Nineteen Minutes By Jodi Picoult

The word “bullying” can be defined as the use of superior strength or influence to intimidate someone, typically to force him or her to do what one wants. In the novel Nineteen Minutes, written by Jodi Picoult, the high school students prove the definition to be true. The forms and effects of bullying have no real limit, but are always going to be negative. Children, or even adults being bullied is extremely common, and can often get out of hand. A lot of the times there nothing is done to prevent bullying, which is a huge mistake that should be corrected as soon as it could be. Through the extremely emotion filled novel, Nineteen Minutes, Jodi Picoult goes deep into the face of a small town to find out what it means to be truly different in society. Jodi Picoult uses the social issue of teenage bullying to create a realistic story about the effects of verbal and physical abuse, leading to a tragedy for society. This novel is a great example of how bullying no only affects the people who are involved, but many others as well. Bullying in teenage children not only has an effect on themselves and their peers, but on society as whole.

Bullying can affect everyone in the world such as those who are bullied, those who bully, and those who are witnessing bullying. Bullying has been proved to be connected to a lot of negative outcomes such as, substance use, impact on mental health, and suicide (U.S Department of Health and Human Services). One obvious effect of teenage bullying would be the physical problems and injuries that the victim goes through. Examples of physical bullying are hitting, pushing, tripping, slapping, spitting, or stealing or destroying possessions. Effects of physical bullying are things such as: withdr...

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...hout the corse of their life. Bully's are likely and tend to have children who then will grow up to be bullies, and the victims tend to have children who will grow up to be victims. Bullying is a cyclical problem, which is the reason as to why it impacts society as a whole, in addition to just individuals (Verial).

Things have to be done to prevent bullying in schools in order for society to overcome this fast growing problem. Lives could be saved from students acting out, as well as lives bettering from students who would not be bullied anymore. Society would become better as a whole without teenage bullying, or even adult bullying seen in the workplace. In many cases, people don’t help out with the situation unless they’ve been through it before, which is also not helping. The world would be better and happier if bullying was completely eliminated from it.