Darcel Tucker
English 101
06/06/2015
Teenage Bullying Must Be Stopped
“Life is a fight, but not everyone’s a fighter. Otherwise, bullies would be an endangered species.”-Andrew Vachss
Have you ever witnessed or experienced bullying and the traumatic effects it has on its victims? Unfortunately researchers have found a strong link between bullying and suicide in today’s teens. Bullies are intentionally causing mental and or physical damage to their victims, which will affect them for the rest of their lives; therefore preventative measures to stop bullying should be a priority.
Bully-related suicide can be connected to various types of bullying, such as physical bullying, emotional bullying, cyberbullying, and sexting (Bullying and Suicide, 2013). Physical bullying usually takes the form of physical abuse, such as pushing, shoving, hitting, fighting, spitting, and tripping. Emotional bullying usually involves insults, derogatory remarks, name calling, and teasing. Emotional bullying can be done face to face or through cyberbullying (School Bullying, 2013). Cyber bullies attack psychologically and get very personal with the obvious intent of hurting someone. Cyber bullies are cowards because they hide behind computers and technology while trying to ruin others’ lives. Cyber bullies ruin self-esteems, the victim’s value of life, and how they act socially.
Unfortunately, bullying not only affects the victim’s life, but it affects the victim’s ability to learn often causing the victim to choose between education and safety. Bullying, whether in school or online, can have a detrimental effect on a student’s ability to learn, turning school from a source of knowledge and education to a nightmare. Although research shows that bullying can be greatly reduced through school-wide programs designed to change the mind set of current or potential bullies, getting funding or the support from the entire school system will take a great amount of time. These programs are not just limited to the school systems; the problem of bullying requires more community attention. Furthermore, there needs to be more awareness where parents are concerned. Just because the current generation of parents did not grow up with social media or the level of bullying we are dealing with does not mean they are excused from educating themselves about it- even if for nothing else than for their children (JBUNQUE, 2013).
Although the victims of the constant bullying can have long term psychological issues, if we were to look at this issue from the bullies perspective we might find that the actual bully was also a victim themselves. We may even ask ourselves “I wonder what his home life is like?” or maybe the bully may suffer from an untreated mental illness. Some parents and unaware school officials might try and make excuses for the bully by saying that their behavior is just a part of growing up and being young, of course they would be wrong. Just because a bully is young does not excuse them from their actions or the possible consequences that may follow (School