9801 NW 31st Street

Doral, Florida 33172

December 3rd, 2014
Barack Obama
President of The United States of America
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear President Obama,
I am Jessica Santos, a 15-year-old attending Doral
Academy Senior High and Miami Dade College in Miami, Florida. I have read parts of
the speech you gave on Bullying Prevention in the first ever White House Conference on
Bullying Prevention which took place in October of 2011. I admire the way you
addressed the points and topics covered such as cyber safety, how you reflected on
personal past bullying experiences, and denying the belief that bullying is a rite of
passage that is seemingly inevitable. I would like to urge you to do more for the
prevention of bullying whether it is online, face-to-face, or by other means. Majority of
publicized bullying-caused suicides are due to online conversations that led to a series of
lies, identity theft, child pornography, and verbal abuse. There is lots to be done to help
prevent this and facilitate a more comfortable and enjoyable social media community
where people are allowed to express themselves freely and appropriately without being
attacked by anonymous users because of their personal opinions. In the declaration of
Independence, there are three unalienable rights: Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of
Happiness. When a victim is bullied, they claim that they are no longer able to live under
their given conditions which hinders daily life and in turn, freedom and liberty to do the
things they previously loved and found pleasure in. This causes the victim to lose all
sense of happiness and sometimes leads them to take their own life. Bullying is a leading
example of something that makes these rights, which were once considered
unalienable, an easy thing to take away and diminish. Because of the widespread
popularity of social media and Internet use in our societys youth, many of these bullying
incidents are sometimes ignored due to the desensitization of this generation. In terms of
what we are exposed to, there is not much that can be done at this point. What can be
done is higher cyber security in order to enforce a permanent sense of surveillance and
this in turn, may assist in the prevention of cyber bullying for example, in chat rooms and
popular social media websites, filters could be implemented in order to restrict the use of
vulgar and inappropriate language towards others. Actions need to be taken to ensure that
the Internet is a safe place for our societys youth to communicate and enjoy themselves.
Again, I admire your boldness in opening up about your personal experiences and making
yourself that much more vulnerable, your confidence has allowed me to synthesize some
of your key points in order to emphasize the importance of cyber bullying in the United
States. Thank you for your time and effort.
Sincerely,
Jessica Santos