School Shootings and Adolescents: An Examination of Social Media Type and Student Emotion

Abstract

In the past decade, social media has gained substantial amounts of popularity and usage. Platforms are playing a large role as a source of news media in the United States, affecting major national events like school shootings. School shootings are at an all-time high, leading researchers to wonder if this is a consequence of the development of news media impacting factors such as the copycat effect. News media and its role in portraying different forms of school shooting content have yet to be studied on the emotional influence of teenagers, prompting this research to evaluate the following question: What is the emotional influence of different types of social media content, regarding school shootings, on teenagers? Using a mixed method approach this study comprised data indicating that negative content, such as that categorized as violent/comedic, had a significant relationship with teens' feelings of emotionlessness. Content categorized as educational had a significant relationship with teens’ feelings of empathy. Content that was found on social media apps, such as TikTok, that had platform regulations indicated less of an emotional influence on teenagers, prompting the researcher to suggest that regulations should be further enforced on social media platforms to prevent the spread of media with harmful emotional effects on teens, and prevent portrayal of school shootings in a manner that may lead to an increase of copycat communities, or school shootings.