As a middle school student, I’ve noticed that as we’ve progressed from elementary school to middle school, bullying has gotten worse. In elementary school, bullying mostly consisted of being excluded, tame name-calling, and maybe taking the belongings of the victim. Bullying in middle school, however, is a bit more extreme.
The majority of middle school students have cell phones and social media. These are some of the main factors in middle school bullying. According to Mr. Destino, most bullying that currently affects the students at MMS is cyberbullying and isn’t during school hours. Doing so makes it harder for parental or guardian involvement to occur.
There are a couple of different types of bullying, including verbal, physical, social, and cyberbullying. Monique Burr Foundation says, “Tweens and older teens in middle school and high school years experience far less physical, verbal, and social bullying but see a dramatic increase in cyberbullying.” Because of social media, cyberbullying is much easier for middle and high schoolers. You can hide behind a fake name and profile and sometimes, the victim is none the wiser.
When interviewing a student at MMS, who has chosen to remain anonymous, I asked if they’d ever seen someone getting bullied and their reaction. They said, “I was like, ‘Why do people do this? There’s no point, this is really stupid.’” The student brought up a valid question, why do people bully others?
According to the Monique Burr Foundation, “Bullying is usually about needing social power and children becoming accepted by their peer group. Often this intense desire to be accepted and become a part of the popular group leads to bullying.” Popularity is usually the case in middle school bullying; many students desire to be accepted by peers, which can turn friends against friends in that fight for attention.
How can we help prevent bullying? I asked Mr. Destino and a student the same question. Mr. Destino said to stand up to the bully and report it to a teacher. A direct quote from the student I interviewed states, “Probably by standing up and telling teachers, that would probably be the best thing we can do. Because it’s hard to stand up like that, especially to the popular kids.” It can be challenging to stand up to a bully, which makes it all the more important to report the bullying to a teacher or trusted adult.
In elementary school, most likely all of us were taught a class or lesson about bullying. We were told to immediately tell a teacher if we thought we were getting bullied. The thing is, not everyone realizes it when they’re getting bullied. They might refuse to admit it because a friend is the one bullying them, or they might just refuse to acknowledge it because they don’t want to draw attention to themselves.
Bullying, whether it’s in-person or online, can have serious consequences. “Bullying is dangerous behavior and leads to violence, homicide, suicide, and bullycide,” says the Monique Burr Foundation. If you ever witness someone being bullied, try to help that person before anything serious happens. I’m sure anyone would feel terrible if they saw someone getting bullied and did nothing, only to find out that person is in the hospital, or worse.
I hope this story helped broaden your view on bullying and help you decide to make a change in that. If you’ve ever been bullied before, remember how that felt before you decide to pick on someone or be a bystander to another student getting bullied.
