Georgia Schools Dealing with Proliferation of Fight Videos
More and more social media pages devoted to student fights are being created as Georgia school administrators and law enforcement officials are struggling to keep up.
Some school administrators think students are encouraged to fight because of the notoriety they can get from social media.
School administrators and parents in Georgia are trying to find ways to combat the increasing number of fight videos being posted online by students.
The Hamilton Spectator reports there are numerous websites and social media pages specifically devoted to school fights that have been created in the last few years, including an Instagram page featuring almost 400 fight videos that has over 30,000 followers for Clayton County, located in greater Atlanta.
Georgia’s Henry County and Cobb County have similar pages devoted to student fights. The Fayette County Police Department, located just outside of Atlanta, says they’ve located fight pages as far back as eight years ago on Myspace. Scott Israel, a member of the Fayette Police Department, says social media sites usually comply with any requests police make to remove a page.
Still, school districts are struggling to control what students post on social media. The Clayton County Public School District has purchased surveillance cameras to better monitor school grounds, where many of the fights take place. A spokesman for Gwinnett County schools, Georgia’s largest school system, says schools struggle to stop students from posting other inappropriate things online as well, such as sexually explicit content and photos.
A member of the community watchdog group Georgia Active Support blames the parents, noting they are the ones paying for the cell phones in the first place.
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