Has Bullying Grown?

Bullying is a form of hurting an individual to make one feel better about oneself. A manner for people who are jealous, sad, hurt, depressed, or just cold hearted, to pick on someone they may not know anything about to make themselves feel like a bigger person.

My personal opinion on bullying is that it is out of control. There are more and more teens, kids, and even adults getting harassed by other people. All the way to the worst point that people are deciding to take their own lives. One example I am keeping up with right now, is the Phoebe Prince story, a fifteen year old girl from South Hadley High School, Massachusetts who commits suicide due to bullying by a group of fellow students at her high school. The story I am keeping up is written by Helen Kennedy at http://www.dailynews.com. She just starts off talking about where Phoebe was from and how nine students are being charged for her suicide. I totally agree with everything she stated in her article and how she feels about the whole situation.  So at this time nine students have been charged with a month long campaign of bullying. More students have been brought in for investigation. I plan to follow the whole story from start to finish seeing how our own law enforcement, public schools, and court systems handle this whole situation. I hope to hear, even people who weren’t involved in the devastating suicide will find it in their hearts to stand up and do what’s right if it will help out Phoebe’s investigation. I hope it ends with the kids getting what they deserve and seeing some ways in the future they can help prevent this from happening again.

 I come from a small school in Lavaca, Arkansas where the graduating class was sixty-four, with over twenty of them being foreign exchange students. I can’t say that I didn’t ever witness bullying going on, but I do have to say that there wasn’t that much. Which is wonderful for us, but there is no telling how much bullying goes on in larger schools around the world. I personally have been bullied, but sadly not by people who were like the average bullies, just by my friends. When I say bullied, I don’t mean like a everyday thing like most bullying is done, it was just this little thing a couple of my guy friends would do when I walked by that made me feel uncomfortable. I didn’t take it in as bullying because they were my friends, but still didn’t fell to well when it was happening I couldn’t imagine what Phoebe was going through. It probably went on for a good month and a half, then I guess they just forgot about it and quit. Sadly to say but it was the truth. Strongly I never took it to heart, but some people just don’t have the man power or strength to do so, they take things to heart where they start to break down from the real person they are and leads to hurting themselves or even taking their lives. People who get bullied day after day becomes weaker and weaker as times goes on. It’s a sad process and we as teens see it more and more every day.

I think even though there was not much bullying in the schools in the west back then, kids still fought amongst themselves and the dads would have their shoot outs downtown for another cowboy looking at them the wrong way. Bullying has defiantly grown from the western lifestyles up until today. Now a day’s kids and teens fight or pick on kids on an everyday bases. We have teens or even mid teens hurting themselves in suicidal ways because the bullying gets so bad. My personal opinion on the whole situation is, “Stop the Abuse”, I think it’s getting way out of control and people are not taking the responsible routes to taking care of the situations. Everybody has their days where they may not feel their best or think they even deserve to live, but by law have to attend school. So when kids get to school the last thing they need is someone that is getting their heads down even more. Teens don’t care though, they will do anything to make that person feel the worst possible and will not stop until they succeed.

I do believe we have taken more outlooks on the topic over the centuries. People have changed so much over time. I believe people have changed their outlooks on the world and have changed a lot since the early western times. I think people are meaner and have lost a lot of respect for everything and everyone. With this being said, of course more crime and bullying would arise. More and more teens are getting addicted to drugs or more and more drinking under the age, more juveniles in the detention centers, but this all doesn’t compare to me as much as someone torturing another human being day in and day out. Putting someone so far into the ground and crushing their hopes of each day being a new on to the point where kids and teens have their whole lives ahead of them thinking of taking their own lives.    

In conclusion I pray we as people will stop being mean to our fellow sisters and brothers and learn to be nice and respect each other as who we are. Drop the immature and non important drama that leads to bullying or thinking bad about another and just live by the golden rule, “Treat Others How You Want to Be Treated”. I know we all have our days, but may be in time we will all realize it’s really not worth it to be mean and say hurtful things to innocent people to make ourselves feel better for a couple of minutes.

-- Ashley Moore