DoSomething.org has created a text message game to teach students about the consequences of bullying.
“The Bully Text” is an interactive, Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-style SMS game meant to replicate a student’s first day at an average school. Participants are faced with different challenges—overhearing a student being called a slur, receiving a gossipy text, having to wait for a sluggish lunch lady—and are given different possible decisions. Do you open the text message and share its contents? Do you walk away from the jeering, confront the bullies, or talk to the victim in private? There are many decisions to be made and dozens of different paths and consequences. What will you choose to do?
The socially empowering program forces teenagers to confront their own behaviors. By putting daily interactions into the structure of a game, the Bully Text raises awareness about how off-the-cuff choices have serious consequences.
Participants can also share the game with their friends. Those that do are entered into a drawing for a $2,000 scholarship.
The DoSomething.org page for “The Bully Text” also includes social-media-shareable graphic statistics and lists of facts about bullying.