Let me paint you a picture. You’re back in high school and you’re doomscrolling in your childhood bedroom when a TikTok featuring your third-period science teacher pops up. She’s showing her outfits for the week or showing her lesson plans and projects she wants to assign. The posts are overall benign, but they still leave a bad taste in your mouth.
Social media has become a major part of every person’s life. Even if you’re not on it, you’re witnessing the effect it has on Gen Z and Gen Alpha. TikTok, in particular, has taken the world by storm and has made it possible for anyone to get some form of notoriety or become an influencer, regardless of their chosen career path.
“TeacherTok,” or the teacher corner of TikTok, has been growing more and more popular, featuring both the good and the bad sides of being in education. This community has allowed young teachers, in particular, to find others with similar experiences.
While the posts aren’t outright nefarious, especially if the teachers are mindful of what they are posting, one has to think of the optics of it all.
Students shouldn’t have so much access to their teachers, and students being able to find them anywhere outside of the classroom blurs that tenuous line between “leader of the classroom” and “student.”
Teachers are supposed to guide and lead their students, but if they post on social media, that could cause their roles to lose the credibility and respect necessary for them to effectively do their jobs.
In the age of the internet, these boundaries are even more important to avoid any parasocial relationships. When you view so much of a person’s life on social media, it is easy to pretend to know them, even if that is obviously not the case.
When kids are as impressionable as they are, it is easier for them to fall into this trap. If a third grader starts to see their teacher as a friend rather than a mentor, it will do nothing but disrupt the order of things.
In addition, some teachers have begun to include students in their posts.
While a few teachers include disclaimers that they have the consent of parents or guardians, not all of them do, and as a result, students are being exposed in a public space without their permission. Some of these kids are as young as five years old and are being shown off by someone who should be a mentor and a safe space for them to grow and learn.
And, because it’s the internet, there are thousands of creeps ready to watch each and every clip.
It would be naive to say this wouldn’t happen. Even if the students’ faces aren’t shown, I wouldn’t be surprised if these creeps found a way to find the schools these videos are filmed at or even find information about the students.
This exploitation of students ultimately just puts them in danger and gives more access to the worst of the internet’s users.
Posting on TikTok is one thing, but teachers have also been caught creating OnlyFans accounts, which feature adult entertainment and other types of X-rated content. Although students aren’t necessarily watching the videos, these teachers are in charge of molding their minds into the best version of themselves, and I could not trust someone on OnlyFans to do the job.
This is an extreme that the majority of teachers on social media aren’t a part of, but if we give an inch, I wouldn’t be surprised if they took a mile. Teacher pay has historically been too low to live off of without a second income. Teachers might turn to these outlets in hopes of keeping up with the growing cost of living and other monetary challenges life likes to throw at us.
The online community of teachers, however, isn’t all bad. The posts oftentimes offer advice for new teachers or suggestions and ideas that anyone could use. If it’s your first year in education, these posts might help you with what to wear or what to do when the kids are not listening to you, and could save you from making the same mistakes as your predecessors.
In the long run, I think “TeacherTok” could be great if it were kept out of classrooms and away from students because, at the end of the day, the students and their education are the priority, and if social media gets in the way of that, it is not worth it.
