Bullying, we've all been on either side. The one doing the damage or the one receiving the blow. People think "that’s just part of life" for some it is the thing that ends their lives. In this day and age bullying is hitting America hard; kids are skipping school, altering their looks and even killing themselves. A recent survey states that nine out of 10 students had their feelings hurt online. This is an issue that is affecting everyone. Of 37 school shootings including the columbine massacre two thirds of them, revenge on a bully was a motive. Bullying is a never ending nightmare that needs to be stopped
You see it everywhere, teens on their cell phones, texting until their thumbs are sore. Some of those texts aren't just LOL or BRB, way too often they are things like "Hey fatty nice XXL shirt" or "LOSER!!" This isn't just happening over text, it's also happening on the web. For example, Amanda an 8th grade student at the time had peers steal a bag of makeup from her, she reported the incident. When she arrived home her Facebook was bombarded with horrible and appalling messages, ''It seems like people can say a lot worse things to someone online than when they're actually talking to them,'' quoted the girl. Sometimes it's not even peers that do the bullying. One incident included the mother of a friend of Megan Meier. This mother created a fake myspace account and sent the girl insulting and vile messages. Megan hung herself because of this.
At the same time not all bullying is over the internet. This is also happening at school, the place where kids go to learn, the place that is the building blocks for our futures. It is also a place where 2.1 million bullies and 2.7 million bullying victims are held. When we think of a typical bullying scene some think of the high school nerd in suspenders being shoved into a locker buy the body building jock. That isn't always true, it has been discovered that the lower the grade is, twice as many fights are reported, and 6th grade is also the worst year for bullying. If school is the building blocks for the future, we would want to be there as much as we can right? Well at least 160,000 students miss school every day because of fear of bullying. You're probably thinking that "Well those kids shouldn’t be afraid teachers and adults probably step in and breakup the fights" wrong again, 71% of teachers say they step in and stop bullying but buy a student survey only 25% actually stepped in and helped.
Humans have three basic needs to survive, food, water and acceptance into society and kids are doing whatever they can to be accepted. Samantha Shaw, a first grader, underwent surgery to get her ears pinned back so that she wouldn't be made fun of. Anorexia, Bulimia and other eating disorders are sometimes the effect of bullying; girls and boys are starving themselves, just to fit in. On the opposite end of the scale, some victims of bullying are coping with the pain by eating, eating to the point where for one example, an 11 year old named Mason Harvey weighed 204 pounds. These children are altering their faces and bodies so that the name calling and bullying will cease, this is going too far.
We are the generation of the future; we are born the way God envisioned us to be and children and teens are changing their bodies and transforming their faces to fit the demands of the cruel and vicious bullies that roam the halls of the schools. I learned from my own experience that bullies are everywhere, not just the body building jocks or the rich snooty popular girls. These bullies can start as friends then turn on you, just for the fun of it! Bullying is the nightmare that isn’t just haunting the dreams of kids, but also the realities. We need to stop it.
