Kids can be mean. They can tear you down until you can’t rebuild yourself. They can cause you to cry, to be scared, to be angry. The ones you walk the hall with can make you feel bad in your own skin.They can be manipulative and deceitful. They can cause you to hate yourself and your life. Make you hate yourself so much that the only way you think you can escape it is when you’re buried in a box, six feet underground and breathless. Every kid is affected by bullying. In school, at home, at the mall or anywhere else, kids are getting picked on because of how they dress or what they believe in. Right now, someone is getting bullied. By someone who thinks that they are better than you. And thinks you are worthless and a waste.
    

In someway, you are affected by bullying. Either as someone who has witnessed bullying in the school halls, known someone who has been bullied or if you’re bullied. When you are at your locker and you see someone getting teased by a group of people, will you comfort them and tell an adult, or just stand there and pay no mind to it? When a student looks or dresses differently from someone else, they become a target for bullying. They will get teased by other people who claim to be “normal” and taunt you and call you names. Throughout the school day, someone is getting bullied. Almost everyday this happens to them. As a result, they feel bad about themselves and may do something bad to themselves, like turn to drugs, alcohol, or self-harm. If bullying keeps happening to them for many years, they may look for another way to escape the pain. This may resort to them committing suicide. Would you let one of your peers do this to themselves or would you be the one to stick up for them and be the friend they never had? You never know who is being bullied and you need to help put a stop to it before you end up at their funeral.
    

According to the website “stopbullying.gov”, a website which provides information coming from many government agencies about what bullying is and how to prevent it, bullying is, by definition, “the repeated and unwanted, aggressive behavior among school aged children that involves real or artifical power imbalance such as making threats, spreading rumors, attacking someone either physically or verbally, and excluding someone from a group on purpose.” When an attack is made repeatedly, bullying is taking place. Bystanders, people who witness bullying taking place, have the job of ending the bullying by stopping it while it is happening and reporting the actions to an adult at school and at home . If a bystander doesn’t report the bullying, they are just as guilty as the bully because they chose not to report it and didn’t put an end to it.
  

   According to ABC News, a news gathering and broadcasting division of the American Broadcasting Company, nearly 30% of students are either bullies or being bullied, and 160,000 students stay home each day from schools because of the fear of being bullied. Bullying has increased in schools around America because of a new form of bullying called “cyberbullying”. Cyberbullying is when the bully uses social media or instant messaging to spread rumors about someone. This form of bullying grew so big because cyberbullying can be performed anonymously. The bully can sit behind the screen of their computer or iPhone and spread rumors to all of their followers on Twitter. According to “bullyingstatistics.org”, a website that informs the readers about bullying, statistics about bullying, and results of bullying, “about 42% of kids have been bullied online, 35% threatened online, 58% of students saying that something mean has been said to them online and about 77% of students admitted to being the victim of bullying at one point.” It also goes into saying that domestic violence at home leads to the increase in bullying online and at school. However, most of victims of bullying aren’t admitting to an adult that they have been a victim of bullying. In fact about 58% percent of kids admit to not telling an adult that they have been bullied.
    

Bullying has different effects on how severe the bullying is on the person. Some people think nothing of the bullying and others have a more difficult time dealing with bullying. Victims who don’t report the bullying and bystanders that don’t report the bullying can have terrible consequences. Many of the victims resort to drugs, alcohol, and self-harm as a way to deal with the bullying. If the bullying repeats constantly and nobody does anything to stop it, the victim may resort to more severe measures.  According to the CDC, a government run agency that provides public health and safety from illnesses, diseases and disabilities for the American population, estimates that 4,400 people commit suicide, 100 attempts per person and over 14% of high schoolers have considered suicide and 7% have attempted it due to bullying. Kids can be mean to each other. They don’t know everything they need to know about the world around them, but they are the experts at put-downs.
    

Preventing bullying is one of the most important things you need to know in life. “One way to stop bullying,” says bullying statistics.org, ” Is by preventing it through a school bully policy, consequences for bullies, and educating potential victims of bullying.” The article also goes into stating that consequences for bullies and family education can help prevent bullying. Supervised interventions can help stop bullying while it’s in progress. Families can teach appropriate assertiveness to victims of bullying and potential victims. Staff training can be taught to teachers on how to notice and prevent bullying from happening in the hallways. In addition, reporting the bullying to an adult at school and at home can help prevent bullying. You are an important role in ending bullying once and for all. When you see someone getting bullied, include them and make them feel good about themselves. You don’t need to be their best friend, just be their friend who extends a helping hand to them when they fall and hit rock bottom. Be the helping hand, be the unspoken hero, be the one who guides them to the light.       

Someone you walk the halls with is getting bullied. It may be the person who has their locker next to yours or it may be someone who you barely know. “Bullying is a very serious concern in our school district,” says the mother of a student. She continued by saying, “School officials need to take this matter more seriously and crack down on the bullies and put a stop to it in our schools”. Bullying needs to end. Someone needs to put a stop to it and end it once and for all. Someone needs to be the voice to the voiceless, be the light in the darkness, and be the one who extends their hand to the ones who have fallen. People need to work together to put a stop to bullying. Helen Keller once said, “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much”.