How far will people go for more followers?
According to the Dallas Morning News, a 13-year-old middle school student in Dallas, Texas posted a photo on Instagram of an unidentified man holding a gun, threatening to kill everyone at the school. Dallas Independent School District Police Chief Craig Miller said the girl told officers she found the photo of the man pointing a gun on Google and shared it on Instagram to see how many followers she could get.
CBS DFW reports that part of the caption on the photo said, “Everybody at T.W. Browne Middle School is gonna die. I’m going to kill everybody, even 6th and 7th graders.”
“The minor could face two to 10 years in prison and a fine of $10,000 if convicted of making a terroristic threat against her school,” Cosmopolitan reports. Definitely not worth getting a few more followers on Insta.
The post was shared multiple times and was not posted from the girl’s own device.
The Dallas Morning News reports that terroristic threats on social media have gone way up in the last few years just in Texas, which probably means they’ve been going up around the country as well. Pretty disturbing that even middle schoolers are learning how to do it. Social media may seem like a place where you can post anonymously and get away with anything, but as we’ve seen in this instance and also in Washington, making a threat on social media can have serious consequences. So if you see anything weird, even just on Yik Yak or Instagram—don’t be afraid to report it.