Reports to an internet safety helpline have increased twelvefold in just one week as teachers grapple with a spike in abusive content being shared on social media.

The Professionals Online Safety Helpline (POSH), a helpline for people working with children and young people that is “predominantly” used by teachers and school staff,  has reported a “flare” in the number of reports made to it in the past week.

The helpline usually receives around 20 calls a week but the number has jumped to an “unprecedented” 249 in the past five days.

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Last year 67 per cent of calls to the helpline were from teachers, while 20 per cent were from other school staff.

Carmel Glassbrook, project lead at POSH, told Tes that the reason for the sudden increase in reports was still unknown. “It could be a YouTuber or TikToker out there encouraging it, or a craze, or teachers are just becoming more aware of this behaviour and therefore looking for the content and reporting it,” she said.

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Ms Glassbrook says the content being shared is currently “99 per cent TikTok”, reflecting the platform’s popularity among students, compared with 2020 when the majority of content was circulated on Instagram. 

Ms Glassbrook warned of the damaging impact on teachers: “If you spent eight hours a day, five days a week teaching and then you go home to find an account where they’ve doctored images of you to be in pornographic situations or worse, it is obviously quite hurtful.” 

She added that the liking and resharing of the harmful content creates a “dogpiling effect”. 

“I think that has a really big impact on them wanting to go back to school, so obviously it would be upsetting.”  

David Wright, director of the UK Safer Internet Centre, added that “it just causes these massive storms that result in panic”. 

Ms Glassbrook warned that schools are reporting pupils being able to make TikTok accounts without verifying email addresses, making it difficult to locate the accounts. 

Mr Wright explained that social media providers need to have more of a duty of care: “Isn’t it right that providers, where they’ve got children on their platform, should have the same sorts of obligations [as schools] and discharge it in a similar sort of manner? 

“So just looking at schools, we see lots and lots of parallels around what duty of care means and how providers could or should be protecting everyone - but ostensibly children - on their platforms.” 

Ms Glassbrook added: “Teachers deserve the same sort of protections and safeguarding that children do, especially in terms of their professional reputation.” 

A headteacher from the North West of England, who wished to remain anonymous, spoke to Tes about the impact of harmful content.

He revealed that the range of content being made and shared online about his school or staff was broad, ranging from posts that reference incidents in schools to those that highlight issues such as suicide or self-harm. 

He said that this issue was leading to teachers feeling too anxious to enter classrooms amid continued tension over Covid in schools.

“It’s another thing to deal with at a time when you’re already tired, feeling overworked and the strain of Covid on all members of the school community is still absolutely there,” he said.

He warned that “because of the anonymity of the nature in which you can post, there’s just no restriction on what they’re prepared to say, there’s no comeback really”. 

When one account is taken down, another one is created.

The headteacher stressed that something needs to be done, as social media “isn’t going away”.

“It’s TikTok today and it could be Snapchat tomorrow, or a new platform that gets created in a few weeks’ time.” 

The headteacher suggested that if people had to supply ID to create an account, they wouldn’t be able to hide behind the anonymity they currently get.

He has also had to create a TikTok account himself to view the harmful content his staff are reporting. 

“I’ve found myself checking daily, with a new inappropriate account being made since I looked yesterday.”  

Another teacher warned that some of the content being shared, such as insinuations that teachers have behaved inappropriately around female pupils, is “really damaging.”

“It doesn’t take much for one of these to be dramatically misinterpreted or misrepresented,” he said.

“The things that worry me are just the total inertia on the part of tech companies and government to actually deal with what is a sort of mushrooming problem that seems to explode. It’s impossible to pat down - they just find new ways around it.”

However, he does not believe that requiring ID to create social media accounts is the answer, adding that there’s nothing problematic about the accessing of apps, rather the regulation of the content that gets put out. He’s also concerned that such regulations would marginalise people who would really benefit from the internet. 

“My preferred solutions are very much aimed at the capacity of these tech giants to profit off content that is clearly malicious, slanderous or insinuating abuse or insinuating any sort of wrongdoing against teachers.”

The Association of School and College Leaders said: “Over the past couple of weeks, school staff have suffered disgraceful abuse through messages and imagery posted on the social media platform TikTok. We do not know how widespread this is but we have received over 50 reports, and we suspect there are many more.

“This material is extremely distressing for the staff who are targeted, and the young people who are posting it are involved in behaviour which could lead to them being excluded from school and, in extreme cases, being the subject of a police investigation.

“TikTok has replied to us 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 its response in more detail.”