A 14-year-old along with a 15-year-old teen girl faced serious legal actions for bullying another 13-year-old girl and leaving her wounded in a fast-food restaurant. Everyone was talking about this incident as soon as the video came out.
The pair was charged with aggressive assault following an attack that resulted in the tooth injury of the victim. Victim Maddie’s front teeth were smashed out and she was knocked unconscious. When she was found, she was already calling her mother. Her mother said that all she could hear was ‘Mummy come to help me.’
Maddie was left with emotional and physical scars that can rarely heal. Her mother said that the mental torture she faced might last for her whole life. Maddie’s father said that people cannot understand the intensity of bullying until it happens to them.
The incident didn’t just end there, Maddie told the court that she has been getting harassing texts online through social media by the same girls and they say that it is going to happen again. Her mother elaborated that the texts say that they should have killed her and this will happen again. Maddie was unable to move forward and these texts made her fear more. Maddie didn’t attend school for a long time and her dental treatment is probably going to take years.
When Maddie started getting social media threats, this is when the police arrested those girls. Maddie gave her statement about how much harassment she faced and the intensity of the texts that she got on social media too. However, the mother of one of the accused teenagers said that her daughter will be okay behind the bars.
Bullying in schools and then through social media is ruining the lives of our kids. One cannot imagine the pain Maddie has gone through and we cannot put the suffering into words. The school’s principal said that they would take better measures to stop bullying and harassment inside the school. But, what about outside the school? What about the threatening messages they were sending the girl? What about the cyberbullying that they were doing with so much ease? What role should a parent play in this scenario?
There are a lot of teens like Maddie who have gone through a similar situation and it has affected their whole life. For a teen to be harassed and bully-like this, to live in fear like this, and to be attacked like this, the world is nothing but a scary place. Their mental health completely deteriorates and they can hardly live a normal life like other teens.
After reading this, or witnessing such cases around yourself, every parent must be worried about the health of their kids. Every parent must be stressed out while thinking about how they can protect their daughters and sons from becoming a bully or a victim. There are some things that parents can do to know beforehand what type of teen their kids are becoming and if they should do something about it or not.
If you don’t talk about something to your kids, it doesn’t mean they will not face it. Talk about it or not, bullying is a social trend that has taken many forms and still happening around the globe. It is better to teach your kids before someone else teaches them or they learn wrong things from their surroundings. Tell them how bullying can destroy theirs and someone else’s future. Show them the examples like this one and talk to them about how this is not what they should be doing and how the lives of kids are ruined through these stupid acts.
Where most parents it might not be the right choice to monitor the social media of their kids, but given the current issue and situation, it can be seen that it is mandatory to see what kids are doing on the internet. Nowadays, bullying has taken the form of cyberbullying, and usually, the bullies send humiliating content and threats to the victim through social media apps. Kids don’t tell their parents about this because they think that it is not a big deal and if they tell their parents, they might take away their smartphones.
Nowadays, parents need to be very friendly about such communications. First of all, they need to monitor the kids’ social media usage through the use of the best monitoring app. Mobistealth is the best tracking and monitoring app that provides you all the features that help you in protecting your kids, keeping an eye on them, viewing their chats, and knowing about the people they are in contact with. You can stop many wrong things that can ruin the future of your kids.
Parents who are of the opinion that they should spy on their kid’s smartphone activity without them knowing should change their strategy. They should inform kids about the phone spy app before installing it on their smartphones. That way kids won’t feel betrayed and would help their parents stay involved in their digital lives.
If you notice that things are going on in the school that is disturbing your kid, you can talk to the school management without any hesitance. You need to make them aware of the things happening in their school and how your kid’s mental health is being disturbed. Such things should be told to the school management so that they can take the necessary steps. There should be some policies regarding bullying in school and everyone should act on them. Such policies help in maintaining peace in school.
What happened with Maddie can happen with any kid. It is time that parents take a stand and guide their kids about right and wrong. Most commonly, the kids who are the bullies are usually the ones whose parents haven’t guided them enough or kept an eye on them. The same is the case with the victims. And, believe it or not, social media is playing a very strong role in inducing such wrong acts in our society. Parents need to keep an eye on their kids as much as possible.