In recent months, the introduction of school-centered accounts on social media has influenced the campus heavily.  Unfortunately, these accounts draw a fine line between their positive and negative influences. 

These social media accounts sometimes influence the school in a positive way, spreading light-heartedness, positivity and awareness to the entire student body.

Peshsnoozers is an unnecessary account, but it creates content that provides light-hearted jokes from all around school. Catching photos of your friends sleeping and seeing them on social media can make someone’s day for the simple fact that it is meant to make people laugh. This page is meant to invoke a sense of silliness throughout the school day to redirect the focus of students from the harsh school environment to a fun page of their peers sleeping in random positions, whether it be a real nap or a purposeful pose of someone sleeping. Stress and anxiety invoked from the school day can be forgotten when seeing a page such as peshsnoozers that doesn’t invoke malicious comments from students. 

An impactful and positive account to highlight is pesh_compliments, an account where students can send in compliments to specific people, and then those compliments are posted for those people to see. This account encourages kind thoughts to students and their peers anonymously. There are rules set in place by the owner of this account to prevent any mean or hateful comments; compliments will not be posted that are backhanded, embarrassing, uncomfortable or that reveal personal information. If someone has a problem with a compliment posted, they can digitally message the owner to delete it as soon as possible. This account promotes positivity through their page and their updates and through the content they share, even if everyone does not have a social media account.

 The planoeastgeese anonymously-run account is a prime example of how we can use social media as an uplifting tool with something as simple as the geese that roam the campus. These geese garnered attention last year when baby geese hatched, and have since managed to keep students’ eyes on them. Not only did it start as a fun page to entertain students with pictures of these geese, but it also found ways to spread awareness about issues within the school and the community. With controversy spreading throughout the campus about sexual assault and other intense subjects, these accounts, whether they are spreading light-hearted jokes, awareness or kindness, also shed light on prevalent issues. Planoeastgeese and peshsnoozers opened up about sexual assault and spread awareness through their page before and after the protest on Feb. 18. Before the protest, the information given through other students was posted on their pages, advocating for the attendance to this protest. After the protest, videos and pictures were posted in an effort to show the turnout of this event and demonstrate the importance of this issue throughout schools, specifically Plano East.

For the campus, we have these accounts that spread positivity, but there are those accounts like peshuglycars and peshrants that contribute to the negativity around school by hurting the feelings of others, no matter the intent of the account. Peshuglycars is an account that calls people out for the kind of car they have, exposing it for its “ugliness,” but contrary to that opinion, no one can control what car they have. Most students pay for their own car or use their parents, so degrading people for what kind of car they have is extremely insensitive and unnecessary. Peshrants is an account that has negative effects due to its unnecessary confrontation. With peshrants, people can send in complaints they have about fellow peers, and the owner posts these as a way for people to see the issues and drama at the school between students. While in the beginning, it wasn’t a big deal and it was somewhat light-hearted, students began sending in inappropriate comments and complaints about both students and teachers.  Along with their negative impact, these accounts contribute to cyberbullying due to the fact that they call out people for their flaws, whether it is the account maker or other people in the comments calling them out. 

Negative and positive accounts flourish on social media that represent the school as a whole. These negative platforms have long-lasting damage due to their everlasting posts. While the posts may be deleted, there is an inevitability of people seeing them before they are taken down and even if taken down, screenshots exist and those can last for a long time. The positive and awareness-spreading accounts are inclusive and should be recognized for the aid they provide to the students who view these pages.