‘Social media, video games fuel gun violence’

Lack of communication with students, as well as addiction to social media and video games, is what is contributing to increasing gun violence in schools, US teachers have said.

Educators of US-based schools spoke at the Global Education and Skills Forum, where they addressed how they were tackling the issue of gun violence in their schools.

The US is facing a major challenge with an increase in gun violence within schools. On February 14, 2018, there was a mass shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where 17 students and staff members died. One of the survivors, Sydney Aiello, took her own life this week due to posttraumatic stress disorder.

In 2012, a total of 27 people died at the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

Nadia Lopez, school principal of the Mott Bridges Academy and founding member of the National Coalition of Safe Schools, spoke about her experience, noting that her school is located in a neighbourhood that has nearly 40 different gangs.

“Part of the issue is that we’re not looking at what’s going on with people themselves. A lot of it has to do with values, self-esteem, feeling hurt and accepted. Social media becomes a community and that’s not what people are really paying attention to. This need to be liked, to be accepted in the world — so what we put online gets us likes and makes us feel good, but when that doesn’t happen, we don’t feel good,” Lopez said.

“Just imagine when a child goes to school: Online, they may have a lot of posts and people are liking it, or they have a community of like-minded people. Then, they go to school and they’re not part of a clique, it makes them feel that they are not accepted, which causes depression, creates doubt, makes them angry. “Then, they play these games and they see the players reacting violently to things, it creates a shift in their brain where they start to believe that it’s the only way they can be heard.”

Lopez said her students face life-threatening situations when they go to and from their school because of the gang-related activities. Another teacher, Brian Copes — a founding member of the National Coalition of Safe Schools — said placing metal detectors outside of schools is not a sustainable solution to gun violence.

He said figuring out why violence is happening in the first place. “Collectively, we are not only concerned with solving the gun crime problem, we are also looking at the fundamental question as to why these crimes are continuing to happen. I won’t pretend to be an expert on the topic, but I also don’t want to sit back and wait for someone else to do something about the problem.

“In the US last year, we averaged one school shooting per week, and they are happening everywhere, both in the countryside and in the city — this is real tragedy,” he said.

“We’re not going to solve the problem overnight but, at least, we can collaborate — one such example being the establishment of the National Coalition of Safe Schools. Prevalence in the US is most definitely driven by our constitution and our citizens’ right to own arms. But on top of this, the situation is becoming more complex globally, in part due to the growing popularity of violent video games.”