive behavior, a real or perceived power imbalance, and behavior that is repeated or has the potential to be repeated. A single incident may therefore not meet that definition, but it can still require a school response under applicable law or policy. Depending on the circumstances, an incident may involve harassment, assault, sexual misconduct, a threat, or another form of prohibited behavior. State laws and district policies may also define bullying differently.

Q: Can a school address bullying that happens off campus?

Sometimes. A school's authority to address off-campus conduct depends on the specific circumstances, applicable state law and district policy, and constitutional limits involving student speech. The effect of off-campus conduct on students and the school environment may be relevant, but there is no single rule that makes every off-campus incident subject to school discipline. Administrators should follow district procedures and seek appropriate legal guidance when questions arise about the school's authority to respond.

By Jon Konen, Last Updated: September 1, 2026

Girl sitting alone on the grass while two classmates behind her whisper and look in her direction

The types of bullying in schools fall into three behavior categories (verbal, physical, and psychological) plus cyberbullying, which cuts across all three. All four share the same markers: unwanted aggression, a power imbalance, and repetition or a high likelihood of it. Which type you're looking at shapes how you document it.

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What Counts as Bullying, and What Doesn't

In 2014, the Centers for Disease Control and the Department of Education published a uniform federal definition, and it's the one worth working from. Bullying is unwanted aggressive behavior involving a real or perceived power imbalance that is repeated multiple times or is highly likely to be repeated. Three parts, and the third is satisfied by likelihood as well as by history.

That third part is where staff disagreements start, and it's also where the most common mistake happens. A single incident without a power imbalance may not meet the bullying definition, but it can still require intervention under school policy or other applicable law. It may be harassment, assault, sexual misconduct, or a threat, and none of those wait for a second occurrence. What the bullying definition governs is whether you open a bullying case, not whether you respond at all.

All 50 states have anti-bullying statutes, but what they require of schools varies widely, including which incidents trigger a mandatory report and how fast you have to act. Check your state's statute and your district policy rather than assuming the general shape applies.

The Four Types of Bullying in Schools at a Glance

Sources carve this up differently. What this article calls psychological bullying is what many organizations label social or relational, and it's the same set of behaviors.

Type	Also called	What it looks like
Verbal	-	Spoken or written words: taunting, name-calling, threats, rumor-spreading
Physical	-	Physical force or contact, or damage to a student's property
Psychological	Social, relational, covert	Exclusion, friendship manipulation, engineered humiliation
Cyber	Online, electronic	Any of the above carried out through phones, apps, or games

The 2019 School Crime Supplement gives a sense of relative frequency among bullied students: rumors 15%, verbal taunting 14%, exclusion from activities 6%, being pushed, shoved, tripped, or spit on 5%, and physical threats 4%. The categories teachers spot most easily sit at the bottom.

Verbal Bullying Behavior

The forms verbal bullying takes are as varied as the language itself. To be classified as verbal bullying, it has to be heard, repeated, or highly likely to be repeated, and carry a clear power imbalance between the students involved.

Here's a quick list of verbal bullying behaviors to watch for. Remember that the bullying definition also asks whether the behavior is repeated or highly likely to be repeated, alongside definite signs of a power imbalance:

Teasing
Taunting
Put-downs
Name calling
Threats
Sexual harassment or sexual comments
Spreading or starting rumors

One item on that list doesn't follow the same rules. Sexual harassment and sexual comments can trigger separate school policies and federal and state legal obligations regardless of whether the conduct is repeated or involves a power imbalance, so school personnel don't wait for the bullying test to be satisfied before acting on them.

Parents and staff perceive the severity of verbal bullying very differently. Some is overlooked, some over-exaggerated, some ignored completely. Investigating further and bringing parents in is a good strategy for getting it stopped.

Physical Bullying Behavior

To be classified as physical bullying, behavior has to involve physical contact, repeated or highly likely to be repeated, with a power imbalance between the students involved. Often the student doing the bullying has a physical stature well beyond the targeted student's.

These aren't all-inclusive, but they're the incidents school personnel handle most often:

Grabbing, pushing, or hitting
Tripping
Spitting
Taking or destroying possessions
Using objects to inflict pain
Unwanted physical contact of a sexual nature
Sexual assault

The last two items on that list sit outside the bullying framework entirely. Unwanted sexual contact and sexual assault are not incidents you evaluate against a repetition or power-imbalance test first. They carry their own school policies and their own federal and state legal obligations, and those apply to a single incident.

Physical bullying can escalate without adult intervention, and earlier intervention generally gives you more options. What that intervention looks like isn't uniform: reporting timelines, escalation paths, when law enforcement gets involved, mandatory-reporting duties, and investigation requirements all vary by state law, by district policy, and by the nature and severity of the incident. Know your own district's procedure before you need it rather than working from a general rule.

Violence Continuum chart with an arrow marking put-downs and bullying as where prevention should begin

The Violence Continuum is a conceptual prevention illustration, not an evidence-based progression. It arranges behaviors from put-downs and insults at the base through threats, fighting, and weapons toward the most severe outcomes, with a "begin here" marker on the bottom step. Read it as an argument for taking low-level behavior seriously, not as a prediction: it does not describe a pathway that individual students follow, and most students who engage in put-downs or bullying never move up it.

Psychological Bullying Behavior

Breaking this category out may be new to some educators and parents, but students feel the pain of psychological bullying constantly. It's the hardest of the three to spot for a structural reason: it isn't seen or heard directly. Like the other two it has to be repeated or highly likely to be repeated, with a power imbalance between the students involved.

School staff finds this type harder to act on because there's rarely a single incident to point at, and yet students report it often. A direct witness isn't required to establish it. Student reports, digital evidence, interviews with the students involved, staff observations, and a documented pattern across time all count. Here's a list of some of the different forms it takes:

Purposely being left out of social situations
Telling other students not to be around a specific student or group of students
Encouraging non-communication in the presence of a student or group of students
Manipulating friendships
Spreading rumors without ever talking directly to the student
Engineering humiliating situations the student doesn't see coming: making books fall out of a locker in a crowded hallway, pranks, orchestrating catfishing

These categories overlap constantly in practice. A rumor campaign is verbal and psychological at once, and most real incidents draw on more than one type.

An explosion occurred in the early 2000's; the internet provided a new avenue to be mean to other students. I believe it will be the largest social challenge we will have as educators in the next 20 years. Since this is a new medium, not specifically verbal, physical, or psychological, social media and texting applications provide a medium where freedom of speech may go too far into the realm of bullying behavior.

As a principal, my first office referral and suspension for cyberbullying occurred from a social media site called MySpace.com back in 2005. It was the most popular social media site, surpassing Google at that point, according to Wikipedia. Students could write openly and freely whatever they wanted on a student's MySpace page. I was able to screenshot and copy/paste all the comments a group of girls were saying about another girl. Unfortunately, parents were not cooperative as they stated that this was written at home. I was able to prove it affected the girl's academics, and the superintendent and school board upheld my discipline decisions!

That case turned on a question with no single answer. A school's authority over off-campus student speech is legally constrained, and what a district can act on depends on the specific facts, on state law and district policy, and on First Amendment standards courts continue to refine. Academic impact is often part of that analysis but isn't a universal test on its own. Document thoroughly, then get administrator and district counsel guidance rather than deciding at the classroom level.

As the number of platforms grows, so does the number of ways this shows up. Here are the situations colleagues and I have seen most:

Posting or forwarding harmful or hurtful words or rumors
Posting or forwarding unwanted pictures
Sexual harassment through messages or posts
Catfishing, meaning posing as someone else through social media to deceive a student

Sexual harassment carried out through messages or posts belongs in the same category as its offline counterpart. It can trigger separate policy and legal obligations whether or not it's repeated and whether or not a power imbalance is present.

I foresee this fourth type of bullying behavior as the one schools of the future will need to deal with the most. We need to be teaching students at a younger age about internet etiquette or "netiquette." Likewise, we need to continue to work with parents on how they can support their students' navigation through social media. We definitely cannot stop it, so we must teach them to navigate it!

Frequently Asked Questions

Is cyberbullying a separate type of bullying?

It's usually treated as its own category because the medium changes so much about it: it follows students home, it's often invisible to adults, and it raises questions about school authority that the other three don't. The behaviors themselves are mostly verbal and psychological ones carried out through a screen.

Does a one-time incident count as bullying?

Not usually under the federal definition, which asks for unwanted aggression, a real or perceived power imbalance, and repetition or a high likelihood of repetition. A single incident without a power imbalance may not meet that definition, but it can still require intervention under school policy or other applicable law. It may be harassment, assault, sexual misconduct, or a threat. The definition determines whether you open a bullying case, not whether you respond.

Can a school address bullying that happens off campus?

Sometimes, but there's no single test and school authority here is legally constrained. What a district can act on depends on the specific facts, on state law and district policy, and on First Amendment standards governing off-campus student speech. Whether the behavior affects a student's learning or the school environment is often part of that analysis, but academic impact alone isn't a universal standard. This is a question for your administrator and district counsel, not one to resolve from a classroom.

MORE BULLYING PREVENTION GUIDE RELATED READINGS:

Three parts, and repetition includes likelihood - The federal definition calls for unwanted aggression, a real or perceived power imbalance, and repetition or a high likelihood of repetition. A single incident may not meet it and can still require intervention under school policy or other applicable law.
The quiet types are the common ones - Rumors and verbal taunting are reported far more often than physical acts, which means the behaviors with no single visible incident are the ones happening most.
Psychological equals social or relational - Different sources use different labels for the same exclusion and friendship-manipulation behaviors, so cross-referencing another framework won't change what you're looking for.
Off-campus authority is legally constrained - What a school can act on depends on the facts, state law, district policy, and First Amendment standards, so academic impact alone isn't a universal test.

Recognizing the four types is the first half of the job. Responding to them without escalating the situation is a trained skill, and it sits at the center of graduate work in school counseling and educational leadership. The sponsored programs on this page include online and part-time formats built for educators already working a full teaching schedule. Degree, approved-program, supervised-experience, assessment, and certification or licensure requirements for counselor and administrator roles vary by state, so check that a program meets the requirements where you intend to work.

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