TikTok has become a huge concern for teachers. Pupils are using the platform to embarrass school staff publicly with sexual innuendo and the misuse of images.
The Department for Education has that said it is working with the social media company to tackle the problem, but, in terms of addressing the roots of this behaviour, what can schools do to build expertise and knowledge?
New research by Jessica Ringrose, Kaitlyn Regehr and Betsy Milne sheds some light on this. In the report Understanding and combatting youth experiences of image-based sexual harassment and abuse, the researchers look at young people’s digital image sharing practices in a bid to understand them within the context of the underlying issues of sexism and sexual violence in schools.
The study involved focus groups of girls aged 12-18, and an astonishing 75.8 per cent of those who participated had been sent a “dick pic”. This chimes with other research in recent years, such as Ofsted’s report on sexual abuse in schools and colleges, published in June, which also recorded a high prevalence of girls and women being sent unwanted nude images by boys and men.
Young people who receive these images often experience feelings of anger, shame and powerlessness as a result. Indeed, a 2015 literature review by Nicola Henry and Anastasia Powell referred to image abuse as “technology-facilitated sexual violence”.
Teachers who have had their features superimposed on to random sexual images without their consent, only to have those images shared on TikTok, along with inferences of inappropriate sexual behaviour, undoubtedly experience similar feelings.
We need to recognise that this recent abuse aimed at teachers is all part of a larger trend. Cyberflashing, Zoom bombing, pressured sexting, non-consensual solicitation of nudes, transactional dick pics, rape culture, revenge porn: all these are relatively new terms. Knowing what they are empowers teachers and students to discuss these issues together.
But how far should schools, as agents of change in young people’s lives, be expected to challenge the normalisation of image-based sexual abuse? They will need specialist support here, because simply saying “stop” is not enough.
As one headteacher pointed out to me recently: “Like many schools, we have suffered from this latest awful ‘craze’ and, while we’ve had some success in identifying the perpetrators, this brings us little joy. Unfortunately, the pupils who are most likely to fall prey to such challenges are often the most vulnerable.”
Schools should be teaching overtly about these issues, but they should not be cast as the sole arbiters of young people’s digital lives. We need to encourage tech companies to strengthen their processes to address online harassment in a timely way.
The Keeping Children Safe in Education 2021 guidance includes more complex safeguarding protocols, offering schools useful updates on recognising online harms, but the focus is largely on managing the perpetrators in schools.
Greater emphasis must be given to survivor support, reporting options, methods of measuring student attitudes, and looking at ways to involve students in creating change.
Education about sexual assault also needs to start earlier. Let’s hope this new research will be a step in the right direction.
Margaret Mulholland is the special educational needs and inclusion specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders
This article originally appeared in the 10 December 2021 issue under the headline “TikTok teacher abuse is part of a bigger issue”
