Social media misinformation causing problems for schools, Berkeley County school officials asking parents to monitor student’s social accounts

Social media networks have been blamed for fake news and misinformation in the past regarding the Covid-19, politics and many other topics as they are the easiest way to spread information regarding everything.

Now it looks like that the issue is spreading in students directly affecting the schools and the educational process or that’s at least what Berkeley County School District spokesperson say.

Katie Tanner, Berkeley County School District spokesperson, said that social media has become a challenge for both “conflict and information management”.

Tanner’s announcement comes after the Friday’s lockdown at Berkeley High School after a report of someone armed with a weapon near school.

“It always seems to come back to social media,” she said.

According to Tanner, multiple student altercations occurred around the same time and the report ended up to be unsubstantiated.

“The two issues have kind of come together, but they’re separate,” Tanner said.

Shortly after the incident, Berkeley High’s interim principal asked the parents for help in preventing similar cases in the future. Katie Butcher, Berkeley High’s interim principal, asked parents to monitor their children social media accounts in an effort to stop the misinformation spread.

“They are our best resource and support for monitoring social media as they can monitor it through their mobile devices.”

Tanner added they are seeing a new trend recently where students usually start their communication on the social media that results with altercations in the schools.

“We want to prevent the altercations from occurring so when there is information that something, maybe someone saw a back and forth on social media, let the administrators know,” Tanner said.

Tanner said the district has resources to help guide parents on how to effectively monitor social media, and the BCSD Security and Emergency Management Department has an anonymous tip line you can access by calling, or through the BCSD mobile app.