A bunch of eighth graders in a "wealthy Philadelphia suburb" recently targeted teachers with an extreme online harassment campaign that The New York Times reported was "the first known group TikTok attack of its kind by middle schoolers on their teachers in the United States."
According to The Times, the Great Valley Middle School students created at least 22 fake accounts impersonating about 20 teachers in offensive ways. The fake accounts portrayed long-time, dedicated teachers sharing "pedophilia innuendo, racist memes," and homophobic posts, as well as posts fabricating "sexual hookups among teachers."
The Pennsylvania middle school's principal, Edward Souders, told parents in an email that the number of students creating the fake accounts was likely "small," but that hundreds of students piled on, leaving comments and following the fake accounts. Other students responsibly rushed to report the misconduct, though, Souders said.
"I applaud the vast number of our students who have had the courage to come forward and report this behavior," Souders said, urging parents to "please take the time to engage your child in a conversation about the responsible use of social media and encourage them to report any instances of online impersonation or cyberbullying."
Some students claimed that the group attack was a joke that went too far. Certain accounts impersonating teachers made benign posts, The Times reported, but other accounts risked harming respected teachers' reputations. When creating fake accounts, students sometimes used family photos that teachers had brought into their classrooms or scoured the Internet for photos shared online.
Following The Times' reporting, the superintendent of the Great Valley School District (GVSD), Daniel Goffredo, posted a message to the community describing the impact on teachers as "profound." One teacher told The Times that she felt "kicked in the stomach" by the students' "savage" behavior, while another accused students of slander and character assassination. Both were portrayed in fake posts with pedophilia innuendo.
"I implore you also to use the summer to have conversations with your children about the responsible use of technology, especially social media," Goffredo said. "What seemingly feels like a joke has deep and long-lasting impacts, not just for the targeted person but for the students themselves. Our best defense is a collaborative one."
Goffredo confirmed that the school district had explored legal responses to the group attack. But ultimately the district found that they were "limited" because "courts generally protect students’ rights to off-campus free speech, including parodying or disparaging educators online—unless the students’ posts threaten others or disrupt school," The Times reported.
Instead, the middle school "briefly suspended several students," teachers told The Times, and held an eighth-grade assembly raising awareness of harms of cyberbullying, inviting parents to join.
Becky Pringle, the president of the National Education Association—which is the largest US teachers’ union—told The Times that teachers have never dealt with such harassment on this scale. Typically, The Times reported, students would target a single educator at a time. Pringle said teachers risk online harassment being increasingly normalized. That "could push educators to question" leaving the profession, Pringle said, at a time when the US Department of Education is already combating a teacher shortage.
While Goffredo said teachers had few options to fight back, he also told parents in an email that the district is "committed to working with law enforcement to support teachers who may pursue legal action."
"I reiterate my disappointment and sadness that our students’ behavior has caused such duress for our staff," Goffredo's message to the community said. "Seeing GVSD in such a prominent place in the news for behavior like this is also disheartening."
Reporting fake teacher accounts on TikTok
TikTok's community guidelines ban impersonation, except for "parody or fan-based" accounts. The platform provides paths within the app and on its website to report impersonation, requiring teachers to show ID to request a takedown.
TikTok's enforcement so far seems uneven. Some teachers told The Times that they reported fake accounts and never heard back from TikTok. Others said they were not comfortable sharing an ID with TikTok for privacy reasons and therefore never reported the fake accounts. It may be comforting to some that TikTok promises to delete the data after authenticating their identities, though.
The only accounts that seemed to be promptly removed were four fake accounts flagged by a reporter that TikTok confirmed were deleted. TikTok found that the majority of other accounts flagged were unavailable.
But in some cases, fake accounts that disappeared simply popped back up at a later date, to teachers' dismay. Some teachers have stopped posting photos online or in their classrooms out of fear of further harassment. Others are afraid to discipline students who may retaliate on TikTok.
Experts told The Times that the ongoing harassment and fear of retaliation "could harm teachers’ mental health and reputations."
Teachers' fears appear substantiated, The Times reported. Even the two young girls who were briefly suspended were not immediately dissuaded from continuing their attacks, promising in a TikTok "apology" video to resume posting new videos soon using stricter privacy settings to evade disciplinary actions.
Students delete “apology” video
The two girls who were briefly suspended likely only recently gained access to TikTok, as the platform only allows users ages 13 and up.
In June, after they'd been disciplined, they posted an apology video to TikTok, but the apology rang hollow to some, as the video was posted under a fake teacher account and claimed that teachers were making a big deal out of nothing.
“We never meant for it to get this far, obviously,” one student said, while the other told teachers to “move on" and "learn to joke."
“I am 13 years old,” the other student said, “and you’re like 40 going on 50.”
While one student insisted that she “never wanted to get suspended,” both threatened to post new videos harassing teachers soon, planning to rely on privacy settings to keep the mob attack going.
The Times report seems to have dissuaded the girls' misconduct for now, though. After the newspaper asked the school district to share its report with parents, the apology video was deleted and the teacher's name was removed from the fake account, The Times reported. The account reportedly now includes a disclaimer that said, "Guys, we’re not acting as our teachers anymore that’s in the past!!”
Goffredo told parents that the school could do very little except focus more efforts on strongly deterring the behavior ahead of the next school year.
"Over the summer, district administrators are working to identify clear and actionable ways that our already established focus on digital citizenship might be strengthened in our curriculum," Goffredo wrote in his message to the community.
He warned parents not to rely on the school district to stop the behavior entirely because students were seemingly within their rights to impersonate teachers online. Beyond limiting phone use at school, the district has little say over what students do in their free time.
"While it may be easy to react in a way that suggests that students should have been more heavily disciplined in school, some, but not all, of their behavior is protected by the right of free speech and expression," Goffredo wrote.
Reporting the behavior to TikTok could result in the most serious consequences for fans of TikTok: a ban that could trigger bans on all their other TikTok accounts. But that only happens in "the case of severe violations of our rules or engagement in circumvention behavior," TikTok's community guidelines said. That suggests that the middle schoolers would have to continually create new accounts to evade bans before TikTok may cut off their access to the platform.
Some teachers may not stick around to be harassed if it escalates that far. For a veteran Spanish teacher at the middle school, Patrice Motz, being targeted in the mob attack was "so deflating." She told The Times that after 14 years, she's losing motivation as a teacher.
“I can’t believe I still get up and do this every day,” Motz said.