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10 BULLIED TEENAGERS Who Are Changing The World

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Ten teenagers turned the worst years of their lives into a global movement against bullying.

Every year, bullying touches more than 3.2 million American students, and for many of them it doesn’t stop at hurt feelings — it spirals into anxiety, depression, and in the most devastating cases, suicidal ideation. The video “10 BULLIED TEENAGERS Who Are Changing The World” profiles the young people who refused to let that be the end of their story, building apps, foundations, and international platforms out of the exact experiences meant to break them. Leading that list is Lizzie Velásquez, whose journey from a cruel viral label to the TEDx stage has become the blueprint for the entire movement.

• Bullying affects over 3.2 million American students annually, often triggering serious mental health crises.
• Lizzie Velásquez’s 2014 TEDxAustinWomen talk, “How Do YOU Define Yourself,” has drawn tens of millions of views.
• Velásquez was born with Marfanoid-progeroid-lipodystrophy syndrome, an extremely rare disorder that prevents her from gaining weight.

Lizzie Velásquez and the Video That Started It All

Lizzie Velásquez has Marfanoid-progeroid-lipodystrophy syndrome, a condition so rare that she is one of only three known people diagnosed with it, and it prevents her body from accumulating body fat. At 17, she discovered a YouTube video that had used her image and branded her the “World’s Ugliest Woman” — a clip that racked up views and cruel comments from strangers who had never met her. Instead of retreating, Velásquez turned the moment into the foundation of a career built on public advocacy.

That decision led to her 2014 TEDxAustinWomen address, “How Do YOU Define Yourself,” a talk that has since been viewed tens of millions of times and turned her into one of the most recognizable anti-bullying voices in the country. The momentum carried her into publishing multiple books, lobbying members of Congress on anti-bullying legislation, and starring in the 2015 documentary “A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velasquez Story,” which chronicled her life story for a wider audience.

A viral video called her the “World’s Ugliest Woman” at 17 — she answered it with a TEDx talk watched tens of millions of times.

Apps, Foundations, and Homemade Solutions

Velásquez isn’t the only name on the list building something tangible out of harassment. Natalie Hampton, tired of watching classmates eat alone, built “Sit With Us,” an app that lets students find open seats at lunch tables; it has been downloaded more than 100,000 times and picked up praise from educators and parents. Akash Nilapwar, only 14 at the time, designed a game called “Bully Fighters” that teaches players about the real-world consequences of bullying rather than just letting them vent frustration.

Others built infrastructure instead of software. Alex Holmes, drawing on his own experience as a bullying target, created the Diana Award to recognize young people making a measurable difference in their communities. Lashunda Tittle founded “Bullying Ends Now” after her son was targeted at school, turning a parent’s frustration into an organization built to educate schools and communities on the warning signs. Samir Lakhani, bullied for being different growing up, launched the Eco-Soap Bank, which recycles soap for people in developing countries while training and employing local women.

The Cost of Cyberbullying

Not every story on the list ends in triumph, and the video doesn’t pretend otherwise. Megan Meier was bullied online and took her own life at just 13 — a tragedy that led her mother to found the Megan Meier Foundation, dedicated to educating parents and schools on the dangers of cyberbullying specifically. It’s a sobering reminder of what’s at stake when harassment migrates from hallways to phones and social feeds, a shift that has reshaped how public figures and private citizens alike get targeted online.

Rosalind Wiseman took a different angle, writing “Queen Bees and Wannabes” — the book that inspired the movie “Mean Girls” — to give parents tools for helping daughters navigate the social hierarchies that so often produce bullies in the first place. Whitney Kropp, meanwhile, became a symbol after classmates voted her homecoming queen as a prank; rather than hide, she wore the crown to parades and events anyway, turning humiliation into a story that spread well beyond her own school.

Living Loud as the Best Response

Brandon Farbstein, born with a rare form of dwarfism that made him a target throughout childhood, now travels internationally as a motivational speaker, telling audiences to treat their differences as an asset rather than a liability worth hiding. It’s the same message running through every name on this list — that the thing bullies weaponize against you is often the exact thing worth building a platform on, a lesson that runs parallel to how other public figures get reduced to a single image before anyone bothers to learn who they actually are.

Velásquez’s TEDx talk remains the highest-profile entry point into this whole story, and with “A Brave Heart” already streaming and her congressional advocacy ongoing as of early 2017, she’s positioned as the name most likely to keep pulling new viewers into the other nine stories on this list.