Bullying can happen to anyone and it can happen anywhere.

You can be bullied about how you look, what you are good at, or not good at, where you come from, or who your friends are.

Bullying can be:
physical – someone hurting or shoving you or stealing your belongings,
verbal – teasing and name calling or someone saying mean things about you, or
social – being left out of a group or someone sending you nasty messages or images.

But bullying is NOT the same as when you don’t get on with someone or you have a fight one time. That’s not okay, but it’s not bullying.

Bullying is when someone uses ‘power’ they have over you to try to hurt or upset you again and again.

Anyone can bully another person.

Bullying can be someone with lots of friends spreading rumours about someone with only a few friends, someone who is good at sport or at schoolwork regularly teasing someone else who isn’t, a strong kid pushing a smaller kid over when a teacher is not supervising, a confident person calling a quiet person names to stop them joining in lunch time games, or when someone keeps on sending nasty messages to someone else in a chat group online.

You might feel scared, worried or sad. These sorts of feelings can stop you from enjoying things, doing your school work, wanting to go to school and even sleeping. Even people who see bullying happening to other people can feel worried or sad.
You feel like you can’t stop it and that can feel awful. But there are some things you can do.

If you are being bullied, you can:
• Ignore them
• Tell them to stop and then walk away
• Pretend you don’t care and act confident, even if you don’t feel it at the time
• Find somewhere safe
• Get support from your friends
• Talk to an adult who can help.

If bullying happens online:
• Leave the conversation or chat
• Block and report the person
• Protect yourself by using privacy settings on your mobile phone and social media, and keep records of any online bullying, like saving messages or taking screenshots.

If you see someone being bullied in person you can support them by walking away with them. If you feel safe to do so, you can stand up for them. If you see someone being bullied online you could support them by saying something to end the bullying, or leave the conversation.

Remember, don’t ever join in with bullying or do the same nasty things back to them