Talk of the Towns: Violence is never the answer
While trawling through my news feed last week, I came across three videos of pupils fighting at a local high school.
THERE has been a noticeable increase in the number of videos depicting school bullying and fights being uploaded to social media recently.
When these videos emerge on platforms such as Facebook, they go viral within hours.
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While trawling through my news feed last week, I came across three videos of pupils fighting at a local high school.
Within an hour of being posted, they had racked up just over 4 000 views.
Two of the videos were of boys fighting, while the third was of two girls fighting over a boy.
Regardless of what the fights were about, violence is never the answer because it resolves nothing.
By fighting in public, not only do you tarnish your reputation, but your family’s too.
A quick scroll though the comments section shows people are quick to question the pupils’ upbringing and often their parents are blamed for this behaviour.
The people filming the fights are also targeted, and are blamed for circulating the damaging footage.
But are they really to blame when you – the bully or the fighter – gave them something to put out there in the first place?
If you see a fight, don’t stand around and offer encouragement or record it, rather try to end it or call for help
The only plus side when it comes to recording fights like these, is that the videos can be used as evidence.
A few weeks back, a video emerged of a high school girl in Pretoria being bullied by a fellow pupil.
The bully drenched the girl in a white liquid and hit her with the container several times before walking away.
This incident was recorded by another pupil and also went viral on social media.
In this case the video was used as evidence, and the bully was arrested.
In an effort to put an end to this kind of behaviour, perhaps police officers could visit schools as part of an awareness campaign and explain the consequences of such actions.
Parents and schools need to be stricter, and most importantly, pupils need to respect themselves and one another and treat people the way they wish to treated.
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