I’ve heard about it on the news, seen it on social networking, but I never thought that I would be the next victim of cyberbullying. I’ve always been the one to stay out of peoples’ way. Keeping close to my few friends, I’ve never been popular. I don’t get in fights and I don’t emotionally harm them. Overall, I’m a quiet person. Then one night, when I got a call from a blocked number, I didn’t think anything would happen when I answered it. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

It was a Tuesday night, and I was working on some homework for my social studies class. I got a call from a blocked number, and I picked it up with my usual cheerful voice. The person calling me said she was my friend from social studies.

It started out with the usual “Heys” and “What’s up?”

Suddenly the caller told me seriously, “We need to talk.”

“Ok. What about?” I answered without a care in my mind.

“Today in class you were bullying me. You told me to shut up, and that hurt my feelings.”

“Umm. I never said that at all. We barely even talked because we were taking notes,” I responded lightheartedly. I had a feeling that this was all a joke. No one would ever accuse me of bullying. Right? The girl I was on the phone with was so sweet. Why would she think of trying this?

“Well you said that,” she came back, “I told the teacher you’ve been bullying some of the students in class. He said that he’s going to tell the principal and you have to go in and talk about what you’ve done. He said you might even get suspended. Bullying is taken very seriously.”

“You’re joking right?” I said with panic in my voice.

“No I’m not. You can email the teacher about this if you don’t believe me.”

I hit the end button as fast as I possibly could. This is when my body became numb. My heart sank all the way to my feet. I had been accused of something I did not do. What made me even more upset was that it was for bullying. For a person that knew what it felt like to be bullied, this was not something I wanted to be incriminated for. I then remembered what bully victims had to go through, the pain, the agony. It made me absolutely horrified.

The caller on the phone kept calling me and leaving me messages, but I kept ignoring her. The one message that hit me was of her saying that she didn’t want to be friends with me because of what happened in class. It was bad enough that she accused me of bullying and told the teacher, now she’s wanted to throw away our friendship too? I slowly started to cry now because I felt like this was such an overreaction. I finally decided to take one of her calls.

“I don’t understand what’s going on? You’re throwing away our friendship for something I didn’t even do,” I said between sobs.

“You know what you did,” she responded with a haste tone.

“I didn’t do anything wrong! I’m going to email the teacher to clear things up.”

“No! No don’t do that.”

I heard laughing in the background. I then realized that this was all a joke. Some girls called me and accused me of bullying when they were the ones that cyberbullied me.

I later found out that the girl who originally called me was not my friend from social studies. It was an anonymous caller with a blocked phone number. My actual friend was not the caller that night because her mom had her phone. My parents even talked to her parents about the whole incident, and it was found that it was impossible that this girl would’ve been able to contact me. The bullies didn’t just call me playing a cruel practical joke, but they pretended to be someone else. They successfully cyberbullied not one person, but two as well. I notified the principal and my teacher about this, and I found out that similar incidents have happened to other students at school. The question that came to mind was why. Why did these bullies think that it was ok to do this to their peers? Were they really that insecure about themselves that they needed to make other people cry and tear apart friendships? The last question I asked was, why me?

Then after a whole week of feeling bad about myself, I felt bad for these girls. They were missing something in their life and they decided to fill it by making other girls feel insecure. If I could have one thing to say to them, it would be that they are better than that. They should’ve used their power over people for the positive instead of negative. Bullies, whether online or in person, were not worth my time. I had better things to worry about.

Cyberbullying is still a huge issue among teens of all ages. About 58% of kids admit someone has said mean or hurtful things to them electronically. More than 4 out of 10 say it has happened more than once. That is more than half of all teens, like me, who know what it feels like to be teased through a device. In my opinion, cyberbullying is easier to get away with because of the fact that it can be done anonymously. Through personal experience, I know how painful it can be to get harrassed. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. When I see cyberbullying, on social network or I hear about it through text, I want to stop it. I think we should all take a pledge to not bully people online or face to face, and if we see it, we should stand up for the victim. I don’t think cyberbullying will ever go away, but we should be trying to stop it. One person, one comment, and one victim saved at a time, we can do something. Now who’s with me?