For years, school shootings have been a public issue – the most notable being the Parkland High School shooting in 2018 – but they have recently become an even more significant threat. Students from middle to high school have made threats towards the safety of their peers, both in a joking manner and seriously. This has left students, teachers, and parents alike afraid.
Following the September 4th shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, Floridian kids as young as eleven years old began expressing threats to shoot up their school. According to FOX 35 Orlando, a student from Creekside Middle School in Port Orange was arrested on September 16th for joking about shooting kids at his school. It was later found that he had a notebook full of potential targets.
Jessica Jenkins, AP and Honors United States History teacher, believes that social media has a large role to play in the amount of school shooting threats.
“Historically, there tends to be an uptick after any major incident. Social media is increasing the ease and spread of such threats,” Jenkins said.
Three Florida middle schools received shooting threats via social media. WESH 2 News states that two students attending Heritage Middle School were arrested for threatening the safety of their fellow students. The media outlet also reported that a student at Cocoa Beach Jr. Sr. High School electronically threatened his peers. A young girl attending Buddy Taylor Middle School made a threat on Instagram, telling peers to “be prepared to die” featuring gun and knife emojis, according to WESH 2 News.
Two Seminole County schools received threats within the same week. At Lake Brantley, a student was found possessing an unloaded gun while on campus (Lockdown lifted at Lake Brantley High School after student found with gun on campus, officials say). This occurred on Wednesday, September 11th. The following day, September 12th, a Seminole High School student texted a friend saying he wanted to shoot students at their school (Sanford police arrest 15-year-old who allegedly threatened to commit a school shooting), the second threat the school had faced in 2024.
As the amount of threats increases, so does the anxiety among students, staff, and parents alike. Taylor Byron, English II teacher, believes gun-related threats have changed the way students go to school. Instead of going to learn new and interesting things, they are now plagued with a constant fear for their safety.
“A school should be somewhere safe for students to learn, not to be worrying about threats of danger every day,” Byron said. “The same goes for the faculty members at these schools. This is a serious matter, regardless of if the threat is meant as a ‘joke,’ and it’s tragic that it’s happening so often.”
In order to prevent these threats from becoming reality, security has increased around schools. Locked doors, resource officers, and strongly encouraging kids to alert the authorities if a peer even jokes about violent actions towards the school all exist to protect the students.
Mannat Bakshi, junior, believes that these measures may not be enough.
“They can add as many security guards as possible,” Bakshi said. “They are just going to make school more miserable for kids, because they are going to hate school more and they will pull more shenanigans like the last ones.”
One such precaution is allowing an armed “guardian” to be on campus. The idea of this is to discourage students from making decisions that could endanger their peers. Jaylean Lajoie, junior, believes that this will do nothing but cause further conflict and will not make them feel safer.
“Solving violence with more violence will do nothing but increase potential consequences,” Lajoie said.
Many people believe parents have the best opportunity to prevent the frequency of these threats from increasing. By limiting access to social media, having serious conversations about actions and consequences, and discussing the importance of school safety, students will be less likely to resort to violence when faced with challenges.
Jenkins favors the idea of openly communicating with children about school safety and the impact words have on people.
“Parents need to have an open dialogue with their students about appropriate conversations around school safety,” she said. “And they need to understand that it is not how you meant to say something, but rather how your words are interpreted by those around you.”
Byron agrees that having difficult conversations could significantly reduce the amount of school shooting threats, but she also thinks that limiting social media access could solve a lot of issues.
“I think parents monitoring social media access, limiting the amount of time on social media, and having serious conversations about the severity of these threats and the importance of safety will all help prevent their children from making threats,” Byron said.
Protected by the Second Amendment, American citizens have every right to keep firearms to protect themselves. However, as children begin to exercise this right, students say they fear and prepare for the worst everyday.
“Guns are an American right, but killing innocent children isn’t,” said Lajoie.
