InDepth

By Kailtyn Barr, Jo Jackson, Jamison Townsend & Grace Cleary SECTION EDITOR, WEB EDITOR, STAFF REPORTER & INTERN Throughout the last four years, social media app TikTok has had a progressively larger influence on younger generations. In recent months, there have been new, sometimes unsafe or harmful, challenges. An example of this is the “devious lick” challenge, where students post videos of themselves on TikTok stealing school property and supplies, like boxes of masks, hand sanitizer, soap dispensers and even water fountains. While these challenges may seem funny and exciting to attempt, necessary supplies are going missing, students who need to have access to them are struggling and teachers have to replace stolen items with the school’s funding. Math teacher Bradley Smith had items stolen out of his room, and he says that when students needed hand sanitizer and masks from his room, he was unable to supply them with any until he replaced them, which he had to take personal time out of his day to go to the store and buy with the school’s money. “I realized in the afternoon that I was missing my hand sanitizer pumps and my box of masks that I provide students,” Smith said. “I had to spend time going [to] replace those items, which the school had to pay for.” Besides items being taken from classrooms, students have vandalized the bathrooms which has left an uncomfortable setting for the people who choose to use them because imagine walking into the bathroom and seeing stolen soap dispensers, missing stall doors and trashed floors. This became a reality for Junior Rodd Monts who says, on multiple occasions, he has gone into the science wing bathrooms and found them vandalized. He believes students get a kick out of attempting to steal school property. “They find it on TikTok and think it’s funny so they say ‘lets recreate this it will be funny’ so they do it to join in on the trend and make their friends laugh, even though it’s messing around in our bathrooms and ruining stuff,” Monts said. Besides that, using social media can cause a disruption during school which can lead to students accomplishing less adequate school work. Vice principal Geoffrey Young wants students to focus on their school work while at school,

and strives to establish positive relationships with students and provide a safe environment for learning. This can be challenging with students focused more on TikTok trends. “Students need to be focusing on things that are important and good in this school and the world,” Young said. “Sometimes those challenges are a distraction and they have you focus on things that are sometimes disruptive and destructive and that is beneath all of us.” According to Young, these challenges are both distractions and disruptions to things that are more important for students to focus on, like their learning and education during the school day. Missing items and the desire to follow these trends can be distracting to a magnitude of students during the day. Smith says that students who post this challenge are also potentially creating a poor image for themselves, and possibly causing more damage by influencing other kids into joining the trend. “Sometimes there are things you post that you realize you might not actually want to disclose,” Smith said. Smith believes students need to be more mindful in regards to social media, and need to begin to realize why they are posting things online. TikTok trends like the devious lick trend is a large trend that many students should not do, let alone post proof of them partaking online. Young discourages students from participating in these trends, as they will face consequences. Students who steal school property, a crime, and record it can face serious repercussions. “It would certainly depend on what the actual challenge was and the severity of what happened,” Young said. “But, as stated in correspondences and communications to students and their parents, the discipline could be anywhere from a temporary suspension up to expulsion depending on the level of disruption to the school community.” Many students who do these challenges are not able to share them with others until they go home, or connect to a Virtual Private Network while at school. This is due to the school blocking the majority of social media apps like Snapchat and TikTok, preventing students from using these apps while at school. Monts believes that by the school blocking so many of these apps so commonly used by students is not assisting students with anything. “I don’t think it’s beneficial to students because it takes away the free use of

Geoffrey Young VICE PRINCIPAL “ ““ “

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using their apps like social media and other blocked websites,” Monts said. Instructional technology director Chris Stanley says that the district has a firewall that blocks certain apps like TikTok so that students can focus on their schoolwork while in the classroom. “We really want to make sure that the majority of the technology

“that we do provide is used for educational purposes,” Stanley said. One social media app that is kept unblocked for students to use is Instagram, due to the amount of clubs and teams who use Instagram to share information. Other apps are blocked because they are deemed to not be used for educational purposes. The school has a firewall to prevent students from using certain VPNs to bypass these blocks, Stanley says they still have a hard time keeping up with the rapid pace at which new ones are released. “We do everything that we can to block those [VPN’s] because that actually is against our technology use policy that our students do sign,” Stanley said. The previously mentioned policy states that students are forbidden to try to bypass the district’s filters on websites while using the school internet, which is located in the technology handbook. The district is currently working to make sure all students have access to safe

and reliable internet. Stanley wants to make sure students maintain that safety and stay away from sites attempting to gather their personal information. Stanley says that the harmful spyware could potentially make its way to our network and the district wants to make sure that everyone is shielded from that malevolence. “There’s always We really want to make sure that the majority of “ “ different types of malicious spyware that can be out that could have a direct effect on a the technology that we network,” Stanley do provide is used for said. “We’re always trying “ educational purposes. Chris Stanley INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNOLOGY DIRECTOR ““ to make sure that we have a safe and secure environment for our students.” Stanley claims that many VPNs are unsafe for usage by students, and students should obey the technology use policies or risk getting their access to technology taken away. In general, Smith says, whether someone is posting or viewing something potentially incriminating inside or outside of school, they should be cognizant of the effects of their social media usage in general. “I think everyone could use a touch of mindfulness when it comes to social media,” Smith said. “‘Why am I posting this? Who do I want to see this?’”