Teenage is, as said, a gruelling period of one’s life. It’s a time when scientifically, the anatomy of one’s body gets complex and starts to develop, leaving major changes physically, emotionally, hormonally and mentally. It’s a time period of life where people starts to question their own existence, get consumed by insecurities and fears, try to fit in as much as possible to make themselves look interesting or attractive enough, and in an era like today’s, the competition has gotten a little too far. Too far, that it has resulted in teenagers hiding their insecurities and fears behind facades of being interesting, and for that, they’re willing to stretch all the limits, and even go beyond that if it doesn’t work out, even if that means hiding themselves by bringing someone else down.
Bully, a word we all are familiar with. I am quite sure a huge population, while reading this is having flashbacks of how they were treated back when they were in high school or secondary school, because no matter how much we deny it, we have all suffered in one way or another. Bullies are everywhere and bullying is indeed, a very ugly truth of our society that we tend to hide by saying:
“it’s normal to have fun with friends.”
As someone who was herself a victim of bullying, I am certain that calling names, catcalling, physical assault are not the only forms of bullying. Emotional bullying is pretty much real and not treated as seriously as authorities treat the aforementioned forms of bullying. Even the victim sometimes doubts if he/she is really being bullied or is it all in his/her head? Emotional bullying is when manipulation, sugar coated words and emotional assault is done by someone who claims to be one’s well-wisher. For example, a lot of teenagers stay in toxic friendships and relationships, because they’re deprived of love and attention, and with an ounce of attention, they are attracted to predators who make them insecure in the name of love. They slowly manipulate them into believing things that they wouldn’t have believed in otherwise, making them end up thinking they deserve what they’re going through. Similarly, the standards and cultures we’ve slowly and unintentionally developed in our schools, making our kids believing that being “popular” or “extraordinary” is directly proportional to the degree of attractiveness they hold, which is absolutely not true. We often ignore the realities and never teach our kids the basics of life. Basics of life say that not all of us are going to end up becoming superstars, super genius and life changing motivational speakers, most of us will be living the same average lives we run away from because that’s how the world works, all we need to learn is to make most out of it. The toxic culture of making kids behave in a way that they are “socially acceptable” is what ruins them, and this is one of the major causes why children between the ages of 13-18 are most likely to be effected by bullying.
A simple and profound way to save our kids on personal level from a kind of factor which is not even visible yet, is to stay close to them. To understand that they also go through some major changes in life which forces them to question things around them, and leads to the ways they behave. As a teacher, I have often seen students tolerating the bad behaviours of their mates because they have a fear of being lonely, and as a student I have lived that fear. I am again, pretty sure a lot of people have lived that fear, and its about time when we try to eradicate this fear from our generation. The fear of loneliness makes a lot of people tolerate things they won’t otherwise, and leads them into some really nasty things. Sometimes, they end up being emotionally and physically abused. Instead of dictating them to live their lives the way you as an adult want, try listening to them and then raise them accordingly so that they don’t end up traumatised and spend their twenties or rest of their lives in misery.
Bridging the gap is one of the most important thing we need to do in the era of hustle and bustle. Our generation, needs to be saved by the predators looking to capture their preys, and it’s only us who have the power of saving them, no one else.
About the Writer:
The writer is a public speaker, article writer for The News and a keen reader.
Aleezeh Fatimah Hashmi