Movies and bullying

Had you asked me a month ago if there was bullying at Kennedy High School, I would have said that it didn’t exist. Sure, students at this school could gossip and insult. A lot of them don’t realize that what they say impacts people, but is it bullying?I didn’t think so. Recently, a student committed suicide. I didn’t know her, but her death affected a lot of my classmates. I was surprised to find out that she was a fairly popular student, and she was a victim of cyberbullying. According to the CDC, 19.6% of high school students are bullied and, of that 19.6%, 14.8% is done via cyber bullying. That means three quarters of high school bullying happens online.This is where all those anti bullying videos go wrong. They always portray outcasts with no history of depression or other mental illness getting bullied by the “popular kids” and even trying to kill themselves.

Teachers don’t know how to handle bullying anymore. Kennedy has a bullying problem, and it’s in no way the “traditional” kind. It’s not bratty kids beating each other up like in the eighties movies, and it’s not students getting messages on their Myspace page like in those early 2000s PSAs. Everything’s outdated. Today it’s gossip, and slurs, and online drama. It’s people that are either too wrapped up in themselves that they don’t understand what they are doing has consequences, or it’s people that want to exert power over others because they themselves feel powerless. Studies done by the CDC show that bullying puts both the victim and the bully at greater risk of developing mental health problems. When the school had its anti-bullying assembly, not only did it not mention mental health, it also forgot to address suicide. It rendered the entire assembly useless. The bullying victims that kill themselves are mentally ill. They have problems outside of someone making fun of them. Telling someone is helpful, but only if that person does more than just tell the bully to stop.  If all thats happened is a scolding, you’re putting a band aid over something that requires stitches.