I have been bigger than most people and not as fast at getting stuff done as most people, which has led to me being bullied all throughout my life. Bullying has affected me in a huge way. It has not helped with my mental health or my social life with not wanting to go to school, because if I do, I feel like the bullying will get worse. I think that we should make rules on bullying a lot more strict and take more action against bullying. We could make a safe space when bullying is happening, acknowledge the effects of bullying, enforce more rules, and make it easier to take action about it.

If we make a safe space for when people feel like they are getting bullied, it would make it so people would feel like they have somewhere to go when someone is getting bullied. They might feel as if they could get away from what is happening according to Stop Bullying’s article titled Build a Safe Environment from 2023 “if we build a safe environment the classroom should be safe and the kids will feel like they can do more about it.” I think that if we build a safe environment, we may not end bullying all together, but we could reduce what could happen if there's not somewhere to go. 

 Some of the effects of bullying can be mental health issues and not wanting to be social. The biggest and worst effect would be suicide, but it all starts with one person. According to Pacers National Bullying Prevention Center’s article on bullying statistics from November 2020, “bullying statistics victims of bullying are 2.2% more likely to have suicidal thoughts and actions.” According to gestures article on leading causes of death by age on march 15th of 2023, “suicide in teens is 11% of the deaths in teens, which is 3rd in the deaths in teens.” If someone got bullied, they would not want to hang out with people, so they would self-isolate from people and would not want to see anyone. They sometimes just want to be alone so that they don't get made fun of any more then they do already, and that makes mental health worse too, with not hanging out with anyone. Bullying does not just affect the person that's getting bullied, but also the family of those being bullied, as with my family my great uncle committed suicide in January of 2020. He loved to hunt, fish, and spend time with family, he had a wife and 2 daughters 2 brothers 1 sister a bunch of cousins, and a family that loved him. But one person said something that pushed him over the edge. I still think about him and what we could have done to save him, as this affects more people than just those being bullied. After going through all of this, a few months later my cousin attempted but thankfully, he was unsuccessful. 

Say that we made rules more strict, such as if someone says something that makes someone do something that hurts themself or someone else they are responsible for the consequences such as jail time or more. Even at school, if someone says something to someone and then the person that was getting bullied says something to someone else higher up such as a teacher or just staff the person that initially said something should have to sit in the office for the rest of the day. 

If we make it easier to report bullying and make it fully anonymous reporting, we will be in a much better place. It will make it so the people that are getting bullied feel like they can say something without being bullied more. They will feel like it will be safer to report it and make the bullying stop.

Bullying can be one of the worst things that someone can go through. It can be the worst part of someone's life, but we can make it safer to be at school when this is happening and make it easier to report it. I think we could make bullying go down but not fully stop with the effects and the safe space and more strict rules I think we could make a positive change when dealing with bullying.