“Sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt you.” This was the advice that was given to me in elementary school.
But the truth of the matter is stick and stones will break your bones and words CAN hurt you.
Although October was National Bullying Prevention Awareness Month in the U.S., the topic of bullying is a conversation that needs to occur every month of the year.
Bullying can take many forms; name calling, insults, physical violence, rumors, threatened with harm and purposely excluded from activities are all forms of bullying. Moreover, with the increase in technology, bullying has moved into the cyberworld. And the facts about bullying alone are enough to make us all realize why we need to talk about preventing bullying from continuing to happen each day of the year.
The Center for Disease Control reports, “bullying has serious and lasting negative effects on the mental health and overall well-being of youth involved in bullying in any way including: those who bully others, youth who are bullied, as well as those youth who both bully others and are bullied by others, sometimes referred to as bully-victims.”
Most importantly, unlike the advice I was given, words can and do hurt. There are two important ways bullying hurts young people.
For one, the National Education Association estimate 160,000 young people miss school daily because of bullying. It leads to 1 in 10 students dropping out of school all together. There are various groups of young people bullied that are already struggling academically. Meaning missing just one day of instruction could have detrimental effects to their education.
Another way bullying impacts young people is through suicide.
The CDC stated suicide is the third leading cause of death for young people in the U.S., which results in about 4,400 deaths per year. Additionally, 7 to 9% of bullied victims are more likely to consider suicide a Yale University study states.
Like many awareness days, weeks, and months, National Bullying Prevention Awareness Month prompted people to get involved in eradicating bullying and to get involved in various activities.
But like many awareness days, weeks, and months, the topic of bullying should be discussed all throughout the year. Not just for one month.
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