Bullying, the increasing battle that some students go through every day, is the act of
harming another person either mentally or physically for little no apparent reason. Bullying has been the source of teen and adolescent suicides ever since school began whether it be because of race, religion, skin color, or just out of boredom. As Jinnie Spiegler of Edutopia, states, “just over half (50.9%) of U.S. middle and high school students reported being verbally harassed at school based on appearance or body size”. This comes as no surprise because of the increasing number of reports of bullying occurring across the globe regularly. Later in the article the author begins to breakdown the causes of bullying into percentages as follows, race/ethnicity (30.3%), gender expression (21.9%), sexual orientation (19.4%), gender (18.1%), religion (18%), and disability (12.7%). As the world continues to change and progress the way bully’s harm their targeted prey is as well. Many years ago the main source of bullying was face-to-face confrontation but today many reported cases of bullying spur from the category of “cyber-bullying”.
As technology becomes more prevalent in society the traditional ways of being bullied have changed from their traditional origin of physical harm to verbal abuse through technology. Larissa Hirsch, Md explains cyber bullying as, the use of technology to harass, threaten, embarrass, or target another person. By definition, it occurs among young people. When an adult is involved, it may meet the definition of cyber-harassment or cyberstalking, a crime that can have legal consequences and involve jail time. Bullying occurs usually to those who are seen as lesser than others, or because they’re seen as an easy target to be made fun of by the one doing the bullying. Based on reports of bullying the ones targeted most via cyberbullying are those with Learning or attention issues. The reason for this is due to the fact that those with learning or attention issues may be less capable of understanding online communication, which is where the cyber bullying occurs, and are seen as easy targets for this. There are many ways to prevent children of cyber bullying one is to prepare the child for online interactions with peers or strangers because at some point in their life they will be faced with doing so with no supervision.
Bullying was once seen as a way for students to play with one another and simply an expression of themselves but as serious tragedies due to self-infliction or school-shootings became more common across the nation, school systems began to see it as a real issue. The first major school shooting most revisit when talking about the effects of bullying on students was the columbine school shooting which occurred in 1999. This school shooting really shed light on the dramatic effects of bullying and what can occur if a person is incapable of coping with bullying logically, turns to violence and harm towards innocent students. Since that one terrible day which shocked citizens across the country, school massacres has sadly become a much more common occurrence than anyone could have previously expected. Some scientists and researched suspect This sudden increase in school shootings and suicides among the youth may be directly related to bullying. Taylor Swaak states that, “Bullying affects an estimated 28 percent of 12-to 18-year-old U.S. students and is often linked to another commonly referenced reason behind school shootings: mental health disorders. Some who have been frequently bullied experience lasting ramifications, such as depression and anxiety.” In mid-February of this year, a former student and possible target of bullying, Nikolas Cruz attacked his former high school with a semi-automatic Ar-15 rifle killing seventeen students and injuring fourteen replacing both sandy hook and columbine as the largest school shooting in history. We, as a society must find a way to stop these action of mass murder from occurring, and many believe finding a resolution to bullying may be the key to doing so.
One way to stop bullying would be to enforce all schools across the nation must have an anti-bullying organization. This anti-bullying organization would be made up of school counselors, teachers, and administration and they are tasked with the job of actively looking for signs of bullying during the school hours and after hours and reporting it when noticed. They must be unbiased and be willing to actively lend themselves and their time to the students they teach and interact with. This anti-bullying organization would stand as a symbol to those being bullied and those doing the bullying, that the matter at hand is not taken lightly. Bullying must be met with consequences and will not be tolerated. One school implanted a known program in the prevention of bullying known as “KiVa”, which “includes role-playing exercises to increase the empathy of bystanders and computer simulations that encourage students to think about how they would intervene to reduce bullying” (Wolpert). Jaana Juvonen is the lead author of the KiVa strial and a psychology professor at UCLA. Juvonen says, “Our findings are the first to show that the most tormented children — those facing bullying several times a week — can be helped by teaching bystanders to be more supportive”. The key is to make everyone aware of the serious problem of bullying across the nation and make those students eing bullied feel like theyre not alone. It is also to make the students doing the bullying feel guily and make them stop this unnecessary physical or mental torture they are doing to other students. There is no act of bullying which is justified, regardless of race, sex, religion, or sexual preference.
Another means of stopping bullying across the nation that is growing more popular is station a campus officer or monitor to intervene if they see an example of bullying take place. This method is growing very popular due to the recent situation which took place in San Diego, California at Granite Hills High School. A School shooting was beginning to take place when a police officer stationed on campus was able to intercept the shooter and stop any further harm which would have taken place had that officer not been there. Many students feel that having a police officer on campus gives them further reassurance and a sense of peace of mind that they will be of some assistance if a shooting or act of bullying was going to take place. However, research shows that members of the African-american community may see these campus officers as more of a threat than as an ally or a friend.
Besides the effects of bullying on one’s physical health and overall attitude recent studies have shown it is also linked to poor grades and increased dropout rates of students across the country. Whitted & Dupper say that bullying is a, “low-level, subtle form of violence, bullying creates an unsafe school environment and can lead to more serious types of violence among students”. Research also shows that even students who view bullying, but are not involved in the bullying at all, face higher levels of depression, stress, and this may have a dramatic effect on their academic ability to learn and test in the future. Students who simply wish to further their education should feel as though school is a place where they are able to get exclude themselves from the outside world. School should be a place where students are able to learn and better their education with friends and administration rather than a place they fear every day and despise due to the increasing bullying factor that is increasing across the globe. As a society we must prevail through these rough times and find a resolution before it is too late. Students, parents and teachers must come to an agreement that enough is enough, and that this turmoil that many students across the nation face must come to an end. It is time to find a solution to stop bullying, because if we let it continue we may see even more school shootings and suicides occur at a much more rapid pace than we can even fathom. It is society’s responsibility to stop this act known as bullying because the effects of it are everlasting and will stick with these students forever. To some students bullying is something that they must experience every day and they look to anyone they can for a way out of their misery and torture.
Over the years many adults and member of the school system saw bullying as simply “just part of being a kid”. As more studies come out on the increasing suicides occurring across the country are released those same adults are starting to realise that bullying is something that must not be taken lightly. Bullying is being recognized as one of the main causes of self-infliction or suicide, research studies show. The CDC, Center For Disease Control and prevention, have stated that suicide is the third leading cause of death by adolescents. The third leading cause of death among young teens known as suicide, accounts for roughly 4400 deaths per year. According to a research study performed by Yale university, Victims of bullying are two to nine more times likely to commit suicide than students who are considered non-victims of bullying. That is an alarming statistic that must be addressed and dealt with. The problem with bully-related suicide deaths is that it is sometimes difficult to recognize and assess. Many students have gotten so accustomed to being bullied that they hide their sadness and depression from their peers and parents to avoid reliving their experience. It isn’t until it is too late that the signs of their depression and the effect of bullying on their mind has become evident. Many students bottle up this emotion of sadness from the outside the world until they feel like they can no longer endure the pain in which they feel constantly. They bottle it up until they can no longer deal with their pain and suffering so they either take their own life, seek assistance in dealing with their emotions, or take out their anger on other students with no concern for themselves or anyone else any longer. Some research suggest that many bullies were actually victims in the past who were incapable of coping with their pain so now they do exactly what the bully did to them. They take out all their anger, frustration, and sadness on another person. They take out all this emotion on someone they find to be an easy target.
Bullying is a troubling subject that must be addressed and stopped before more tragic events happen to innocent students who play no part in the actual bullying. It is time to drastically lessen the adolescent suicide percentage statistic and the way to do so is evident. Bullying can no longer be taken lightly and referred to as a way one young person expresses themselves or a way of growing up. It must be met with consequence and punishment if society truly wants this epidemic to end. Students should feel as though school is a place to escape from other stressors in their everyday life, rather than a place they feel like they must escape from.