Cellphones, Social Media, and Vicious School Brawls

[Axtremus]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/15/technology/school-fight-videos-student-phones.html?unlocked_article_code=1.h04.iqeu.srPity6sDV7p

An Epidemic of Vicious School Brawls, Fueled by Student Cellphones
Cafeteria melees. Students kicked in the head. Injured educators. Technology is stoking cycles of violence in schools across the United States.
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“Cellphones and technology are the No. 1 source of soliciting fights, advertising fights, documenting — and almost glorifying — fights by students,” ...
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Students have used social networks to plan and incite school violence since the 2000s. Over the past decade, higher quality phone cameras and new social features, like Instagram Live and Reels, helped spur teenagers to mass produce, stream and share videos — including school fight clips.

By 2020, dedicated fight video accounts — set up using the names or initials of middle and high schools — had popped up on Instagram and TikTok. Sometimes students staged fights among themselves and invited friends to film. Others attacked unsuspecting peers.
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[89th]

I am glad schools are starting to ban cell phone possession during school hours. Safety is a baseless argument and not to play the old(er) man card, but we survived just fine before cell phones.

[jon-nyc]

My sons school has phone holders in the classrooms but I think in the hall they’re fair game.

Not a lot of fights here though.

[Mik]

Word of anything spreads quickly in a school. If there was to be a fight after school everyone knew about it, but they were never staged nor serious.