Bullying has been around for a while now but has only gotten worse. Many people push away the topic because they think they don’t know anyone who’s been bullied or believe they haven’t bullied anyone else but researchers took a poll with about 8,000 student in North Carolina and found out, “In that group, about half the students were white and a third black. Most lived with two parents. The average student was harassed by 0.72 students during the spring term, but among victims, the average number of attackers was 2.2. Girls had higher rates of victimization. The researchers noted that there could be differences in other populations.” So the question is, why are we ignoring the fact that bullying is a real big problem and not only outcasts are being targeted? In “Even popular kids are bullied in high school, researchers find” by Mary Maclean, Researchers Robert Faris and Diane Felmlee find that according to polls, those who are more popular than others are the ones who are bullied the most. This is because according to Faris and Felmlee, the outcasts who bully usually are trying to replace those people they’re bullying, they want to become popular like them. They found that, “The aggressors, too, often “possess strong social skills,” and bully others to move up the social ladder rather than to “re-enact their own troubled home lives.” meaning the bullies know what they’re doing, they have everything planned out from the start. Most of them bully to become more popular, they think because they’re bullying someone they’ll be viewed as having more power over other people and stronger. Most of those kids and teenagers that are bullied feign being bullied to avoid being bullied even more. Now, when teenagers report other teenagers for bullying, the kid that reported the bullying gets more hate yet no one does anything, for example in schools when administration are told someone is getting bullied they usually suspend the bully but in reality how does that help? Why does the bully not get in more trouble? The reason why kids being bullied don’t tell is because of that reason, there’s really nothing we do to protect them more and that’s what needs to change. Kids now take it as a joke and claim they’re joking around but behind closed doors, it could’ve really affected someone. In, “Two girls arrested on bullying charges after suicide” by Doug Stanglin and William M. Welch they wrote about a horrifying story about a young girl’s suicide. Rebecca Sedwick, 12 years old from Lakeland, Florida committed suicide on September 9th from jumping off of a cement factory tower. Sedwich was reportedly constantly harassed by as much as 15 girls within a couple months through messages. Two girls were arrested a 12 year old and 14 year old for admitting they harassed her and did not feel remorse towards her death. Following the change of school, the same degenerates from her last school continued on harassing her. Justin Patchin, a professor states, “…the actions in the Florida case were extreme because of the length of the harassment, the number of teens involved and the seriousness of their postings.” meaning the case was so much bigger than normal cases of bulling because there were so many people involved and the posts online included serious death threats such as “drink bleach and die”. This occurrence caused much controversy because normally kids around those ages aren’t normally filled with criminal charges. Sedgwick’s death engendered concern for many parents and opened their eyes to realize this is a very really topic and we need to take care of it and worry about our children when we know something is going on. Police found “Judd said the “red flags” for possible suicide were there. On her computer, police found search queries for topics including “what is overweight for a 13-year-old girl,” ”how to get blades out of razors” and “how many over-the-counter drugs do you take to die.” One of her screensaver also showed Rebecca with her head resting on a railroad track.” meaning there were obviously clues Rebecca was not happy with her life but why didn’t anyone do anything, where were her parents? This is why parents should be more involved in the lives of their kids and schools should handle these problems with more care.
Rebecca Sedwick-Bullying Death (click on link to watch video)
In the story about Rebecca Sedwick authors Doug Stanglin and William M. Welch included the line “Kids have been bullying each other for generations. … What makes it different is the long-standing nature, the permanent nature of statements online.” stated by professor Patchin. When Patchin said this to the authors he was pointing out that this generation bullying and generations before are cognate, the only difference is that now kids and teenagers have technology. Technology is now innate since their birth, parents are also starting to give their children cell phones and exposure to the entire world through these medias which most parents don’t know their children have. When these parents give their children this type of “freedom” they become more vulnerable for cyberbullying, such as Rebecca’s story. Some of the stories about people being bullied involve pictures that were meant for one person to see but get leaked and this is what I believe Patchin means when he says that what we do and say is permanent online. If you attack someone with words online, everyone can see and no matter if you erase it, there’s always a way to find it again there is no way you can transfigure what you had said and how you said it.
These two stories were very interesting and very eye opening and I know there’s always news that we aren’t told when these stories are put online but if I was a mother and I noticed a change in my child’s behavior I would do something about it instead of just ignore it. Teenagers go through a lot of emotions and stress and definitely anxiety throughout our teenage years and we all deal with bullies whether we say it or not but there are some people that constantly get bullied and it’s not a joke to them and really affects them so it’s important to communicate always with you child even small talk can change their whole day. It’s extremely sad to hear stories about children committing suicide because they’re being bullied. I feel as if parents just don’t care enough about what their children do, I feel as if they give us a little too much trust which isn’t always good. I just think if the parents of these 15 kids saw what their children were saying to this little girl and stopped them immediately, none of this would’ve happened. I don’t think school systems are helping enough either. I think administrations in schools think they handle it all but suspending the kids or in this case switching classes but I feel like it just goes way more deeper than that and either way, they’re all coming back to school eventually so in reality, do they really think it’ll stop? In conclusion, I think handling bullying should be a lot more stricter, I mean in the article it even said that bullying isn’t considered a felony and I think parents should talk to their children and if they’re not talking back, find a way to communicate with them. We should avoid this at all costs, this shouldn’t be happening ever to anyone.
Even popular kids are bullied in high school, researchers find
Two girls arrested on bullying charges after suicide