An Epidemic of Vicious School Brawls, Fueled by Student Cellphones
Across the United States, technology centered on cellphones — in the form of text messages, videos and social media — has increasingly fueled and sometimes intensified campus brawls, disrupting schools and derailing learning. The school fight videos then often spark new cycles of student cyberbullying, verbal aggression and violence.
A New York Times review of more than 400 fight videos from schools in California, Georgia, Texas and a dozen other states — as well as interviews with three dozen school leaders, teachers, police officers, pupils, parents and researchers — found a pattern of middle and high school students exploiting phones and social media to arrange, provoke, capture and spread footage of brutal beatings among their peers. In several cases, students later died from the injuries.
Technology has increasingly fostered and amplified every stage of this aggression. The arguments often begin with student cyberbullying — or even perceived online disrespect among friends — which prompts in-person squabbles during school, educators and police officers said. Then classmates start filming and put pressure on quarreling students to brawl. Students later share and comment on the fight clips, further humiliating the victims and sometimes triggering additional fights.
districts, including in Los Angeles, Buffalo, Jefferson County, Ky., and Prince George’s County, Md., The Times’s review found, as well as in smaller school systems.
In some cases, the violent cycle has overwhelmed the schools. Some districts now face negligence lawsuits from parents while others are seeing an exodus of teachers. Dozens of districts have sued social media firms, saying that the platforms’ “addictive” features caused compulsive student use, disrupting learning and burdening school resources.
School administrators said they now spend a significant portion of their jobs working to thwart or untangle tech-stoked student beefs.
“Cellphones and technology are the No. 1 source of soliciting fights, advertising fights, documenting — and almost glorifying — fights by students,” said Kelly Stewart, an assistant principal at Juneau-Douglas High School in Juneau, Alaska. “It is a huge issue.”
How the aggression begins
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.
During the pandemic, many students became more reliant on messaging and social apps — and less comfortable with real-life interactions. Principals and teachers said some students also developed difficulties controlling their emotions, a mental health issue that psychologists call “emotional dysregulation.”
In 2021, as many districts reopened for in-person learning, some schools saw increases in student fights, aggression and cyberbullying. At Los Angeles public schools, reports of student fights more than doubled — to nearly 4,800 incidents in the 2023 school year, compared with 2,315 fights in 2018, according to a district safety report.
Student use of tech to spread school violence has led to other harms. In particular, educators and police officers said, social media influencers and TV newscasts often broadcast school fight videos, distressing students and causing further chaos.
In May, several girls planning an attack on a peer at a middle school in Novato, Calif., made an Instagram video beforehand discussing who would serve as a lookout or guard their backpacks during the beating, said Lt. Alan Bates, with the Novato Police Department.
How Student Phones and Social Media Are Fueling Fights in Schools - The New York Times