“Bullying“ has the potential to completely ruin victims‘ livesi Feeling alone in profound darkness and not being able to feel any happiness, when a boy is bullied, everything around him loses colors. For him, the world is monochrome. He needs to tell his parents that he is bullied in his school, but he is worried that doing so will upset his parents. Keeping the bullying to himself, his darkness of mind becomes deeper because there is no escape from the pain, The boy cannot enjoy and experience many things that ordinary children experience during childhood. This example of bullying is a very common one. Current situations of bullying is much more serious than you expect According to the National Association of School Psychologists, over 32 million students are victims of bullying each year, which means that 3.2 million students are losing their brilliant childhood every year (Cohn St Canter). Further complicating matters, bullying is becoming more complex as a result of cyberbullying.
In modern society, it is no longer possible for children to resolve bullying by themselves because of the complexity. Therefore, parents and teachers must recognize instances of bullying, and address them in appropriate and effective ways. One day, one accident made me very sensitive to bullying When I was 12 years old, my close friend, whose name was Maki, committed suicide because of serious bullying. Although we hung out together every day, I failed to recognize that he was bullied because he had completely hidden it from me; and of course he did not share the experience with his parents or teachers. One more reason why I did not notice the bullying is because the perpetrators used the Internet Through many anonymous emails, bullies told Maki “Everyone hates you, and all of your friendships are fake. You should leave the school,” Maki looked like a popular student in our school, so nobody even imagined him being bullied.
As a result, no one noticed or responded to the bullyingi Unable to bear the experience, Maki chose to end his own life, another reality no one could imagine. After his death I became very sensitive regarding bullying. In addition to mourning Maki’s passing, I knew we must learn something from his death to decrease bullying. To be honest, after his death, when bullying happened around me, I tried to help victims every time. As Maki experienced, the modern method of bullying is to use the Internet, and it is called cyber—bullying. Larry Magid, co»director of ConnectSafely.org and founder of Safekidscom, defined cyber-bullying: Manifests of cyber bullying include name-calling, sending embarrassing pictures, sharing personal information or secrets without permission, and spreading rumors, It can also include tricky, exclusion, and impersonation Some have a much broader definition of cyber bullying that can include any type of mean or rude comment, even if it’s not particularly hurtful or traumatic.
As Magid stated, even small prank and conflicts can be judged as cyber—bullying, And it most often happens on social networking services like Facebook and Twitter. Because perpetrators use the Internet and do not terrorize victims physically, some adults think cyber-bullying is relatively harmless. In the article “Social Networking Sites Cannot Be Blamed for Bullying,” from Opposing Viewpoint in Context states that the world children live in today is very different from the world children lived in 40 years ago. Children arejust using the current technologies, like social networking, for teasing someone instead of passing papers as they did in the past (Harding). Society needs to attach more importance to cyber-bullying because Cyber— bullying is not the just current method of bullying someone. By comparison of past bullying methods and cyber—bullying, we can understand that cyber-bullying needs more supports from adults to address it.
In the past, victims could more easily identify their bullies. Therefore, victims could find solutions like counterattacks against violence or consulting teachers. Now, victims of cyber-bullying often cannot even identify their bullies because perpetrators anonymously bully victims through the Internet; victims must endure attacks from invisible enemies. Children who have [0 endure bullying usually suffer from low self-esteem and their ability to learn and be successful at school is dramattically lessenedr Cyber—buliying is much worse than previous forms of bullying. In addition, by the anonymous attacks, it will be difficult for victims to believe someone because they need to doubt every friend to figure out bullies. Society will not solve cyber-bullying by merely attributing it to changing eras; instead, society must create appropriate solutions for resolving cyber-bullying. An important first step to decrease cyber—bullying is to teach children how to use the Internet correctly.
Adults need to demonstrate and model to children how the Internet is effective in modern society (i,e., how it can be enjoyable and productive for functions like online games or programming, respectively). In addition, those functions can be opportunities for children to make good friends, If children understand, appreciate, and use the Internet’s positive functions, they will not spare time for terrorizing someone online, Furthermore, it is also imponant to tell children that cyber-bullying can lead to serious consequences like victims committing suicide. The reason why I could try to help when I noticed bullying around me is that I had learned bullying leads the worst consequence from Maki’s committing suicide. Children need to understand how much cyber—bullying actions like posting unwanted pictures of friends can hurt their friends. In an effort to combat cyber—bullying, every school or anti-bullying association needs to provide counselors who can share this information with children.
To set up computer classes as a required subject in elementary schools is also good idea, Helping children understand the serious negative consequences of cyber—bullying makes it possible to decrease the number of thoughtless actions on the Internet. There is one more interesting solution for cyber—bullying. It is an app which is called “STOPit‘. According to the article from Opposing Viewpoints in Context, the app allows children to report bullying anonymously on the Internet with evidence like screenshots of chatting pages or tweets on SNS and messages. In addition, for children, this app is for free completely (An App To Stop Bullying). II is true that children notice bullying before teachers and parents notice it. And there are cenainly at least one student who understand bullying is not acceptable. The students can report the fact of bullying, and adults can work on the situation with appropriate ways such as telling the fact to bullies’ parent before the bullying lead the worst consequences. Now about 100 schools already have used this app. Next, adults need to restrain the exaggeration of bullying to decrease bullyingt as referenced earlier in the paper, the definition of bullying is expanding regularly.
As an example, if a child feels uncomfortable, even a rumor can be bullying. Of course, recognizing and addressing bullying is important, but sometimes adults exaggerate bullying too much, so children become too sensitive to bullying. As Benjamin Soskis asserts, ”Aggressive anti—bullying efforts may vilify normal adolescent behavior and prevent children from learning how to cope with social injuries that are simply a part of growing up” (Benjamin). After children become overly sensitive to bullying, they may immediately ask adults for help when they feel uncomfortable in a friendship, which could result in adults intervening too much in children’s small troubles. In short, children may be too protected, and thus not learn how to resolve difficult situations on their own. Overcoming these more minor challenges is an invaluable experience for children because it can help improve self-esteem and give them courage to stand up when they are bullied.
However, this solution is very risky because when victims fail to solute the bullying by counter attack and so on, it can promote bullying more; thus, careful monitoring from adults is critical, The biggest merit of restraining exaggeration is to prevent children from misunderstanding adolescent behaviors as bullying. Rumors or conflicts can happen frequently between adolescent children, so adults should not judge those as bullying and try to solute those behaviors, In many cases, children can solute by them selves, and they can grow up mentally. As I mentioned in last paragraph, sometimes, adults need to just watch over children for their mental growth. Finally, the most important solution to put in place to decrease bullying is to provide stricter legal punishments against bullies. California serves as an example, In California, there is a law that covers bullying on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, disability, or religion. In addition, according to California Education code 32261, 32265, 32270, and 48900, the punishment for bullies can escalate to suspension and even expulsion.
Like this, the law for bullying is not firm, so parents and teachers use private settlements as a solution, As a result, it is not rare that after a settlement victims and bullies are still in the same classroom, which in many cases is not fair. It seems counterproductive that bullies be able to return to their life as usual even though they negatively affected someone‘s life. Though bullying is decreasing, it is tme that there is still bullying in schools. One reason bullying may persist is that perpetrators know they will not face any serious punishment for their actions. Therefore, society needs to make bullies understand the weight of their sin. The best way to achieve that end is to report the bullies’ names with their faces to communities around them as a law, This law for addressing bullying is very strict, so some people may disagree with this approach; they may argue that such public reporting of bullying will adversely affect the bullies’ future, While these individuals may have a point, bullies inflict similar consequences on victims.
They already ruin victim‘s lives, so it is difficult to see how/why bullies deserve pity, Ultimately, all children must understand that bullying is a serious problem, and schools can hold a school conferences day or forum devoted to bully/victim problem to let children understand that. If this law is authorized in every country, bullying must decrease all over the world. Bullying can be addressed by strong corporation between schools and administration, Although bullying has decreased actually, a lot of children still suffer from bullying, Cyber—bullying in particular makes today‘s bullying more complex, and leaves victims more mentally terrorized than before. Exaggerations of bullying may make children anxious and wonder if they really are being bullied, and weak laws do not fully cover bullying, These and other problems associated with bullying are difficult and time-consuming to solve, but it is not impossible.
Teaching children appropriate Internet usage, restraining exaggeration of bullying, strengthening children mentally, and establishing stricter bullying laws are effective solutions to address modern bullying. To decrease bullying, adults and children must understand that bullying is an extremely serious problem, and cooperate to directly address instances of bullying. Even now, sometimes, I imagine “If Maki is still alive…” Honestly, I really hated the bullies, but now I can feed back the accident in positive way. If I did not experience that, I might have belonged to bullies’ group in my school life, and I might have terrorized someone. By the experience I could understand that bullying is fear, I could not learn from adults that, so society let children understand the fear of bullying in kinder way than I learned Bullying must be stopped.
