In the high school environment, school fights seem almost unavoidable. Whether it’s physical or verbal, fights are always bound to happen. The question is how do they affect everyone involved?
When these fights occur, they are the talk of the school. It could be for that day or could extend for weeks depending on how severe of a fight and who it was. Many of these fights will end up across social media platforms because of an abundance of people who crowd around and film. This keeps the talk going longer since the fight is documented.
A lot of these videos don’t capture the whole story, since people run to watch after the fight starts. So a lot of the time it is unknown why the fight may have started, which leads to rumors in the future. These fights can start for various reasons, and I’ve come to realize many of them are not planned and start over absolutely nothing. As a matter of fact, many just start as a play fight.
After the fights occur, the fighters along with some others as bystanders or involved students may get questioned to figure out the root of this fight and its intentions. Fighting will tend to result in consequences that could be from ISS to an out-of-school suspension.
People may think it is not a big deal to fight as they are minors and since it can’t affect their career, but this can greatly affect their academic career. With a suspension on your record, not only are you missing time in school, but this will make the college search a bit more difficult.
Not only does physical violence affect people academically, but injuries are the biggest aspect: bruises, bleeding, black eyes and even broken bones. When the fights are more serious, people can be severely injured, even hospitalized over a verbal argument that could be resolved by a verbal conversation.
Teens this age do not have fully developed brains which is true, but this does not mean they can make an excuse to settle things with violence.
Yes, the main concern is physical. It is a huge problem, but not the only problem. When it comes to fights, mental health issues can be just as bad. Reputations ruined, mental trauma and feeling unsafe at school are all parts of these mental health issues.
School is meant to be a safe environment for learning, and when people don’t want to go to school, it now affects them both academically and physically.
A lot of students take violence as their first approach to a disagreement or argument. This should never be the response because it causes academic troubles, physical issues and mental problems. None of these have to be present if students responded better.
Even if physical violence happens, students around can be taught to respond better by not recording the fights, not posting them on social media, not getting involved and not starting rumors that make them worse than they already are.
