But rather than comments whispered in hallways, students frequently share those juicy nuggets through anonymous online 鈥溾�� accounts on Facebook and Instagram that much of the student body follows religiously.

鈥淧eople will be talking about it, like, 鈥楧id you just see the new confession?鈥� 鈥� said Samantha Farrow, a junior at Stuy.

Many confessions are harmless 鈥� complimenting a classmate鈥檚 smile or admitting apprehension about prom 鈥� but others target and bully students. In Farrow鈥檚 freshman year, a post called her and two peers overweight and unattractive. Dozens of students came to their defense, she said, reassuring them the insult was completely untrue. But still, the post affected her.

鈥淚 was mad and I was upset,鈥� Farrow remembered. 鈥淚t was very degrading to my self-esteem as a 14-year old.鈥�

Accounts like Stuy Confessions are hardly rare, students across the country report. Though the pages , lockdown may have increased their popularity and influence as teens lost the ability to connect in person for months on end.

When schools en masse shifted online, much of young people鈥檚 socializing also migrated into virtual spaces like Discord servers, Google Hangouts and TikTok. Now two years later, even as pandemic restrictions have fallen across the country, many online communities remain, students say, and impact K-12 classrooms in ways that adults fail to understand.

鈥淚t鈥檚 really going over [educators鈥橾 heads,鈥� Farrow told 社区黑料. 鈥淪o much stuff happens on Facebook and Instagram, the confessions accounts, and they have no idea.鈥�

鈥淲hat people post on social media kinda seeps into the classroom,鈥� she added.

In fall 2021, when Diego Camacho鈥檚 Los Angeles high school returned to in-person learning, students began taking pictures of their peers 鈥� sometimes eating, sometimes of their shoes under the bathroom stall 鈥� and posting them online anonymously without consent, he told 社区黑料. 

He and other students 鈥渨ere constantly looking over our shoulders, looking around when we ate and some [of us] refused to use the bathroom out of fear [we] would end up on the pages,鈥� said the high school senior. 

It took school administration two months to shut down the account, he said. While the page was active, it 鈥渃reated a lot of distrust between students,鈥� said Camacho.

At Mia Miron鈥檚 middle school in nearby Pomona, California, Instagram pages of a similar style continue to pop up despite old accounts getting banned on numerous occasions, she said. With page titles based on the phrase 鈥淟orbeer Lookalikes,鈥� a play on their school鈥檚 name, users send photos they took of classmates to the accounts via direct message, and the page administrator then posts the images without indicating who submitted them.

鈥淚 just followed it to make sure nobody that I know would get hurt by not knowing their photo was on there,鈥� explained Miron. 

Twice, the accounts have shared pictures of her sitting at her desk. The eighth grader doesn鈥檛 know who runs the account, she said, and did not give consent for those images to be posted. 

鈥淚 wouldn’t like my photo to be on there without my permission,鈥� she told 社区黑料.

While Miron says she hasn鈥檛 taken the posts personally, a friend of hers was cyberbullied on the page, she said, which took a toll on the middle schooler鈥檚 mental health. 

社区黑料 spoke with eight students in 6th through 12th grade and one college student about their experience of social media鈥檚 impact on education post-COVID. Most agreed that lockdown initially forced them to lean more heavily on online platforms to stay connected with peers and that some of those habits have since stuck around.

But the proliferation of online content and connection has also delivered some positive effects, students emphasized.

Kota Babcock, a senior at Colorado State University, said his roommate joined a pandemic Discord server they still use for weekly horror movie screenings. High schooler Ameera Eshtewi, of Portland, Oregon, hones her programming skills as a member of the online community . And Joshua Oh, a Gambrills, Maryland middle schooler, said Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter helped him and his peers quickly spread the word to wear pink in support of victims of an alleged sexual assault at a nearby high school.

Circulated within Oh鈥檚 student body, a satirical TikTok account pokes fun without crossing a line, the teen said. The 鈥渟lander鈥� page posts videos about students and teachers that he finds 鈥渇unny when they are true.鈥�

One of a cowboy coughing heavily and falling down on a train track is captioned, 鈥淲hat Lois thinks will happen if she doesn鈥檛 have gum for 00000.1 seconds.鈥� Another video with the caption 鈥淏randon trying to convince his ex to take him back鈥� features a man in the rain to a Lil Nas X song. 

In a key difference from the pages at Miron and Camacho鈥檚 schools, none of the videos include images of actual students. 

And in Pomona, as a counter to some of the online toxicity within Miron鈥檚 middle school, a student also created a school-based TikTok account featuring an 鈥渁ppreciation post for the girls that got put down on that other Lorbeer account.鈥� The pictures students鈥� smiling faces set to B.o.B鈥檚 Nothing on You.

Instagram and other social media can have degrading effects on youth mental health, including eating disorders and suicidal ideation, particularly for teen girls bombarded with unhealthy body image standards. Facebook (now Meta), Instagram鈥檚 parent company, has tracked the harms for years, internal documents reported by the , but implemented few measures to curb the addictiveness of its app, as teen users have driven much of its popularity.

Even when students use accounts to uplift each other, ZaNia Stinson, a high school student in Charlotte, North Carolina, said that she and her peers鈥� dependence on social media often makes them less present IRL 鈥� in real life. 

Teachers often collect phones during class, she said, and when the devices get returned afterward, 鈥渨e don鈥檛 pay attention in the halls so we bump into people, like our heads are glued to [our] phones.鈥�

During free periods at Stuyvesant, said Farrow, students will often sit next to each other in the hallway without saying a word, just scrolling. The tendency, she believes, to ignore human contact in favor of digital has worsened since COVID. From time to time, she herself pulls up Instagram during class without the teacher knowing, she admits.

Yet one online outlet has provided consistent solace for her since early in the pandemic. In June 2020, the high schooler created a Twitter stan account, or fan account, for K-pop megastars BTS, who she jokingly described as her 鈥渂iggest passion in life.鈥� She has fun chatting with other fans of the group and appreciates the low stakes because she doesn鈥檛 know any of the other users in real life, she said.

Social media is 鈥渁 good outlet if you know how to use it the right way,鈥� said Farrow. 鈥淏ut I don鈥檛 think a lot of people do.鈥�

This story was brought to you via 社区黑料鈥檚 Student Council initiative, an effort to boost youth voices in our reporting. America鈥檚 Promise Alliance helped in the recruiting of our diverse 11-member council and the idea was conceived as part of Asher Lehrer-Small’s Poynter-Koch Media and Journalism Fellowship.