Cellphones are fueling fights, brawls, cycles of cyberbullying, and disrupting learning in schools and classrooms throughout the U.S., with some dedicated fight video accounts — set up using the names or initials of middle and high schools — even popping up on Instagram and TikTok.
An investigation by the New York Times reviewed 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.
It 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.
“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.”
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.
Technology has increasingly fostered and amplified every stage of aggression that turns to violence. 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.
While cellphones have been used to plan and incite violence since the 2000s, things appear to have gotten worse since the COVID-19 pandemic shut down schools.
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.”
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.
While the use of text messages, social media and videos to spread violence may alarm adults, students said that it is becoming a regular part of school.
“Kids are very used to it,” said Lunna Guerrero, 16, a 10th grader at Revere High who was on the track team last year. “Kids don’t see it as something so surprising as the adults do.”
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