To the Editor:

Whether you’re in school, at home, or hanging out with your friends, I’m sure there have been jokes or bits of playful teasing that you’ve heard. Nothing cruel or mean, just a bit of fun that everyone can laugh at — right? Even the person being teased is laughing right along with you.

But something small can turn into serious bullying really easily, really fast. I mean, do you really know what others are thinking? Everyone should be more aware and careful of the consequences of seemingly harmless words.

After all, being picked on is actually a worse threat than child abuse. Bullying results in many mental-health issues, and nobody deserves to feel the pain of being psychologically torn apart by their peers.

One reason that being more aware of others’ feelings is important is that being teased ends up being worse than being abused by an adult. To so many people, child abuse is a tangible thing, something horrible, and it is.

But I feel that using words to bring down others isn’t taken nearly as seriously. I’m sure that we’ve all heard how bullying is also bad, and it needs to stop.

The thing is, the kind of psychological bullying that is often experienced, messing with somebody’s mind, often isn’t recognized for the true cruelty that it is. Most of the time it isn’t even seen as bullying just because it happens so often and isn’t an exchange of physical blows.

The mental health of children is scarred for the long term by peer bullying just as much as if not more than abuse from adults. Honestly, I was a bit surprised at this because, although I always hated harshness in words as a target of them in the past, child abuse had always seemed like it was on a completely different level. I’m sure this rings true for many of you. The mental issues that arise from bullying are actually more serious than those that are a result of child abuse.

There are so many mental-health issues that can be caused by bullying. Many victims of repeated bullying experience anxiety, depression, and self-harm, as well as suicidal thinking and behavior. In Britain, 24 percent of bullying victims developed mental health problems as young adults, and in the United States, 36 percent of young adults who had been bullied developed mental-health problems.

Considering the long-term effects of bullying, it truly is a problem that needs to be addressed. But before long-term mental issues occur, the immediate emotional effects of psychological bullying are destructive.

Being teased and taunted by others wreaks emotional havoc on any person. Even if you have good intentions and are only joking around, others might not be.

There are situations where there is a leader of a group teasing others and the leader is jeering and aiming to hurt people, but they are misleading their friends to laugh and see it as a joke. And the person being targeted is always hurt.

Most of the time it can seem like harmless fun, and you can protest all you want that you aren’t actually hurting anybody. But you don’t know what’s going through their minds. You might think that none of your comments are real bullying, that you’re just being funny.

But as soon as somebody is hurt, it turns into something much worse. And not only does it affect their mental health, but students who experience bullying are twice as likely as non-bullied peers to experience negative health effects such as headaches and stomachaches.

So many insults are made because of the desire to be “cool,” to impress others. Nobody should make others feel broken just for the sake of something as superficial as popularity. Hurting others is never funny.

Psychologist Dieter Wolke of the University of Warwick in Coventry, England says, “Bullying is not a harmless rite of passage or an inevitable part of growing up; it has serious, long-lasting, detrimental effects on children’s lives.”

I completely agree. Being bullied changes the deepest parts of who you are. It shapes your life, and no one should have to deal with the negative effects of bullying.

Forty-four percent of middle schools reported bullying problems, while only 20 percent of elementary schools and 20 percent of high schools reported bullying problems. Middle school is such a crucial point in our lives, and adding being bullied to a long list of things to worry about would be way too much.

The most dangerous part of this kind of bullying is that it most often isn’t recognized for what it really is. It isn’t labeled as something as “bad” as bullying. Yet words can hurt more than anything.

Parents shouldn’t dismiss mean comments to their children, and teachers shouldn’t let “roasts” or “burns” slide. All I ask of you is to remind your friends and especially yourself, never to go too far. “Sticks and stones break my bones but words will never hurt me” — right? Hah.

Joanna Chen

Guilderland

Editor’s note: Joanna Chen just completed seventh grade at Farnsworth Middle School.