In the US, students attack teachers in a TikTok group attack and shake up their school

In February, Patrice Motz, a veteran Spanish teacher at Great Valley Middle School in Malvern, Pennsylvania, was warned by another teacher that trouble was coming. Some eighth-graders at her public school had set up fake TikTok accounts posing as teachers.
Motz, who had never used TikTok before, created an account. She found a fake profile for @patrice.motz that had posted a real photo of her on the beach with her husband and young children. “Do you like touching children?” asked a text in Spanish above the family vacation photo. “Answer: Si.” In the days that followed, about 20 pedagogues – about a quarter of the school’s teaching staff – discovered they had fallen victim to fake teacher accounts filled with references to pedophilia, racist memes, homophobia, and fabricated sexual affairs among the teachers.
Hundreds of students soon viewed, followed, or commented on the fraudulent accounts. The school district then temporarily suspended several students. The principal reprimanded the 8th grade class for their behavior during lunch. The worst consequences were for teachers like Motz, who said she felt “like a punch in the gut” that students would so casually attack their teachers’ families.
The online harassment has raised concerns among some teachers that social media platforms are helping to inhibit the development of empathy in students. The Great Valley incident is the first known group incident TikTok attack of this type of middle school students to their teachers across the United States. It is a clear escalation in the way middle and high school students are impersonating, trolling, and harassing teachers on social media.
The attack also reflects broader concerns in schools about how student use and misuse of popular online tools is seeping into the classroom. Some states and districts have recently restricted or banned student cellphone use in schools, in part to limit peer harassment and cyberbullying on Instagram, Snap, TikTok and other apps.
Meanwhile, social media has helped normalize anonymous aggressive posts and memes, leading some children to use them as a weapon against adults. “We’ve never seen attacks on teachers on this scale before,” says Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union. “This may make educators ask themselves, ‘Why should I continue in this profession if students are doing this?'”
The Great Valley School District said it had taken action against “22 fictitious TikTok accounts.” Identity change teachers. But it said it had limited options to respond. Courts generally protect students’ right to free speech off campus, including parodying or denigrating teachers online – unless students’ posts threaten others or disrupt classes.