Twitter and Instagram are letting kids pick (and plan) schoolyard fights even when they aren’t in class (hechingerreport.org)

In New Orleans, violence is already at profoundly high levels: 54 percent of children ages 10 to 16 have had a close friend or relative murdered and nearly 40 percent have witnessed domestic violence. And in the past few years, the increased use of social media has added a new wrinkle to the problem as virtual disputes between students turn physical.

Several school leaders, coaches and social workers across New Orleans say fistfights instigated by social media slights have become extraordinarily common, although there are no hard numbers tracking the trend. A “huge proportion” of fights have roots in social media, said Osha Sempel, a social worker who saw the phenomenon when she worked at Cohen College Prep, a high school, and sees similar patterns with the middle schoolers she works with at a Cohen sister school, Lawrence D. Crocker College Prep.

Last year, some New Orleans disciplinarians and social workers were puzzled by the number of fights that started as soon as students got off the buses in the morning. Then it became clear: when teens feud on social media at night, they arrive at school ready to fight.

Increasingly, schools that want to defuse youth flare-ups sparked on social media are turning to “restorative justice” programs that emphasize dialogue and making amends in lieu of traditional, punitive strategies like detention, suspension and expulsion.

In New Orleans, the city’s Health Department is trying to revive a program that first brought restorative justice into the public schools. Because 90 percent of New Orleans students attend schools run by independent charter operators, unified efforts at youth-violence reduction in New Orleans are most likely to emanate from City Hall.

Now, in lieu of suspension, students have a chance to go through a “restorative-justice circle,” a carefully moderated conversation that determines who was harmed by the fight and how that harm (and the overall dispute) can be resolved. Participants sign contracts pledging, for instance, that they will not grimace at each other — students call it “mean mugging” — or post mean comments or photos about others online. Students are only suspended if they don’t adhere to their contracts or refuse to participate.

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