Our Neighbors in Wisconsin Are Some of the Biggest Bullies in the Nation
I'm not confirming or denying this claim, I'm just reporting the findings of a recent study. Everyone I've met from Wisconsin has been truly lovely, but according to Wallethub, our neighbors to the east in Wisconsin are some of the biggest bullies in America:
To identify the states where bullying is most pervasive, WalletHub’s analysts compared 47 states and the District of Columbia across 20 key metrics, ranging from “bullying-incident rate” to “truancy costs for schools” to “share of high school students bullied online.”
The top 10 states with the biggest bullying problems were:
- California
- Wisconsin
- Alaska
- Missouri
- Mississippi
- Lousiana
- Montana
- New Hampshire
- West Virginia
- Alabama
Due to data limitations with this study, Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington were all excluded from the analysis so we can't see how exactly the Land of 10,000 Lake compares.
So why did Wisconsin rank so high? Shouldn't they have a little Midwest Nice in them? Wisconsin's stats pointed to one of the highest percentages of kids getting in physical fights on school grounds. They also ranked 3rd for anti-bullying laws, and second for bullying prevalence.
Wallethub shared this information along with the study:
In the next 7 minutes, a child in the U.S. will be bullied. It may be the son or daughter of someone you know. It may even be your own child. Meanwhile, only four in 100 adults will intervene. And only 11 percent of the child’s peers might do the same. The rest — 85 percent — will do nothing.
What blew me away was that only 25% of adults will intervene. As adults in situations, we need to be setting the example for the kids. Even if they don't directly say it, the youth are looking to us for leadership. If we are willing to step in and say something isn't right, they will be more likely to do the same.
Even though Minnesota wasn't part of the analytics of this study, you know bullying is happening here because it happens everywhere. It's up to us to lead by example and set the bar high for how kids treat each other. How they are treating each other now is how they will treat others as adults, so it's important that we start being the change we want to see in the world.