Michael Turner knows plenty about bullying.
He used to be one.
“I never realized how bad I was,” Turner said.
Now his goal is to help reduce bullying.
“I know now the pain that I have committed.”
Bullies can more easily target people now than when he was young, Turner said.
“With social media now, we call [bullies] ‘studio gangsters,’ so now it’s a lot of talk,” Turner said.
Bullies can “intimidate ten people [now]… versus me having to wait for you after school.”
Milwaukee-based Generations Against Bullying, or GAB, connected NBC 26 with Turner.
GAB recommends that witnesses to bullying step in and talk to a bully.
Turner supports the strategy, and has the following ideas for what witnesses could say in such a confrontation:
“ ‘Why do you want to pick on somebody? What are you getting out of having this guy scared of you? Obviously he’s scared of you, so you already won.’”
When a bystander intervenes, bullying stops within 10 seconds more than 50 percent of the time, according to stopbullying.gov.
