Bullying:
Bullying is and has probably always been a problem in our society and takes place wherever people interact in different social environments. In this essay I will provide some examples of different ways of bullying, some reasons why people get bullied and some strategies to avoid bullying.

There are a lot of different reasons why people are bullied. Some of them could for example be body size, appearance in public, religion, hobbies, sexuality and social background.

Many people are for example overweight and struggle to deal with this problem. When I played badminton, there was a girl, who was very overweight. Sometimes it looked kind of funny, when she played, and we sometimes laughed at her behind her back. Some of the others even called her names. Looking back I´m not at all proud of the way we treated her. It most certainly made it even more difficult for her to fit in, and as a result, she stopped playing badminton shortly after.

As a human being you are very sensitive to how other people see you, and you feel that your appearance, looks and body defines, who you are. Of course some people and age groups are more responsive than others, especially teenagers and ‘old’ kids are very sensitive and insecure about themselves.

A good example is for instance the little boy Dylan Stewart, we read about in class. Dylan Stewart was only 12 years old, the same age as my own younger brother, when he chose to kill himself as a result of long time continuous bullying. He did nothing wrong, besides being the new kid in town.

It is absolutely terrible that things like this can happen, especially when the victim is a young boy with his whole life ahead of him! I cannot imagine how hard it must be on the family to lose a family member in such a tragic way. I could personally not imagine a life without my beloved younger brother, which only makes me feel more sorry for the poor Stewart family.

I think bullying connects with your identity in such way, that people who are bullied become very insecure about themselves. They do not dare to speak up neither in class, at work or among friends. They change their appearance and try to go around as unnoticed as possible.

Bullying can also lead to eating disorders such as anorexia or binge eating disorder, or it can lead to cutting and maybe depressions.

I think almost everybody knows that bullying is a terrible thing to do, but why do people keep bullying then? I don`t think that there is one crystal clear reason why people bully, but I do think that mostly people bully because they deep down are insecure about themselves. I think most of them do it to feel better and get some kind of a ‘confirmation’ that they are good enough, or at least better the bully victim. I also think some people bully because of jealousy, ignorance and fear.

When it comes to bullying there are also lots of strategies to avoid this from happening. People need to recognize and identify the problem and be willing to talk and work together in order to understand differences. Only then can we broaden our perspective and learn from each other. But most importantly - people need to speak up if they get bullied, because if nobody besides you knows about the bullying nobody can help, ’No mention – no tension’.

Often people who are bullied do not dare to speak up about their problems, because they fear the bullies too much. Sometimes we don’t even notice, how great an impact our behavior has on other people.

In conclusion bullying is indeed a terrible thing to do to another person. If it goes on for a longer period of time, it can have a fatal impact on the victim, who people who are very insecure about how to behave.

That’s why it is very important that the victims speak up about their problems, because if nobody knows what is going on, nobody can help the poor victims and stop the bullying.