Bullying: A Problem that Persists

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A teenager wakes up; they dress in a fashion comfortable to them. Perhaps the style isn’t the style that is currently “in”, but nonetheless, it is what this teenager feels good about wearing. They never expect that they will spend the entire day at school being made fun of for it. Somewhere else, in a different state, a different school district, a female doesn’t believe she is beautiful. She wakes up every day, looks in the mirror and wonders why life is cruel. She heads to school where her belief is validated by the senseless and relentless taunts of her classmates. She decides later that night that life is no longer worth living. These are scenarios that seem too horrific to be true, but they are all too real. Bullying is a problem, especially amongst school children, and there must be more awareness and more done to hinder the disease.
According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a bully is “a blustering, quarrelsome, overbearing person who habitually badgers and intimidates smaller or weaker people.” The definition allows for some leniency. Bullies are not always stronger physically; they are not always picking on weak people. But they do almost always feel they have power over the victim. The act is becoming much more commonplace today, especially in schools, where bullying seems to thrive. But there is more than just the typical, often-thought-of bullying that consists of name calling and physicality. There is also psychological bullying, which is much harder to control.
A lot of psychological bullying persists online, where little can be done to control it. Typically, quarrels between classmates can break out in the safety of one’s home, and they do, quite often according to statistics posted in “Beware the Cyber Bully”. ...

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