Recently, we got an email from an IML'er named Ellora, 12, who asked us: "Bullying is a huge issue and you hear all the time about people committing suicide. Why do people still do it?"Ellora, that is possibly the best question we've heard in a long time. We wish the answer were simple, but it's not. Sometimes just thinking about that question, and the fact that people will be asking it for years and years if not forever, makes us really sad. But then we thought about the reverse of the question, which would go something like, "Bullying is a huge issue. What gets people to STOP doing it?"
Everyone's trying to make that happen, right? You've probably seen tons of anti-bullying PSA's and had people come speak at your school, or read articles and books and blah blah blah blah blah. So we'd like to know, is any of it WORKING? Was there anything that made you say to yourself, "Wow, I did something that was wrong, and I'll never do it again," or "OMG, the next time I see someone getting teased, I'm going to stand up for him," or "You know, if someone forwards me an embarrassing pic of someone, I'm not going to pass it on."
Maybe it was part of a school campaign or something you saw, read, or heard. Or maybe it was a situation that happened in real life, the kind of thing that nobody plans. If you've bullied in the past and changed your ways, IML would like to know; you can post your story on our I Bullied Someone You Said It page. If you've found the courage to stand up to a bully, we'd like to hear about that too on the I Stood Up To A Bully page. We want to know what you think works and, more importantly, what DOESN'T work (because it seems like there are a lot of anti-bullying efforts out there that are ineffective).
The more we talk and think about the issue, the closer we'll get to being able to answer Ellora's question. We hope we help people do that a little on IML. Recently we watched the new video of AHMIR's cover of "Perfect," which sort of gave us chills (it was shot by a teen and includes real teens who have been bullied), and we think that does it too. Check it out.
