Bullying. You see it and recognize it every day. Does anyone ever actually step in? I think we would all know that answer. Only some do. I can say truthfully that it’s hard to intervene in something like that. Am I right? You only look out for yourself. According to pacer.org, the one in three students that do get bullied try to defend themselves while the rest of us just join in on the picking people out, name-calling, or posting crude stuff online. Most likely, there is a chance that most people who do bully, were bullied before. What people are starting to realize is that bullying can cause kids to do things to take the pain away, extreme things.
When you think deeply of the effects on students from bullying, it can cause a popular subject we have seen in the news. I’ve taken notice that when we see school shootings in the news, they don’t just do it for fun. They do it because they want revenge on us for the pain we caused them. For example, according to USA Today, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, the shooters of Columbine High School, were bullied by jocks in the years they were there. I’m not standing up for them, but if you take that into consideration, we make them do it. We plug it into their mind that we hate them and everyone hates them, so they will never have friends. My point is that we keep on, and they’re slowly becoming psychotic. Classmates impact the choices of other classmates. For instance, in our lifespan so far, we have probably picked someone as an outcast at least once. The reason I say that is because I have been on both sides. When I first moved to Roswell and went to Crabapple, I can say that I was one of the outcasts. But at my old school, I was the one nitpicking people. The people who saw me as an outcast impacted me a lot. I was sad before I could ever get use to Crabapple.
In studies from Bullyingstatistics.org, one in 65,000 kids from ages 10 to 14 considers suicide in the United States each year. Almost 7% of high school students actually attempt or succeed in suicide. To bystanders, that might not seem a lot, but to friends or family that lose someone to it, it’s a lot. According to studies at Yale University, bully victims are two to nine times more likely to commit suicide than non-victims. Look around your classroom. Every one in five of your classmates could be getting bullied or have been bullied. They could be thinking, right at this moment, to commit suicide. If I were you, I would reach out to them.
Over 25 percent of teens have been bullied repeatedly through cell phones or social media sites, said by stopbullying.gov. Have you ever sent a text to someone saying something mean or rude? Did you think about the text before you sent it? I can remember when this girl sent something stupid to someone she trusted and it got out to the whole school. We saw her as an imbecile for doing something like that. We treated her differently. I saw her as a different person. I can still hear my friends talking about her. My friends would call her names such as the infamous “s” word or call her inappropriate. They would whisper about her at lunch and in P.E. I can’t say that I didn't. I was scared to intervene because I thought that I would be the next victim of being bullied. All of us saw her as an outcast. She was invisible. Looking back on that, I would've helped, made her feel like she had a friend, invite her to my lunch table, and hang out with her outside of school.
The world would be a better place if bystanders stood up against the bullies and helped the victims. Everyone thinks that everyone should live up to the idea of a perfect person. Blond hair, blue eyes, skinny body, perfect skin, and even perfect eyes. Society, such as movies and TV shows, has made us into popular-hungry people. To be honest, Media is the biggest bully of all. Before writing this, I had thought that each and every one is perfect in their own special way and after writing this; I still feel the same way. Whether you are Hispanic, short, tall, and even a red-head, you own yourself and how you act. Let’s be the generation that doesn't settle for bullying. Let’s be the generation that changes the statistics. Let’s be the generation that knows who we are and like it that way.