Being bullied isn’t great, and I’m sure more than half of the world would agree. Studies show that about 22 percent of students ages 12–18 reported being bullied during school during the school year. Why am I telling you all of this? Well because I feel that most people don’t take this kind of thing seriously and just brush it off like it’s nothing. There have even been lots of student suicides caused by bullying. 

I recently asked a few people some questions about bullying in their life. I asked the four people, “Have you ever been bullied?” They all replied yes. Then I asked if they had ever bullied someone in turn and three of them had also said yes.

 One of the people that I interviewed said something that really made a lot of sense. That person said, “As long as there’s class separation and as long as we are all different, there is going to be bullying.” They’re right, if we were all the same, there wouldn’t be any harassment or anything like that. 

I also asked, “What’s something you could do to stand up for yourself to get the bully to stop?” My favorite reply to this question was, “Play into it, take the power away from the bully, make fun of yourself with them, they’ll stop.” 

I then asked, “What could schools do better to help deal with bullying?” There was one reply that stuck out to me: “I think schools should pay more attention to their students, I’ve heard lots of times where students could have been saved if someone had just listened.” 

Bullying is not a joke, if someone comes to you for help, or even if they’re just looking for someone to talk to about what’s going on, please listen. It could save their life, you never know what someone’s going through.