News

Instagram fights with Auburn middle schoolers

AUBURN, Wash. — Auburn School District officials reached out to Instagram, asking the social media site to take down an account that features videos of Olympic Middle School students fighting each other, according to district officials.

As of Thursday, the page had 16 videos of students fighting other students.

Sophie Yean discovered a couple of the videos showed her 11-year-old daughter being attacked by several girls during gym class.

"They approached her with a group of friends and told her to stand up, and she says, 'No I know you guys want to fight me and I don't want to fight,'" Yean says.

The video shows several students dragging the girl and hitting her.

"They shouldn't be recording it. They shouldn't be instigating fights just so they could record it at school," Yean said.

The Auburn School District learned about the account Tuesday, and immediately reported it to Instagram, according to Vicki Alonzo with the district.

"We believe it violates their terms of service. We would really like the page taken down because we don't want kids fighting just so they can get on the page," Alonzo said.

Alonzo says a few of the videos were recorded recently, but most of them feature fights from the past.

Yean's daughter was in a fight last Thursday, the same day the video was posted.

"I'm not comfortable with her going to this school and it feels even worse now," she says.

Alonzo says several other school districts have dealt with the same problem.

0