Class War: School fight videos show violent new trend in NSW

‘Class War’: A terrifying trend of Instagram profiles promoting schoolyard violence has exploded online, as parents uncover shocking attacks against their children. SEE THE VIDEO.

NSW children are filming each other in vicious schoolyard bashings and posting them online in a bid to gain likes, with The Daily Telegraph uncovering hundreds of videos on Instagram pages dedicated to the violent school fight club craze.

Disturbing footage shows children being thrown to the ground, kicked and punched unconscious with parenting and cyber experts slamming tech giant Meta for enabling the harmful content to flourish on its platforms for up to four years.

Videos of the brawls show students from both public and private schools across the state often fighting in their uniforms on school grounds as their classmates laugh and cheer them on.

One shocking video shows an altercation between two teenage girls at a school in Dubbo, with one grabbing the other’s hair and slamming her to the ground before kicking her in the face.

Former teacher and specialist cyber psychologist Jocelyn Brewer said the violent videos, which generate thousands of likes and comments on Instagram, were a desperate bid for notoriety, calling it a “localised version of celebrity culture”.

Two girls brawl in a NSW schoolyard.

The attack continues as one of the girls falls to the ground.

“Kids want to see their friends, who have established alpha personalities, fighting online,” she said.

“These aggressors that we see in these violent schoolyard fights are benefiting from popularity and getting gratification from the fact that these assaults are being filmed and engaged with online – so their reaction is to continue these acts of violence.

“Meanwhile, adolescent audiences are hungry for content, and the footage they resonate with is violent videos that can be shared from the school playground.”

The fight club accounts, created on Instagram, encourage students to upload footage of school scraps and tell followers not to report the activity.

Meta has come under fire for being too slow in proactively identifying harmful content and removing it.

The videos displayed on an Instagram account promoting school yard fights.

University of NSW cybersecurity lecturer Shabnam Kasra said repeated exposure to the schoolyard bashings posed a definite risk to children’s mental health.

“There is a direct correlation between the increased publication of videos featuring violent attacks on young people and increased rates of suicide in young people,” she said.

“It is horrific that children need to deal with this exposure to violence in real life, and then be forced to relive their attack on social media every day, for the rest of their lives.”

Another harrowing video from a school on the Central Coast shows two teenage boys fighting in a school stairwell, with one copping a punch to the head which knocks him unconscious. He drops to the concrete ground as his classmates continue to film.

Parenting expert Justin Coulson says social media algorithms reward harmful content.

In Gunnedah, as one child holds a mobile phone recording and dozens gather to watch, a female student attacks an 11-year-old girl, repeatedly punching her in the head and kicking her as she curls up into a ball on the ground.

Similar incidents have unfolded in front of dozens of students at schools across the state.

But despite clear violations of Meta’s community guidelines, which prohibit graphic violence, abuse and bullying, many of of the profiles remained public on Instagram for months and years – in one case since March 2019.

Dozens of videos have since been taken down by Instagram following enquiries from The Daily Telegraph.

Dr Kasra said social media giants would not voluntarily spend funds to remove the videos without the prompt of users.

“From a resource standpoint, it isn’t beneficial for them,” she said.

One of the videos shows a student under attack ...

... before they run into a classroom for help.

Parenting expert Justin Coulson said social media algorithms too often “rewarded” dangerous content.

“Whatever platform, and they’re on all of them, the nature of the content is shock value,” Dr Coulson said.

“These platforms – TikTok, Snapchat, Meta, whichever – absolutely play a part in this issue and have to bear responsibility. (They are) not morally immune.”

He called on the tech companies to make better use of AI to identify violent videos and take them down as soon as they are posted and use algorithms to vote down harmful content.

“It would minimise people’s capacity to share this type of violent content and the onus would also be on them to post non-harmful content,” he said.

Dr Kasra said TikTok used algorithms and artificial intelligence to “almost immediately remove violative content from the platform”.

Instagram has been found to be a haven for school fight profiles depicting violent assaults. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Nicholas Eagar

Federal eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant said social-media platforms “have a responsibility” to rapidly remove the material themselves, as well as clamp down on repeat offenders.

“Technology companies also need to be doing more to prevent recidivism, where users who have been banned for abusive behaviour are able to create new accounts and continue to abuse their targets,” she said.

The eSafety commissioner has the power to compel online service providers to remove seriously harmful content within 24 hours.

She said eSafety had received reports relating to school fight videos and had acted quickly to remove them.

“For children who have unwillingly appeared in videos like these, the knowledge other people have seen them being physically attacked can be deeply distressing and humiliating, adding to the trauma of the initial assault,” she said.

Australian eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant says school fight videos are ‘deeply distressing’ for the victims. Picture: Jonathan Ng

A Meta spokesman told The Daily Telegraph it did not tolerate “bullying and harassment or content that glorifies violence on Instagram”.

“We strongly encourage everyone to report this kind of content using our reporting tools,” he said.

He said Meta had reviewed all school fight profiles identified by The Daily Telegraph and had “taken action against all of them for violating our policies”.

The company also said it had removed more than 6.6 million pieces of content relating to bullying and harassment from Instagram, with dedicated contact channels for police and the eSafety Commissioner.