Instagram working with schools to take action against bullying, gossip accounts

For years, educators and parents have implored Instagram to address student bullying and harassment that often starts on the company's platform and later shows up in the classroom.

Now the platform, which is owned by Meta, is rolling out a program that allows educators to directly report safety issues like bullying directly to Instagram.

The Schools Partnership program will launch with a pilot that's open to all middle and high schools in the U.S. The International Society for Technology in Education, a nonprofit that focuses on edtech, and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, helped develop the initiative.

When participating schools report content or accounts to Instagram that may violate the platform's community standards, those reports are prioritized for review. Additionally, Instagram will provide status updates and notifications once the platform takes action.

The program requires schools to have an Instagram account and provides them with a profile banner to indicate that they're an official platform partner.

Meta told Mashable that schools that have tested the program so far have typically designated a single administrator, like an assistant principal, to receive relevant safety reports and then share them with Instagram. Per Meta's policy, official school accounts should be run by school officials, not by a parent-teacher organization volunteers.

The process of reporting — and quickly resolving — Instagram-related harassment and bullying has been a key concern of educators and parents in recent years.

In October 2022, the American Federation of Teachers, a union representing 1.7 million educators in the U.S., partnered with the nonprofit organization ParentsTogether to demand that Instagram take gossip accounts seriously.

A petition sponsored by AFT and ParentsTogether asked Instagram to enforce the platform's community guidelines "by taking down all accounts that solely or primarily feature bullying content" and prioritize bullying and harassment reports made by verified school accounts.

Nicholas Perrone, principal of Edgewood Magnet School in New Haven, Conn., praised Instagram's new program after testing it prior to the official launch.

"Instagram listened to these reports and took them seriously," Perrone said in a statement shared with Mashable. He noted that the school had alerted Instagram about cases of bullying or harassment, online violence, and imposter accounts. "What's more, it led to a decrease in negative online content that could have resulted in serious safety concerns for our students."

Meta said in its announcement that middle and high schools can sign up for a waitlist to join the program via their Instagram settings, by selecting "account type and tools" or "business tools and controls." They can also learn more and sign up for the waitlist on Instagram's website.