High school and middle school principal Jackie Hanson wants to alert parents about a disturbing new trend around the country in social media in which students are encouraging each other to engage in self-destructive acts.
Hanson sent a memo to parents on Nov. 10 about how some users of TikTok, a video-sharing social media platform which in the past has been at the center of controversy, are instructing their viewers to encourage suicide.
“As of lately, the forum is encouraging viewers to use phrases such as, ‘Go kill yourself.’ or ‘Go kill yourself, it will be better for everyone,’” Hanson said in the memo, adding that these phrases have “trickled into the language of youth,” and there have been instances where school staff members have overheard students use these exact phrases toward one another.
“As with any social media forum,” she continued in the memo, “monitoring use is often recommended in an effort to create positive experiences and reduce risks online.”
Hanson said she didn’t know if this trend is limited only to that one social media forum. “The phrases that had entered our learning environment were directly connected to TikTok,” she said in an interview on Nov. 22, “and so that’s why I was just focusing on TikTok.”
After hearing these phrases from students, she and her staff have used them for “a teachable moment” to talk with students. “Those comments are not appropriate in any setting,” she said. “They’re not kind, they’re not necessary.”
In writing the memo, Hanson was trying to provide an alert and forge a partnership with parents, educating them of the potential risk and to request that they have conversations with their children.
“I never want to infringe on the rights of a parent and tell people this is how you should parent,” she said. “But I want to open that door of communication because a lot of times kids are often left to their own account on a device.”
While both schools have policies in place as well as regular classroom interactions that prevent students from using smartphones at will during school hours, there are plenty of opportunities outside of those times to interact with social media, Hanson said. “Their device use is happening, probably, after school, at home in the evenings, on the weekends.”
While she and her staff will continue to educate students as needed, repeated offenses could result in disciplinary actions and consequences.
It’s important that school staff and parents come together to help students understand the dangers of parroting some of these social media trends, the principal said. “It’s part of like, digital citizenship, and I don’t think kids quite understand the consequences of their actions.”
Reaching out to parents seems to have proven effective. “I haven’t heard those comments (from students) since my memo. My staff hasn’t reported those comments since the memo,” she said. “And so, I’m hoping it helped.”
Reader Comments(0)