The impact of bullying

As of this week, it is less than three weeks since the death of Tyler Clementi. His case was one of several high profile suicides of teenagers and college students in the last month.

This year alone, 10,000 teenagers will end their lives. In the case of Tyler Clementi, just as in the case of the other suicides in the last month, this decision was a result of bullying.

Bullying by others for no other reason than simply trying to be themselves. Acts of bullying committed by weak-willed perpetrators who failed to even recognize their actions are as cowardly and as despicable as is humanly possible.

Even before the recession began, it was hard enough for many of us to get by on a daily basis. If there’s one thing American society has perfected, it’s the ability to break a person’s spirit down day after day, week after week, even without being bullied and pushed around by others.

And the advent of the Internet might have created a global community, but it doesn’t quell the loneliness and depression that can often only be fixed with actual human contact and connection.

Friending someone on Facebook or liking their status or following them on Foursquare doesn’t help anymore than any other Facebook activism to create real world changes. And in Tyler’s case, the Internet only increased the duress he felt related to his  situation.  

Throughout the course of your life, you will meet, disagree with and hate more people than you knew was possible. But despite the disagreements you will have with other people, whether political, cultural, religious or other, the one thing we should be able to come together on is empathy for the human condition itself.   

Merely because the consequences of negative actions such as these are not immediately visible does not reduce the severity of bullying and ridiculing others for no reason. It should not take the deaths of innocent teens to remind us of the effect we can have on others, regardless of intent. Part of this not only involves becoming more involved with those you know might battle depression, but also taking a more active role to not sit idly by while someone else is attacked, verbally or physically.

Hunter S. Thompson often spoke that he viewed suicide as a way of knowing he had control of this ride that is human life. He had control and could check out whenever he deemed it desirable. But the children who are now no longer with us did not have that control. They made a decision because they were pushed to it, and they felt that they had no other options.

For many of these children, it was a decision based upon ridicule for their sexual orientation. Ridicule based on a bigoted, childish fear of those different from what is considered “normal,” as though the endeavors we deal with in pursuit of that most intimate of human connection are not already enough to wear on a persons heart and mind.

To purposefully add to the pains of someone’s heart is as sadistic and unjustifiable an act as a human can commit short of outright murder or rape.


E-mail: mrstraw@indiana.edu