By Paul Grossinger
K. Rocco Shield’s Love is All You Need, an anti-bullying short film that shows with chilling clarity the terrible consequences of teen cyber-bullying, deserves support from parents.
Love is All You Need is the story of a straight girl in a parallel universe America where homosexuality is normal and heterosexuality is abnormal. The protagonist is bullied throughout the film and pushed, ultimately, to suicide. Throughout the film, viewers feel the growing consequences of the bullying; finally understanding in the last minutes that the story will not have a happy ending. The film’s message is clear: treat others as you would like to be treated and, even if you are not a perpetrator, do more to prevent harmful cyber-bullying. The film’s end suggestion is that kids need to understand the consequences of their actions and parents need to understand the consequences of what they teach their kids.
MMGuardian, which includes text alerts to prevent cyberbullying and blocks for harmful calls, texts, and mobile apps, is already a dogged supporter of anti-bullying efforts nationally. Our feature set is designed to help parents prevent bullying: text monitor lets parents choose words and phrases to watch for in their children’s text messages and app blocker enables parents to block certain applications that are often used to bully teens.
Now Ms. Shields and her team are working on a new ending for the Love is All You Need to increase the film’s educational accessibility and on a new, full-length feature film version of the story. We encourage you to visit her campaign on Indigogo and support this important effort!
For the future, we can only hope for a world without bullying. In the meantime, we can support projects like Love is All You Need that each take us one stop closer toward our goal of a bullying-free world.
