Opinionative Essay on Bullying:

Bullying, inclusive of cyberbullying, has been a significant issue faced by young teenagers and adults. Even though regular bullying is not the same as cyberbullying, they do collide with each other. A lot of individuals have been committing suicide each year merely due to the problem. It begins online, and then it may escalate to neighborhoods, schools, or even at one’s own house. The critical thing to note is that if one is bullied, they should talk to someone about it, there is no need to keep it to oneself. Bullying takes place in familiar places, both physically and online. The online areas include sites like Facebook or MySpace, although it’s common in chat apps such as WhatsApp, emails, instant messages, and message boards (Butler). It’s necessary to think before one posts anything personal online. A similar scenario goes for the case where one is being bullied in school or on campus. It is essential to encourage victims who go through it or help consult an instructor or anyone who can provide safety.

In the course of victims of bullying going through the defiling acts, it hurts them, and they undergo a stage of depression or stress. They may feel like they are lost and may fail to know the move to take. It’s a time when these victims find it hard to trust anyone else, and most become lonely. Even worse, they may hurt themselves physically or also die. It becomes a tragedy (Butler). Many individuals, as well as family members, have a lot of questions left unanswered. Indeed, everyone needs to know the people involved, and they need to call law enforcement officers immediately to address the issue.

There have been several nonprofit organizations working closely with educators across the country to alleviate bullying. For instance, there were insights about bullying from survey responses from more than 200, 000 students in grades 5-12 across more than 38 states. There has been a lot of bullying learned, including the top three reasons teenagers and students feel like they are being bullied (Wilka). These include their appearance, skin color, or race, and due to other students understanding them as being gay. In general, just over one of four students in 2017 said they experienced bullying in school.

Last year, mainly, a good number of educators around the country had the view that there was more to the story. They were looking at their voices and needed to know whether bullying was increasing in their schools, or whether it’s a more significant trend. There is the question of how the issue has escalated, the individuals being bullied, and the reasons behind bullying (Wilka). Emboldened by such conversations, some educators have been taking a fresh look at their latest bullying data in understanding the shifting landscape.

Conducted analyses of anonymous interpretation of data from more than 170,000 students in 28 states, gathered in association with more than hundreds of schools in the last few years, noted that bullying was indeed increasing. Around 30% of students, or one in every three, confessed to being bullied in school in 2017 and 2018, up from one in four years ago (Butler). Schools, where more than half of the students were white, had higher bullying rates. In such schools, 37% of students confessed to being bullied, compared to 33% in school, where the student body had 55% of students of color.

Policies and campaigns on bullying prevention have been exploding in popularity in the last few years. Such is partly due to the immense efforts activists have been putting in making schools safer for everyone. However, the vague language that comes with the prevention of bullying has been stretched so much it has proven to be used in justifying nearly anything.

Works Cited

Butler, Katy. “My Personal Opinion on bullying and cyber-bullying!! .” 2020. 12 May 2020. <http://www.thebullyproject.com/my_personal_opinion_on_bullying_and_cyber_bullying>.

Wilka, Jen. “Opinion: Bullying is on the rise, survey shows. How did we get here?” 24 September 2018. Web. 12 May 2020. <https://hechingerreport.org/opinion-bullying-is-on-the-rise-survey-shows-how-did-we-get-here/>.