In the US suicide is the 10th leading cause of death. Heart disease is the first leading cause, and Cancer is second. In 2019, 47,511 americans died from suicide. In the same year there has been 1.38 millions suicide attempts. Since Covid has started, the suicide rates have only gone up. 

“You never look good, trying to make someone else look bad”.

It happens every day, in every school. At least 3 kids commit suicide everyday. To me, in a personal opinion it’s selfish, suicide is a way to get away from the world. To stop the pain, and escape permanently. But people who do this forget that you’re leaving behind people who care about you. Sure people who committed suicide might feel alone at home and their parents constantly are being bullies or it could be a kid their age or around there age. Whatever the reason is, you’re not alone. There are millions of people out there going through the same things. And that’s what I’m here to talk about.

BULLYING is not cool, you’re hurting people. You’re making them feel pain that you’re too cowardly to address yourself. Bullies start off with lying, and then they go to changing their appearance to look like the popular people. People who bully might feel alone themselves. And they take it out on other people to resolve the pain and erase it. But hurting others won’t make them feel better. Bullying is like a drug. To mask your pain. To numb it. But you’re hooked and all you can do is chase the high.

There are many forms of bullying. Racism is the oldest form of bullying dating back to 1776 and beyond. Sexism and homophobia is bullying. Bullying became a thing in the 1970s or the 1500s. Bullying is a lot like police brutality. And it’s where people use knowledge, excessive force and assumption to hurt or harm another person. Suicide goes with bullying because it’s the force where someone takes their own life by hanging,overdose,gunshot or knife wound. In Greek history the first person to commit sucide was Empedocles, he believed death was a transformation and it influenced his suicide. He threw himself into a volcano. Back in slave times if a slave committed sucide no one really cared, and the master wouldn’t be to blame.

In America Jim Jones was an american cult leader, preacher, activist, ect… and he led  the people’s temple. He and his circle orchestrated mass murder-sucide at the artichetical commune in remote South America.

Because of covid, suicide rates have gone up because we went remote. And people got depressed and frustrated, and I’ll admit who can blame them. It was frustrating to go from learning in person and seeing friends to learning at home with your dogs. It was hard to start the 11th grade at home and hearing the dogs barking or having bad wifi cause there is too much technology going on at once. But I got my work done, and I did pretty good. And so many more kids did too. I know it was hard to not see friends or teachers to only see parents and your pets and siblings. And since covid had a huge social and psychological effect on everyone’s bodies and minds and especially if they came from the 7th grade to high school. Covid-19 is associated with anxiety and depression, chronic stress, ect…and from time to time we all go into depression, especially pregnant women when they have a baby. And most people did have babies during quarantine.Apps like Tik-Tok also create suicide and hide it really well.

TikTok has raised suicide rates by a lot, 41 deaths on the app and nine of them are understood to be sucide. Like Nur Ansari died while filming a TikTok video on train tracks. Or Anitha, a mum of two from India, filmed herself ingesting poison after reportedly being banned from TikTok. And so much more. There was a trend going around where you would take a whole bottle of pills and at least 10 people died from that because they overdosed. There was another trend recently called the power outage trend and people had to strangle themselves to see if they passed out and a kid allegedly died from it.

Bullying is not right, and Tik-Tok is just adding to it. We all need to know that bullies are alone themselves, and like Martin Luther King jr. once said. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” They always say it gets better, and I have that tattooed on my foot as a reminder that sometimes that phrase is not enough. People don’t need to hear it’ll get better, because the truth is it won’t. It’ll only get better when we stand up for ourselves. When we show the bullies that just because they’re alone and probably afraid and want everyone else to feel their pain, doesn’t mean we have too.Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can. So don’t hate the person who’s hurting you, love them instead. If Martin Luther King jr. or Malcolm X would have resorted to the levels of those who did not like them. They wouldn’t have been known as one of the most famous black leaders in the world. And they did that by love and light. And as for Tik-Tok we are so consumed with technology and wanting to be accepted by the people we see online. We forget that sometimes we really want to be accepted by those we see in person. But Tik-Tok won’t give people that acceptance they crave. It’ll only kill them. 

“Courage is fire, and bullying is smoke.”