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Almost one out of every four students (22%) report being bullied during the school year (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2015). Rates of bullying vary across studies (from 9% to 98%).

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michelle carter gets 15 months in texting suicide case - cnn

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Woman sentenced to 15 months in texting suicide case

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Michelle Carter, whose own words helped seal her involuntary manslaughter conviction in the suicide of her teenage boyfriend, was sentenced to 15 months in a Massachusetts jail Thursday -- but will remain free pending appeals.

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Be an Upstander

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Ky Baldwin - Dear Mom (Official Music Video) ft. Mindy Pack

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Cyberbullying Continues to Rise among Youth in the United States

Here at the Cyberbullying Research Center, we routinely collect data from middle and high school students so that we can keep on top of what they are experiencing online. Over the last two decades, we have completed about twenty unique studies of teens and tweens in the United States involving more than 30,000 subjects. And [...]

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Cyberbullying Research Center - How to Identify, Prevent, and Respond

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Cyberbullying presents a dangerous threat in today's digital world to youth and adults alike. Access up-to-date resources and research on cyberbullying for parents, educators, students, non-profits, and tech companies. Read victim stories, learn about cyberbullying laws, and download relevant tips and strategies.

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The best and most obvious way to stop bullying in schools is for parents to change the way they parent their children at home. Of course, this is much easier said than done and everyone parents their children differently. Bullies, however, come from homes where physical punishment is used and children have been taught that physical violence is the way to handle problems and "get their way."

Bullies usually also come from homes where the parents fight a lot, so violence has been modeled for them. Parental involvement often is lacking in bullies' lives and there seems to be little warmth.

Early intervention and effective discipline and boundaries truly is the best way to stop bullying, but parents of the victims or therapists cannot change the bully's home environment. Some things can be done at the school level, however.

1. Most school programs that address bullying use a multi-faceted approach to the problem. This usually involves counseling of some sort, either by peers, a school counselor, teachers, or the principal.

2. Hand out questionnaires to all students and teachers and discuss if bullying is occurring. Define exactly what constitutes bullying at school. The questionnaire is a wonderful tool that allows the school to see how widespread bullying is and what forms it is taking. It is a good way to start to address the problem.

3. Get the children's parents involved in a bullying program. If parents of the bullies and the victims are not aware of what is going on at school, then the whole bullying program will not be effective. Stopping bullying in school takes teamwork and concentrated effort on everyone's part. Bullying also should be discussed during parent-teacher conferences and PTA meetings. Parental awareness is key.

4. In the classroom setting, all teachers should work with the students on bullying. Oftentimes even the teacher is being bullied in the classroom and a program should be set up that implements teaching about bullying. Children understand modeling behaviors and role-play and acting out bullying situations is a very effective tool. Have students role-play a bullying situation.
Rules that involve bullying behaviors should be clearly posted. Schools also could ask local mental health professionals to speak to students about bullying behaviors and how it directly affects the victims.

5. Schools need to make sure there is enough adult supervision at school to lessen and prevent bullying.

A child who has to endure bullying usually suffers from low self-esteem and their ability to learn and be successful at school is dramatically lessened. Schools and parents must educate children about bullying behaviors; it will help all children feel safe and secure at school. Children who bully need to be taught empathy for others' feelings in order to change their behaviors and the school must adopt a zero-tolerance policy regarding bullying.

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The best and most obvious way to stop bullying in schools is for parents to change the way they parent their children at home. Of course, this is much easier said than done and everyone parents their children differently.

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To the Editor:

I applaud the decision to charge nine teenagers in the bullying case that led to the suicide of Phoebe Prince, 15.

Now let's look at the adults who must claim responsibility. Educators are mandated reporters of suspected child abuse. If it is true that some staff members were told and/or witnessed bullying and did nothing, they, too, must be held accountable in a court of law.

By natural extension, the parents or guardians of the nine accused students must be held morally and legally accountable for a lack of values that could lead to this kind of destructive disrespect.

The broader solution to bullying is to address and attack bullying in pre-school or earlier. It should be a part of the curriculum, as should self-esteem building.

Laws should reflect not only the horrific physical and emotional bullying but also the latest technology that allows for insidious cyberbullying.

Joan P. Kaufman
Hurley, N.Y., March 30, 2010
The writer is a retired instructional superintendent for the New York City Department of Education.
*

To the Editor:

Re " Playtime Is Over " (Op-Ed, March 27): David Elkind raises an interesting point regarding the possible relationship between the loss of playtime and the rise of bullying. The relationship seems intuitively obvious. What is not so apparent is how to replace the important normative life experiences that result from unstructured playtime.

In the "old days," pick-up sports (stickball, stoopball, touch football) involved any child who was outside and willing to play. That meant children of all ability levels were included. As a result, good players learned tolerance, patience and acceptance from playing with weaker and perhaps younger players, and these weaker players learned skills from the better players. In different ways, each benefited from the experience.

In the absence of these spontaneously occurring opportunities for socialization, we need to develop programs that move beyond the Band-Aid approach, like the use of recess coaches.

Over the last decade, a number of "whole school" programs have been designed in which administrators, staff and teachers work together to reduce bullying among students. But perhaps it is time to expand the whole-school concept to include school-community partnerships involving community agencies and organizations like the YMCA and the Unified Sports program of Special Olympics.

Programs in which schools and community groups work together to create new recreational sports opportunities for children and youth at all levels - not just the athletically talented - are an important next step in addressing the bullying problem.

Gary N. Siperstein
Boston, March 28, 2010
The writer is director of the Center for Social Development and Education, University of Massachusetts Boston.
*

To the Editor:

I agree with David Elkind. Children learn kindness and how to get along with one another through play. I believe that the increase in bullying over the last 10 years is due, in part, to what children see and hear from the adults around them. After all, children are exposed to bullying words and tactics by elected officials, radio and television personalities, and, sadly, in some cases, their teachers.

Children take this in. They watch. They learn.

Judith Pack
Red Bank, N.J., March 29, 2010
The writer is an early childhood specialist.
*

To the Editor:

I am a public defender in Massachusetts who has represented juveniles, many of them teenage girls. " The Myth of Mean Girls," by Mike Males and Meda-Chesney Lind (Op-Ed, April 2), misses the point. Physical violence is only one manifestation of mean-girl bullying. Mean girls use verbal abuse, intimidation and exclusion, and it's most viciously directed at girls who are liked by popular boys, as we've seen in the recent tragedy in South Hadley, Mass.

While it's wonderful news that girls' arrest rates for violent offenses are down, that statistic doesn't begin to measure the terrible damage being done to girls by, yes, "mean girls."

Mara Dolan
Concord, Mass., April 2, 2010

*

To the Editor:

While the writers of this article may have a point, the only mean girls who mattered to Phoebe Prince were the ones who made her life a living nightmare. I know all about "mean girls," having been victimized as a freshman at a Catholic girls' high school in the early 1960s by five of them.

When they tried to resume their harassment at the beginning of my sophomore year, a senior (whom I did not know) stepped in on my behalf and shamed them into considering how their behavior was hurting me. They backed off and never bothered me again.

It took only one concerned person to help me; how sad and troubling that I have not heard about one student, teacher or administrator in that entire high school who had the courage to defend Phoebe Prince.

Dolores Soffientini
Holmdel, N.J., April 2, 2010

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Opinion | How to Stop Bullying in the Schools

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To the Editor: I applaud the decision to charge nine teenagers in the bullying case that led to the suicide of Phoebe Prince, 15. Now let's look at the adults who must claim responsibility. Educators are mandated reporters of suspected child abuse.

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For decades, people have argued that bullying is just a part of growing up, that parent - and educators - shouldn't worry too much about kids harassing other kids. "Stop panicking about bullies," read an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal a few years ago.

Certainly this was my view as a kid, and I remember being bullied, and bullying, as a normal part of what happened in schools. But a growing body of research shows that schools can prevent bullying - and ensure that all kids go to school each day without fear of being physically hurt or socially targeted.

The research on bullying builds on a substantial body of evidence around the importance of helping students develop social-emotional skills, and studies increasingly shows just how important these abilities are for a child's success. This is true for bullying and in many other aspects of life. Indeed, many scholars now believe that showing empathy for others is just important as learning algebra.

But helping students develop social-emotional skills can be challenging for some schools. For one, school leaders are under significant pressure to improve academic progress, and so many schools neglect the social and emotional side of learning. Plus, social-emotional skills may seem a little vague, and so educators do not get much guidance on what to teach or even how to teach it.

Some years ago, a team at the University of Virginia lead by Catherine Bradshaw decided to help educators understand how to help students develop better social-emotional skills in an effort to address bullying. After all, bullying can have very negative effects. In an extreme example, a teen stabbed and killed another teen in a New York City school over bullying last year.

So the UVA team leveraged the widely used school-wide prevention framework known as "Schoolwide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports," which aims to improve school climate and student behavior across a range of outcomes like discipline and academics.

This framework is innovative for a number of reasons. First, it targets the entire school, and so all of the staff are involved in its implementation, developing a shared sense of norms around things like student engagement in the classroom and positive reinforcement for good behavior.

Second, the framework focuses on setting clear expectations for behavior around daily school interactions, and staff provide help to students who have trouble following the norms around everything from safety to teasing. This means that efforts are put in place to stop bullying before it even starts, catching it early instead of being allowed to fester.

Finally, the framework also provides tailored support for the both victims and bullies in each school. Specifically, the victims and bullies both get small group or individual counseling to develop stronger social-emotional skills and develop a richer sense of empathy, and alternative methods of coping with challenges.

This sort of targeted approach works, and schools that this framework had better climates and fewer student discipline issues. There were also much lower incidents of bullying.

Of course, there's no way to address every form of bullying in school. Because technology is so widespread, lots of bullying incidents happen privately on smart phones, far away from adults, and while this program might help even with technology, it simply can't address every issue. Plus, such approaches take time to implement well, and it can be difficult to get enough buy-in from the entire staff around key issues.

But what's clear is that bullying can be stopped. By learning better social-emotional skills and norms, students are far kinder to each other. In other words, when we understand and care about bullying, we begin to understand that there are actually strategies to stop bullying.

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For decades, people have argued that bullying is just a part of growing up, that parent - and educators - shouldn't worry too much about kids harassing other kids. "Stop panicking about bullies," read an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal a few years ago.

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How to Stop a Bully Video

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Speak Up Video

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Stop Bullying: Speak Up Special Presentation | Speak Up | Cartoon Network

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National Bullying Prevention Center

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According to the Center for Disease Control, students who are bullied are more likely to experience low self-esteem and isolation, perform poorly in school, have few friends in school, have a negative view of school, experience physical symptoms (such as headaches, stomachaches, or problems sleeping), and to experience mental health issues (such as depression, suicidal thoughts, and anxiety) (Center for Disease Control, Bullying Surveillance Among Youths, 2014).

Bullying affects witnesses as well as targets. Witnesses are more likely to use tobacco, alcohol, or other drugs; have increased mental health problems; and miss or skip school (StopBullying.gov).

Youth who bully others are at increased risk for substance use, academic problems, and experiencing violence later in adolescence and adulthood. Youth who bully others and are bullied themselves suffer the most serious consequences and are at greater risk for mental health and behavioral problems. (Center for Disease Control, 2017).

Bystanders can be powerful allies.

Students have a unique power to prevent bullying. More than half of bullying situations (57 percent) stop when a peer intervenes on behalf of the student being bullied (Hawkins, Pepler, & Craig, 2001) .

Unfortunately, peer bystanders intervene in bullying less than 20% of the time (Hawkins, Pepler, & Craig, 2001).

Student bystanders are often aware of situations before adults in the school (Hawkins, Pepler, & Craig, 2001 ); it is therefore important that all students feel empowered to intervene safely in bullying situations. A school can facilitate this behavior by cultivating a climate of respect and tolerance within the school. Students should be encouraged to stand up for one another and such behavior should be recognized and rewarded.

Since student bystanders can often intervene most effectively, it's important for schools to encourage bystander intervention by teaching skills and offering resources that support this behavior. Schools should also seek to ensure that bystanders are protected and students know not to put themselves in danger.

In a recent meta-analysis, it was found that programs are effective at changing bystander intervening behaviors whey there are opportunities for youth to discuss reasons why they might not intervene to help targets, develop understandings of others, and practice effective bystander intervention skills with role-plays (Polanin, Espelage, & Pigott, 2012).

Bullying is not a "rite of passage" but a serious threat to student safety and well-being.

Some say bullying makes children tougher and is not a serious problem, but the reality is that students who are bullied are more likely to report increased negative effects to their emotional and physical health.

Students, parents, educators, and communities all have a responsibility to address bullying in schools, on line and in communities.

Many students feel that the adults in their lives - parents, teachers, community members - are failing to adequately address this issue (Danielson & Emmers-Sommer, 2016; Tenenbaum, Varjas, Meyers, & Paris, 2011 ).

Areas of concern include:

Education - School avoidance, loss of academic achievement and increase in drop out rates

Health - Physical and emotional including stomachaches, headaches, sleeping issues, depression, fear or anxiety

Safety - Harm to self and others, including self-isolation, increased aggression, alienation, and retaliation.

Anyone can bully, and anyone can be bullied.

Bullying is a behavior, not an identity. Labeling as student as a "bully" can have a detrimental effect on their future and often limits their ability to change their behavior (StopBullying.gov, 2016 ).

Students can have multiple roles: they can be the one subjected to bullying and the one who bullies (StopBullying.gov, 2016 ). Strategies that focus on holding students accountable for their behavior - but also empower them to change that behavior - are more effective than punitive punishments and peer mediation in bullying situations.

Any student can exhibit bullying behavior - male or female, popular or un popular, students with good grades, and those who struggle academically. Teachers need to focus on a student's behavior, not their profile, when determining if bullying occurred.

Bullying isn't about resolving conflict; bullying is about control.

In conflict, children self-monitor their behavior and generally stop when they realize they are hurting someone.

When bullying, children continue their behavior when they realize it is hurting someone, and are satisfied by a feeling of power and control.

Bullying does not occur between evenly matched opponents; the child bullying has more power in some way than the target (Salmivalli, 2010 ).

Rigby (2008) identifies six of the most common power resources:

1. Being able to physically hurt others, often due to being superior in size, strength, or physical capabilities.

2. Being numerically superior, such as a group of three individuals ganging up on one individual.

3. Being more confident and assertive than others, which can propel someone to directly make fun of another individual without worrying how that will influence themselves or their reputations.

4. Having superior social or manipulation skills, which can provide the ability to turn people against someone or have them excluded.

5. Having greater social status and the ability to influence others, or access to embarrassing or private information.

6. Being able to sophistically threaten or hurt others, such as making fun of someone in a subtle way that goes unnoticed by adults in schools, which allows the bullying to continue.

Effective bullying prevention efforts involve students, parents, teachers, and community members.

Involving community members such as law enforcement officials, faith organizations, community action groups, and others allows school officials and parents to address the bigger issues of disrespect, bias, and violence that can contribute to bullying issues in schools (StopBullying.gov, 2016; Swearer, Wang, Collins, Strawhun, & Fluke, 2014 ).

A community-wide effort shows students that adults care what happens to them and that they are not alone.

There are inconsistent findings for the effectiveness of zero-tolerance and peer mediation approaches to school bullying. Programs that emphasize prevention, early identification of students with behavioral concerns, and provide prosocial social skills instruction (e.g., building character and empathy, providing social- and emotional-development skills, and conflict management skills) are successful at reducing bullying behaviors and victimizations (Swearer, Wang, Collins, Strawhun, & Fluke, 2014 ).

According to the Center for Disease Control , promising elements of bullying prevention programs include:

Multi-tiered systems of support, which includes universal programs or activities for all youth within the community or school; selective interventions for groups of youth at risk for being involved in bullying; and preventive interventions tailored for students already involved in bullying.

Multicomponent programs that address multiple aspects of bullying behavior and the environments that support it. Examples include examining school rules and using behavior management techniques and social emotional learning in the classroom and throughout the school to detect and provide consequences for bullying.

School-wide prevention activities that include improving the school climate, strengthening supervision of students, and having a school-wide anti-bullying policy.

Involving families and communities by helping caregivers learn how to talk about bullying and get involved with school-based prevention efforts.

Developing long-term school-wide approaches that strengthen youth's social-emotional, communication, and problem-solving skills.

Focusing on program fidelity by forming an implementation team to make sure the programs are carried out exactly as they were designed.

According to a recent meta-analysis (Lee, Kim, & Kim, 2015), successful bullying prevention programs include the following

Training in emotional control (awareness of personal feelings and the feelings of others, self-regulation of impulses and actions)

Training in peer counseling (education and activities that empower students to help one during bullying situations)

Establishment of a school policy on bullying (schools regularly assessing the needs of their students, establishing and revising school bullying policies with the support of school administration, and promoting a school culture that does not tolerate bullying).

Effective bullying prevention tactics include school-wide instruction on the behaviors that are expected. Rather than only focusing on rules about what students should not do, schools should also advocate positively stated expectations to students, such as being respectful and kind to others (Ross & Horner, 2014).

Students and educators believe that, in order to prevent cyberbullying, schools need to cultivate positive and kind online behaviors for students rather than merely trying to curtail the negative behaviors, which is what they referred to as "cyber kindness" (Cassidy, Brown, & Jackson, 2011).

It is essential for bullying prevention efforts to include education and awareness about how to be inclusive of peers, particularly for students with disabilities (Falkmer, Anderson, Joosten, & Falkmer, 2015; Raskauskas & Modell, 2011), or students who identify as LGBTQ (Snapp, McGuire, Sinclair, Gabrion, & Russell, 2015).

Youths' resilience is a protective factor in mitigating the negative effects of bullying. Resilience is one's ability to spring back, rebound, and successfully cope with bullying victimization. Resilience is fostered with supportive environments, positive peer relationships, a sense of belonging, and self-efficacy (Hinduja & Patchin, 2017).

Mentoring is a useful strategy for bullying prevention. Older peer mentors can serve as positive role models to younger students by modeling appropriate and alternative ways of responding to bullying situations, as well as identifying responsible online behavior to prevent cyberbullying (Studer & Mynatt, 2015).

Allowing students to be involved in bullying prevention efforts has a great impact. Students feel empowered by being directly involved in analyzing bullying issues, creating ideas to help solve the problem, and enact creative solutions. Student-led bullying prevention initiatives give students self-efficacy and a sense of agency with leadership (Shriberg et al., 2017).

References

Cassidy, W., Brown, K., & Jackson, M. (2011). Moving from cyber-bullying to cyberkindness: What do students, educators and parents say? In E. Dunkels, G-M. Frånberg, & C. Hällgren (Eds.), Youth culture and net culture: Online social practices (pp. 256-277). New York: IGI Global Press.

Center for Disease Control, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (2017). Preventing bullying. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/bullying-factsheet508.pdf

Danielson, C. M., & Emmers-Sommer, T. (2016). "She stopped me from killing myself": Bullied bloggers' coping behaviors and support sources. Health Communication, 1-10. Retrieved from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10410236.2016.1196419?journalCode=hhth20&

Falkmer, M., Anderson, K., Joosten, A., & Falkmer, T. (2015). Parents' perspectives on inclusive schools for children with autism spectrum conditions. International Journal of Disability, Development, and Education, 62, 1-23. Retrieved from http://www-tandfonline-com.ezp3.lib.umn.edu/doi/abs/10.1080/1034912X.2014.984589

Hinguja, S., & Patchin, J. W. (2017). Cultivating youth resilience to prevent bullying and cyberbullying victimization. Child Abuse & Neglect, 73, 51-62. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0145213417303411

Lee, S., Kim, C., & Kim, D. H. (2015). A meta-analysis of the effect of school-based anti-bullying programs. Journal of Child Health Care, 19, 136-153. Retrieved from http://journals.sagepub.com.ezp1.lib.umn.edu/doi/abs/10.1177/1367493513503581

O'Connell, P., Pepler, D., & Craig, W. (1999). Peer involvement in bullying: Insights and challenges for intervention. Journal of Adolescence, 22, 437-452. Retrieved from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.620.7079&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Rigby, K. (2008). Children and bullying. Massachusetts: Blackwell. Retrieved from
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249400251_Children_and_Bullying_How_Parents_and_Educars_Can_Reduce_Bullying_at_School_-_By_Ken_Rigby

Olweus, D. (1993). Bullying at school: What we know and what we can do. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pits.10114/abstract

Polanin, J., Espelage, D. L., & Pigott, T. D. (2012). A meta-analysis of school-based bullying prevention programs' effects on bystander intervention behavior and empathy attitude. School Psychology Review, 41, 47-65. Retrieved from https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-286719752/a-meta-analysis-of-school-based-bullying-prevention

Raskauskas, J., & Modell, S. (2011). Modifying anti-bullying programs to include students with disabilities. Teaching Exceptional Children, 44, 1-8. Retrieved from http://journals.sagepub.com.ezp3.lib.umn.edu/doi/abs/10.1177/004005991104400107

Rigby, K. (2008). Children and bullying. Massachusetts: Blackwell. Retrieved from http://www.worldcat.org/title/children-and-bullying-how-parents-and-educators-can-reduce-bullying-at-school/oclc/144329017

Ross, S. W., & Horner, R. H. (2014). Bullying prevention in positive behavior support. Journal of Emotional and Behavior Disorders, 22, 225-235. Retrieved from http://journals.sagepub.com.ezp1.lib.umn.edu/doi/abs/10.1177/1063426613491429

Salmivalli, C. (2010). Bullying and the peer group: A review. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 15, 112-120. Retrieved from http://njbullying.org/documents/bullyingandpeergrroup.pdf

Shriberg, D., Brooks, K., Jenkins, K., Immen, J., Sutter, C., & Cronin, K. (2017). Using Student Voice to Respond to Middle School Bullying: A Student Leadership Approach. School Psychology Forum, 11, 20-33. Retrieved from https://www.nasponline.org/publications/periodicals/spf/volume-11/volume-11-issue-1-(spring-2017)/using-student-voice-to-respond-to-middle-school-bullying-a-student-leadership-approach

Snapp, S. D., McGuire, J. K., Sinclair, K. O., Gabrion, K., & Russell, S. T. (2015). LGBTQ-inclusive curricula: Why supportive curricula matter. Sex Education, 15, 580-596. Retrieved from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14681811.2015.1042573?journalCode=csed20

Studer, J. R., & Mynatt, B. S. (2015). Bullying prevention in middle schools: A collaborative approach. Middle School Journal, 46, 25-32. Retrieved from https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1048984

StopBullying. (2016). Prevent bullying. Retrieved from https://www.stopbullying.gov/prevention/index.html

Swearer, S. M., Wang, C., Collins, A., Strawhun, J., & Fluke, S. (2014). Bullying: A school mental health perspective. In M. Weist, N. Lever, C. Bradshaw, & O. J. Sarno (Eds.), Handbook of school mental health: Research, training, practice, and policy (2nd ed. Pp. 341-354). New York: NY: Springer Science http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-1-4614-7624-5_25

Tenebaum, L. S., Varjas, K., Meyers, J., & Parris, L. (2011). Coping strategies and perceived effectiveness in fourth through eighth grade victims of bullying. School Psychology International, 32, 263-287. Retrieved from http://spi.sagepub.com/content/32/3/263.abstract

Updated December 27, 2017

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According to the Center for Disease Control, students who are bullied are more likely to experience low self-esteem and isolation, perform poorly in school, have few friends in school, have a negative view of school, experience physical symptoms (such as headaches, stomachaches, or problems sleeping), and to experience mental health issues (such as depression, suicidal thoughts, and anxiety)

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Stop Bullying Government Facts

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If you or someone you know is being bullied, there are things you can do to keep yourself and others safe from bullying.

If you or someone you know is involved in cyberbullying, it is important to document and report the behavior.

If you have done everything you can to resolve the situation and nothing has worked, or someone is in immediate danger, there are ways to get help.

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If you or someone you know is being bullied, there are things you can do to keep yourself and others safe from bullying. If you or someone you know is involved in cyberbullying, it is important to document and report the behavior.

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Teen Activism - Bullying

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Inspiration To Speak Out

Some teen activists became an activist because something personal happened to them. One example of a teen activist with a personal motivation is Alex Libby. He was severely bullied, and was harassed and threatened to be sexually assaulted or even killed.

Another example is teen activist Malala Yousafzai. She became an activist for girl's rights to education. She speaks to the world and hopes girls have the same rights as boys (when it comes to education) in Pakistan. There are countless other reasons why someone might have been inspired to speak out and become an activist.

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Some teen activists became an activist because something personal happened to them. One example of a teen activist with a personal motivation is Alex Libby. He was severely bullied, and was harassed and threatened to be sexually assaulted or even killed. Another example is teen activist Malala Yousafzai.

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Alex Libby - Life after Bully Article

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Life after Bully: Teenage star of hit documentary finally escapes his tormentors... and finds happiness in new school

Alex Libby's life has changed since he featured in the hit anti-bullying documentary, Bully.

The highschool freshman now has other students come up and hug him in the corridors, has good friends and gets on well with his teachers.

The unlikely fame has potentially saved him from becoming one of two thousand American teenagers who have committed suicide because of relentless aggression from their peers.

Some 13million schoolchildren in the U.S. are victims of bullying, with 3million absent from class each month because they cannot cope with the torment.

The award-winning documentary by Lee Hirsh follows five kids and families over the course of a school year, including two families who have lost children to suicide because of bullying.

Alex agreed to take part in Bully in the hope that his persecutors would stop tormenting him.

He didn't realise that the brave act would bring him national notoriety, a trip to the White House and a chat with a beauty pageant winner.

Much of the bullying took place on the school bus, on which Kim Lockwood, assistant principal of East Middle School in Sioux City, Iowa, insisted the kids were 'as good as gold'.

Alex knew different.

'Most of the kids on that bus, I knew from elementary school, and we were good friends then,' he said in the documentary.

'But then in middle school, everything changes, and it's all about popularity and who dresses the best and who's the most athletic and who has the best hair. I was not the kid with the best hair.'

The bullies in Iowa called him 'fishface'. They threatened to break his bones, sexually assault him and kill him.

Perhaps, more crucially, the bullies scared away other kids who were his genuine buddies.

'I craved friends. I didn't have any friends. That was all I wanted, some friendship, someone to come over, someone to lift me back up when I'm knocked down. I didn't have that, he said.

However, today things have changed dramatically, reports the Des Moines Register .

A move to a new school, Edmond Memorial School in Oklahoma, has broken the cycle of bullying but Alex is also enjoying his unlikely fame and has become a spokesperson for the bullying cause.

He wears a T-shirt that says, 'I stand for the silent'.

Alex is not the only one: the documentary has already been seen by over 90,000 American schoolchildren and has 97,000 'likes' on its Facebook page .

Watch the video:

Watch the documentary trailer:

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Life after Bully: Teenage star of hit documentary finally escapes his tormentors... and finds happiness in new school

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Alex Libby's life has changed since he featured in the hit anti-bullying documentary, Bully. The highschool freshman now has other students come up and hug him in the corridors, has good friends and gets on well with his teachers.

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GMA Interview

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Video: 'Bully' Star Now Has 'Lots of Friends'

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Alex and Jackie Libby join David Long, Lee Hirsch in discussing bullying in U.S.