By Rachel Nguyen
We all hear stories about bullying at school --from verbal to social to physical bullying-- but we might not fully understand the impact of bullying and its damaging consequences on someone’s life. What we also do not know is that young people around the world have at least one unfortunate thing in common: most have been impacted by bullying in their lifetime.
Sadly, teasing is part of growing; almost every child experiences it. It starts as early as one’s childhood, but can permeate into the teenage years and intensify throughout adulthood.
Teasing becomes bullying when it is repetitive, or is seen as someone intentionally hurting others consistently. The truth is that this type of behavior can lead to serious consequences, as it leaves long-term effects on one’s health. Many children not only face problems growing up, but rather the effect of bullying stays with them for a very long time, sometimes for their entire life.
Katelynn Vien, a senior at Yerba Buena High School, describes her experiences with bullying around her school. Although she has never been a victim of extreme bullying herself, Katelynn says that she sees students physically fight one another and call each other names at school.
“For me, it’s when people call me names and it hurts me mentally. It started in elementary school. It left me insecure ever since,” says Vien.
In fact, researchers have discovered that bullying of any form or for any reason can also have long-term painful impacts on everyone involved, including bystanders. According to Bullying Statistics, although most bystanders don’t like to watch bullying, less than 20% try to stop it.
Bystanders in these situations claim that they would rather not intervene with bullying because they believe that their actions would not make a difference, or that they simply do not know what to do.
“It makes me feel sad seeing someone being bullied because I want to help them, but I don’t want to be picked on, to,” says Katelynn.
We can’t really blame them for not helping victims, either. When this usually happens, it means that the school has already began to feel unsafe, causing a majority of bystanders distress or anxiety since they may too become the target of bullying.
Because most bullying takes place in areas that are less supervised by adults or school security, taking school wide measures to counterattack bullies is difficult to pursue. Not many school bullying instances are accounted for, and are often left unheard or unreported by the victims themselves who fear that reporting the situation would not help what they have been through.
Although any kind of bullying that is heard in school, or signs of it, should already leave a strong impression that bullying is a serious public health problem, we often do not hear that someone is being bullied until someone takes their life for it.
Sadly, teasing is part of growing; almost every child experiences it. It starts as early as one’s childhood, but can permeate into the teenage years and intensify throughout adulthood.
Teasing becomes bullying when it is repetitive, or is seen as someone intentionally hurting others consistently. The truth is that this type of behavior can lead to serious consequences, as it leaves long-term effects on one’s health. Many children not only face problems growing up, but rather the effect of bullying stays with them for a very long time, sometimes for their entire life.
Katelynn Vien, a senior at Yerba Buena High School, describes her experiences with bullying around her school. Although she has never been a victim of extreme bullying herself, Katelynn says that she sees students physically fight one another and call each other names at school.
“For me, it’s when people call me names and it hurts me mentally. It started in elementary school. It left me insecure ever since,” says Vien.
In fact, researchers have discovered that bullying of any form or for any reason can also have long-term painful impacts on everyone involved, including bystanders. According to Bullying Statistics, although most bystanders don’t like to watch bullying, less than 20% try to stop it.
Bystanders in these situations claim that they would rather not intervene with bullying because they believe that their actions would not make a difference, or that they simply do not know what to do.
“It makes me feel sad seeing someone being bullied because I want to help them, but I don’t want to be picked on, to,” says Katelynn.
We can’t really blame them for not helping victims, either. When this usually happens, it means that the school has already began to feel unsafe, causing a majority of bystanders distress or anxiety since they may too become the target of bullying.
Because most bullying takes place in areas that are less supervised by adults or school security, taking school wide measures to counterattack bullies is difficult to pursue. Not many school bullying instances are accounted for, and are often left unheard or unreported by the victims themselves who fear that reporting the situation would not help what they have been through.
Although any kind of bullying that is heard in school, or signs of it, should already leave a strong impression that bullying is a serious public health problem, we often do not hear that someone is being bullied until someone takes their life for it.