In her compelling but chilling book about social media, cyberpsychology professor Mary Aiken says: “We cannot gamble with the future development of children who will someday be adults who weren’t cared for and raised in the best way. It’s a generation of what I describe as cyber-feral children” (The Cyber Effect).

Over the past two weeks, we have witnessed those boundaries of childhood and adult life shrivel away further.

It has certainly been a challenging fortnight for schools, even by the grim standards of the past 18 months or so. The reason has not been the pandemic, the challenge of education recovery, lack of funding or even the wretched prospect of Ofsted inspections - although these are all swirling murkily in the background.

No, the unlikely source of trouble on this occasion is an obnoxious craze among young pupils for using the social media platform TikTok to post imagery and commentary about school staff which is defamatory, offensive and, in some cases, homophobic. We’re not sure exactly how widespread this problem is but it appears to have affected many school communities in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland.

Hurt and distress

At a time when schools have so many challenges to cope with already, it has been a hugely unwelcome distraction and one that has caused a great deal of hurt and distress to many staff. Schools have had to spend time endeavouring to get offensive posts removed, as well as dealing with the fallout among pupils and staff. Many tell us that TikTok has failed to remove this material despite it being a clear contravention of the platform’s community guidelines.

We’ve written to TikTok and it has replied to say it is investigating the issue and that it is using a combination of technologies and moderation teams to identify and remove content or accounts that violate its community guidelines. It says it has acted against a large number of accounts already. It has also offered to meet with us to discuss these problems in more detail.

We welcome that response and the action that is being taken, and we hope this matter is resolved swiftly.

Mental health and wellbeing

But, of course, this is hardly the first time that social media has been a problem for schools, and it won’t be the last.

Back in 2018, we carried out a survey of 460 headteachers, which found that 95 per cent felt that social media use is damaging the mental health and wellbeing of young people.

Almost all had received reports of pupils being bullied on social media, with 40 per cent saying that incidents were reported on a daily or weekly basis. And almost all had received reports of pupils encountering upsetting material on social media - such as sexual content, self-harm, bullying or hate speech - with 27 per cent saying incidents were reported on a daily or weekly basis.

I don’t know whether things have improved or not since 2018. And it is important to be clear that this was a survey about social media in general and not about any specific platform. But the point is that the damage caused by social media is far from being new, and there are, of course, also many examples outside the world of education.

Laws and regulation

Indeed, our survey back in 2018 asked headteachers what they thought should be done about the situation. Nine out of 10 (93 per cent) said that new laws and regulation should be introduced to ensure social media sites keep children safe.

So, where are we nearly four years later in terms of legislation? The answer is a little further forward but not much further.

An Online Harms White Paper was published in 2019, proposing a duty of care for internet companies including social media platforms, but it has taken another two years for the government to publish a draft Online Safety Bill. This is now being considered by a joint committee of both Houses of Parliament which is due to report by 10 December. The long journey will then begin to get it into legislation and for it to have an impact in the real world.

Here’s a summary from the House of Commons Library about what the bill will do:

“In line with the government’s December 2020 response to its Online Harms consultation, the draft bill would impose duties of care on providers of online content-sharing platforms and search services. Ofcom would enforce compliance and its powers would include being able to fine companies up to £18 million or 10 per cent of annual global turnover, whichever is higher, and have the power to block access to sites.”

Modest point

Inevitably, there are concerns about the bill in various directions. The BBC reported in May that “campaigners say the plans will lead to censorship, while others warn fines do not go far enough”. So the legislative path ahead is unlikely to be plain sailing.

Hopefully, however, at the end of all this we will have something in law that introduces statutory regulation backed up with powerful sanctions. It is incredibly frustrating that it has taken so long to reach even this modest point, and it remains to be seen how well the legislation works in practice.

But the events of the past two weeks have reinforced the pressing need for tighter control of an industry that exists in the digital world but causes far too much harm in the real world.

As Mary Aiken reminds us, “we cannot gamble with the future development of children”. Nor can we undermine the authority and wellbeing of the staff in our schools.

This is no longer an intellectual debate. It’s about the responsibility we, the adults - and especially those big technology companies - have to protect, inform and educate the young people in our society on how to conduct ourselves in an interconnected world.

And this week’s squalid TikTok challenge demonstrates just how urgent the issue is.

Geoff Barton is general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders