Influx of anonymous student-run social media accounts troubling

Posted Jan. 26, 2022

By Graciela Del Rosario

Staff Editor

December saw an influx of anonymous student-run social media accounts, posting photos of students and staff parking their cars, eating, sleeping, and even using the restroom.

Located primarily on Instagram and sparked popularity through TikTok, the accounts feature photos of students and staff relating to a specific topic and publishing them with a personalized caption. The accounts either take and post the photos themselves, or they are open to direct messaging and accept the photos to post anonymously from followers. They have expanded in terms of topic in the past two months as some of the more common accounts are posting students sleeping during class, not wearing a mask or not wearing one properly, wearing different kinds of shoes during school or in the bathroom, or eating food. They advertise themselves to be somewhat harmless as the photos themselves do not tag or mention the students’ names explicitly; and if they do, the student mentioned is normally joking about it in the post’s comment section.

The alleged main inspiration of DDHS specific pages can be traced back to an account called @ddhscantpark, an Instagram page publishing photos of ill-parked cars located within all David Douglas parking lots. The cars posted never have their owners revealed, but for some students–even staff–are able to identify whose car is whose. Although the account is fairly light-hearted in concept, mixed reactions still brew. In every post, the car’s license plate is shown clearly. Posting someone’s license plate to social media is not illegal in concept, as it’s considered public information, but inciting any form of violence in the caption can hold the poster liable. Fortunely for the account, no such acts of violence have been written and all have remained light-heartd jokes, but the uneasiness still remains amongst students. Accounts like @ddhscantpark still remain on Instagram, but they’ve either lacked activeness or they’re just reposts from another page.

DDHS is not the only school dawdling in these types of pages, as other Oregon schools like LaSalle, Central Catholic, Centennial, and others have joined in with their versions. Schools across the country are taking part, and just like DDHS, they’ve remained light-hearted as some schools even do affirmation-centered pages.

“After many months of pandemic-mandated remote instruction, teenagers have come to regard such banalities as their classmates eating, slouching and parking badly as fodder for amusement—and, of course, content,” stated New York Times writer Katherine Rosman. “The students behind these accounts say they are mostly a harmless trend, predicated on the novelty of being in the same physical space as their classmates again.”