my mom is a child psychologist and kids don’t start understanding or caring about the long term consequences of their actions until pretty late in the game. i really don’t think a lot of them are thinking “if i bully this kid then this could harm my future idol career”, especially since so few people actually end up becoming successful idols. also, many of them dont know they want to be idols that young. for example skz hyunjin was streetcasted.

i’m not trying to justify bullying of course, but one of the reasons bullying happens in the first place is that kids are basically little psychopaths with very little empathy or understanding of the consequences of their actions. especially since apparently korean teachers mostly turn a blind eye to bullying, they don’t really have the opportunity to learn that bullying is bad and has negative consequences. i saw someone say on another thread that the people who should be losing their careers in bullying scandals are the teachers who allow this to happen and i agree.