The "B" Word

The "B" Word

I recently discovered a video today about a topic that is widely talked about, but very rarely do people take the time to apply it to their lives. It's something that everybody always preaches about how bad it is, but hardly anybody realizes they might be part of the problem. What's worse is when it is happening, those affected by it are too scared to talk to anyone about it.

The "B" word I am referring to is bullying. One might think, "This is 2014, bullying doesn't happen anymore," but they could not be more wrong. Even though campaigns against bullying have been around for over a decade, bullying is still going on and there's a whole electronic world filled with it now too. "One in three young people have experienced a cyberthreat," and more than half of the teens affected will not tell their parents that this is happening (http://www.bullyingstatistics.org/content/cyber-bullying-statistics.html).

Bullying happens every day, and chances are, you don't even realize it. A lot of my closet friends have either been victims or friends with victims of bullying, and probably have of them admit that they didn't realize they were being bullied at the time. In some cases when those affected do step up and tell someone, they are told to forget about it and the victim is made to think that they were silly to be offended by something someone did or said. I was one of these people. My senior year of high school I told my cheer coach that I was getting bullied by one of the other girls on the squad, and instead of trying to help fix the problem my coach told me that I was wrong and was not being bullied. My coach, actually told me I couldn't use the word anymore!

Bullying is defined by "Bullying is unwanted, aggressive behavior among school aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance," (http://www.stopbullying.gov/what-is-bullying/definition/index.html). This definition says school aged children, but it can be at point in life.   The point of this post is to make people stop and think about if someone could perceive them as a bully or if someone is a victim, it is okay to speak up. Bullying is an easy subject to talk about, but very difficult to act against.

I have included the video that sparked this post below in hopes that if reading this wasn't convincing enough to change one's actions and way of thinking, the video will.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYVvE4tr2BI