Bullying is a serious problem for school youth. It is prevalent across the elementary and secondary school years and it has serious consequences for both bullies and victims.

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between self-esteem and bullying behavior.

We conducted a cross-sectional study including children enrolled in two high schools in Sousse, Tunisia. The students were asked to complete two questionnaires: the Adolescent Peer Relations Instrument witch is a multidimensional scale designed to assess bullying involvement both as target and perpetrator and the Rosenberg self-esteem scale.

We recruited 600 adolescent. The mean age of our population was 13.76 ±1.37 and the sex ratio was 1. More than 95% of adolescent who reported that they had been victims of bullying had a very low self-esteem comparing to those who stated that they had never been bullied (4.4%). Our results have also shown that bullies had a lower self-esteem than children who had not bullied others.

We found that both victims and bullies tend to have low self-esteem. Our findings could help to understand better the role that individual characteristics and personal qualities such as self-esteem play on bullying, and provide the scientific knowledge to develop successful strategies to prevent this phenomenon.