Phone-Fueled Fights

Ricardo Martinez was in his high school lunchroom last April when a big fight broke out.

He watched, horrified. A dozen teenage boys raged through the cafeteria, hitting and kicking one another. Tables and chairs were overturned. Other students jeered and tried to film the fight on their phones.

“It was like a stampede of videos,” says Ricardo, now 18 and a senior. “Everyone was trying to get the best angle.”

But the chaos at Revere High School in Revere, Massachusetts, was just beginning. Within minutes, students in other parts of the building began receiving text messages about the fight. Suddenly dozens of excited teenagers started racing down hallways and running down stairways with their phones to film the fight.

To stop more people from entering the cafeteria, Revere High posted staff members in front of the lunchroom entrances. They issued a “hold” order to keep students in their classrooms. Administrators called the police to help restore calm. The school said 17 students involved in the fight were suspended.

Across the United States, smartphone technology has increased and, sometimes, intensified campus brawls. These fights disrupt school and learning. The school fight videos often spark new cycles of student cyberbullying, verbal aggression, and violence.

The New York Times investigated the problem in more than a dozen states, including Massachusetts, California, Georgia, and Texas. The investigation found a pattern of middle and high school students exploiting phones and social media to arrange and provoke fights. The footage of brutal beatings among students was then captured and shared. In several cases, students later died from the injuries.

Technology has increasingly fostered and intensified every stage of this aggression. The arguments often begin with student cyberbullying or perceived online disrespect among friends. This prompts in-person squabbles during school, educators and police officers say. Then classmates start filming and putting pressure on quarreling students to brawl. Students later share and comment on the fight clips. The comments further humiliate the victims and sometimes trigger additional fights.

That violence has cut across some of the nation’s largest school districts, including in Los Angeles; Buffalo; Jefferson County, Kentucky; and Prince George’s County, Maryland, as well as in smaller school systems.

In some cases, the cycle of violence has overwhelmed the schools. Some districts now face negligence lawsuits from parents. Teachers are also leaving dangerous districts. Dozens of districts have sued social media firms. They say that the platforms’ “addictive” features caused compulsive student use, disrupting learning and burdening school resources.

School administrators say they now spend a significant portion of their jobs working to prevent or untangle tech-stoked student beefs.

“Cellphones and technology are the number one source of soliciting fights, advertising fights, documenting—and almost glorifying—fights by students,” says Kelly Stewart, an assistant principal at Juneau-Douglas High School in Juneau, Alaska. “It is a huge issue.”

Since the beginning of social media in the 2000s, students have used social networks to plan and start school violence. Over the past decade, higher-quality phone cameras and new social features, like Instagram Live and Reels, have helped teenagers mass-produce, stream, and share videos—including school fight clips.

By 2020, dedicated fight video accounts had popped up on Instagram and TikTok. The accounts use the names or initials of middle and high schools. Sometimes students staged fights among themselves and invited friends to film. Others attacked unsuspecting peers.

During the pandemic, many students became more reliant on messaging and social apps—and less comfortable with real-life interactions. Principals and teachers said some students also developed difficulties controlling their emotions. Psychologists call it “emotional dysregulation.”

In 2021, many districts reopened for in-person learning. Some schools saw increases in student fights, aggression, and cyberbullying. At Los Angeles public schools, reports of student fights more than doubled—to nearly 4,800 incidents in the 2023 school year, compared with 2,315 fights in 2018, according to a district safety report.

Masses of students filming also endanger peers, says Chris Heagarty, the school board chair at the Wake County Public School System in Cary, North Carolina. In November 2023, he says, students recording a fight in a high school gym blocked administrators from intervening. Two boys were stabbed. One, a 15-year-old, later died. A video of the brawl, posted on X last February, got more than 660,000 views.

“So many students were crowded around recording on their phones, posting to social media, trying to get the best pictures, putting themselves and others in harm’s way,” Heagarty says.

Last April, Wake County schools—the nation’s 14th-largest school district—filed a lawsuit accusing Instagram, TikTok, and other platforms of negligence and interfering with school operations.

TikTok said that it doesn’t allow  the promotion of violence. It proactively works to remove content showing violent activities. Snap said it prohibited graphic violence and proactively removed accounts posting violent content.

Meta, which owns Instagram, said the platform doesn’t allow bullying. They also remove content depicting physical bullying. In November, Instagram took down 16 school fight accounts, flagged by The New York Times, for violating company policies.

Young people’s fast-changing tech habits have made it harder to prevent and contain student aggression, school officials say.

“Now students might be arguing with each other or bullying each other for days or weeks online, which is hidden from the staff who would typically work to de-escalate the conflicts,” Christopher Bowen, the principal of Revere High in Massachusetts, wrote in an email.

Many schools don’t have a playbook for addressing that violence or for helping pupils engage more positively online because few researchers are studying the issue, says Desmond Upton Patton, a University of Pennsylvania professor who studies social media and gang violence.

“What would it mean,” Patton says, “for a young person to understand that clowning around and filming the beating of a friend or a classmate could lead to their death?”

Students say that use of text messages, social media, and videos to spread violence is becoming a regular part of school.

“Kids are very used to it,” says Lunna Guerrero, 16, a 10th-grader at Revere High. “Kids don’t see it as something so surprising as the adults do.”

Others worry that the videos desensitize students to violence.

“The fights just immediately become entertainment,” says Endurance Nkeh, 17, a senior at Revere High. “There’s not an ounce of guilt or empathy.”

In August, ahead of the new school year at Revere High, Principal Bowen announced a new “phone free” learning policy requiring students to keep their cellphones off during the school day, except for lunch. But on the third day of classes, before the school had begun enforcing the new phone rules, another hallway fight erupted, this time among a group of boys.

Amid the chaos, student videos show, one boy slammed an assistant principal into lockers, sending her crumpling to the floor.

Experts say that student use of tech to spread school violence has led to other harms. In particular, educators and police officers say, social media influencers and TV newscasts often broadcast school fight videos, distressing students and causing further chaos in the hallways.

Last May, several girls planning an attack on a peer at a middle school in Novato, California, made an Instagram video discussing who would serve as a lookout or guard their backpacks during the beating, says Lieutenant Alan Bates, with the Novato Police Department.

Video clips of the assault, which aired on local TV newscasts, showed several girls pummeling another as she lay on the ground, while a crowd of students hooted and filmed. The Novato police later charged eight girls, aged 12 to 14, with conspiracy to commit assault. Four also faced felony assault charges.

Says Bates of the Novato Police Department: “The aggression begins in technology, continues through the technology in the planning for the fights, and comes to a head in physical confrontation.”

In August, ahead of the new school year at Revere High, Principal Bowen announced a new “phone free” learning policy. Students are required to keep their cellphones off during the school day, except for lunch. But on the third day of classes, another hallway fight among a group of boys erupted. The school had not yet begun enforcing the new phone rules.

Amid the chaos, student videos show, one boy slammed an assistant principal into lockers. She fell to the floor.

Experts say that student use of tech to spread school violence has led to other harms. In particular, educators and police officers say, social media influencers and TV newscasts often broadcast school fight videos. This distresses students more and can cause further chaos in the hallways.

Last May, several girls were planning an attack on a peer at a middle school in Novato, California. They made an Instagram video discussing who would serve as a lookout or guard their backpacks during the beating, says Lieutenant Alan Bates with the Novato Police Department.

Video clips of the assault aired on local TV newscasts. They showed several girls hitting another as she lay on the ground. A crowd of students hooted and filmed nearby. The Novato police later charged eight girls, aged 12 to 14, with conspiracy to commit assault. Four also faced felony assault charges.

Says Bates of the Novato Police Department: “The aggression begins in technology, continues through the technology in the planning for the fights, and comes to a head in physical confrontation.”

Natasha Singer covers technology for The New York Times.

Natasha Singer covers technology for The New York Times.