Pink Shirt Day started in 2007, when two Nova Scotia high school students took action after witnessing a younger student being bullied.
The campaign is now in its seventh year and people across B.C. were encouraged to wear the colour on Wednesday to fight back against bullying.
Volunteers clad in pink gathered at Georgia and Granville in the morning, collecting donations and raising awareness about Pink Shirt Day.
Students at McMath Secondary in Richmond held assemblies at their school where they encouraged their fellow students to delete negative messages on social media.
Richmond RCMP also partnered with the school for “Delete Day 2014.”
Organizers said students have the power to control what they put on social media.
The goal of Delete Day was to encourage students to become better cyber citizens.
“We’re seeing that bullying has really changed from face-to-face, towards now, mostly happening online,” said Cst. Stuart Gray with Richmond RCMP. “One of the big issues we see with that is that you can’t get away from it, they are so connected to the Internet these days that anywhere they go, they’re going to be dealing with this.”
43 per cent of teenagers say they have been bullied online in the past year, and 68 per cent of teens agree that cyberbullying is a serious problem.
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