Bullying has become a national, and probably international, epidemic, affecting mostly teens as they face both middle and high school. The problem has now expanded as well due to the fact that there are infinite ways to bully someone through the Internet and social media. And although I do acknowledge that this problem needs to be seriously addressed, I feel that the term “bullying” has surpassed its original meaning.

Bullying, in very simple terms, describes harassment, both physical and mental, over a period of time. The key term in that definition is “over a period of time.” Many use, and quite frankly overuse, the word bullying to describe one–time incidents, rather than repeated incidents.

One can not, and should not, call an argument, regardless of any circumstances, “bullying” because that is not true and gives the confrontation a negative connotation, as it suggests that the argument was one sided and due to months of abuse.

Why am I saying this? I am saying this because I feel that categorizing every fight, every playground argument, every heated debate, every punch in the face, and every glare as bullying takes away from the solution of the problem. We, as future leaders of this great world, cannot begin to attempt to eliminate all of these problems with anti–bullying seminars and extra-curricular activities.

This is because, I believe, we’ve broadened the term bullying too much, and rely solely on our efforts to reduce bullying that we fail to see an improvement, when, in fact, the actual bullying among teens could be going down but we cannot see it.

All I’m trying to say is that we need to make our outlook on bullying more concise if we want to see any improvement in the problem, because we will see absolutely no progress in the epidemic if we simultaneously pursue anti-bullying and broaden our definition of it.