With the rapid spread of smartphone use and the rise of shooting threats, school officials across the nation are forging their own rules on internet engagement.

The state doesn't set policy for public schools, leaving it up to districts to decide how to deal with internet and phone use in school.

In Butler County, a general consensus has been reached among several school district superintendents — mainly a mixture of internet surveillance and using social media as a community engagement tool.

For Paul Epps, safety and security director for Butler Area School District, cooperation is an important part of preventing threats and harmful online behavior.

“How do you limit a teenager? It's difficult. That's a job that has to be done at home as well,” Epps said.

“We have to remember sometimes that they're kids, and they don't always use the best judgment. Certain words spoken these days set off a lot of alarms. It's not always about intent. It's about how people perceive what you say.”

Recent local threats

Moniteau School District Superintendent Sean Arney referenced the recent shooting threats at Mars Area School District as well as the recent sentencing of 18-year-old Jason Bowen.

Bowen, a former Knoch High School student, was ordered by a judge earlier this month to stay off social media for three years for making what authorities considered a school shooting threat in January.

“I don't think we learned anything new with the Knoch school shooting threat,” Arney said. “From my lens, I don't understand how the kids don't know what negative effect this has and how quickly school and police officials will react.”

Arney pointed out the tough road ahead for Bowen.

“He just graduated, and he's got a horrible path he'll have to work through. Could that have been prevented?” Arney questioned.

Regarding the recent batch of school threats, Epps said, “You're always going to have copycats. Monitoring is important to prevent a travesty.”

Striking a balance

Occasionally monitoring takes on a less technological path: Cooperating with students in deterring harmful behavior is part of Epps' solution.

“The safety awareness factor has increased,” Epps said. “Kids are now reporting these incidents on a regular basis because it involves their friends, family.”

Arney stressed the need to strike a balance between using technology as an educational supplement, a means of communication with students and parents, and the temptation it poses for distraction and unhealthy online behavior. He and other district leaders communicate often about the challenges they face.

“We all are struggling to provide our kids with the information they need to make the right choices,” Arney said. “We're trying our best to stay as current with social media as possible, but that changes all the time.”

Crossing the line

Mars Area School District faced these problems when it received two cyberthreats this past week that led the district to take action.

On Monday, a “potentially threatening” mass email was sent to high school students. A threatening message also was found on the wall of a boys bathroom.

And on Tuesday the district received an inflammatory text message threatening violence at the middle school. The suspects were tracked down, and the threats were deemed to be without merit.

One person was arrested in each incident.

In a prepared statement, Mars Area School District Superintendent Wesley Shipley reminded parents that any student who interferes “with the educational program of the district's schools or threatens the health and safety of others will face disciplinary action,” and he warned students that authorities will get involved.

“There comes a point in time with today's society with the school shootings going on that you have to take a stand and, most times, police action is the best way to take a stand,” Epps said. “Every parent wants to see their kid return from school, and if that's what it takes to ensure safety, I'm all for it.”

New problem for districts

For veteran school officials, social media problems are a brave new world with no historical framework.

Arney noted he can't even draw on his own experience as an adolescent.

“Cellphones weren't out when I was a kid,” Arney said.

A 2018 report released by the independent research organization Common Sense Education revealed the number of teens with a smartphone skyrocketed since 2012. The report is a nationally representative survey of more than 1,000 teens, ages 13 to 17, that tracked changes from 2012 to 2018.

Data show the numbers of teens with their own smartphone more than doubled in the past six years from 41 percent in 2012 to 89 percent in 2018. And for 13- to 14-year-olds, 84 percent now have a smartphone, and 93 percent have some type of mobile device, such as a tablet.

Distraction for some students

But for Keith Moore, a 19-year-old BC3 student who went to Karns City High School, social media is a distraction, and he didn't have a smartphone until he started at Butler County Community College.

“There's so much drama on Facebook, Instagram, whatever. I don't care to get into it. A lot of it is getting so political after the last election,” Moore said. He still uses Facebook occasionally to look at humorous material but tries to limit his use.

“In high school, everybody was on social media all the time, totally absorbed,” he said. “Kids in classrooms always had their phones out.”

Moore recalled one year his high school had a bomb threat, “a waste of a day spent standing outside during evacuation.”

Moore said he may have missed out on some social connections in high school, but overall he thinks that people are being pressured to use social media because of how prevalent social media platforms have become. But in the end, he said, “it's just a bunch of people spreading their opinions.”

Irresistible force

For some teenagers, the allure of the screen is described as an irresistible force.

“I'm addicted. I use it hours a day. Even at school,” said Emma Marak, an 18-year-old senior at Butler High. “I'm always on social media. If I'm bored, I'm always on my phone.”

A peek at Marak's cellphone usage log shows she averages five hours per day on her smartphone.

Schools try to promote the use of technology in a productive way.

In the Moniteau district, Arney said students are provided with electronic devices to supplement their education.

Similarly, Seneca Valley School District has a one- to-one program for students in kindergarten through 12th grade and allows kids in fifth grade and above to take home their school-assigned laptops during the school year.

Consistent monitoring

Arney and other school officials are well aware of the ubiquity of online activity among students.

All of the school officials point out their districts use programs that surveil students' communications and online activities when they're connected to the district's network. Moniteau's online monitoring program, Bark, is an application that screens youths' devices for dangers such as cyberbullying or communication with predators.

Bark is one of several available programs that can monitor text messages, YouTube, emails and 24 social networks for potential safety concerns. The company reports it has helped prevent potential school shootings and bomb threats, while also alerting parents and school officials to thousands of potential incidents of self-harm.

“For our (limited area networks), we certainly monitor social media on our network, but when they're at home it's really concerning because there's no real way to watch them,” Arney said. “I have two teenage daughters, and we have all their accounts monitored. We know who they talk to.”

Limited area networks are computer networks that span a small geographic area and allow the administrator of the network to have more control over access.

Better understanding

Along with monitoring students' online activities, Arney said Moniteau also tries to teach students about the permanence of activity on the internet.

“A lot of it is about providing information to the kids about their (digital) footprint to understand what they do, where they go and what they post is forever. We try to explain that to them,” Arney said.

Another danger, Arney pointed out, is that students who spend large amounts of time online exhibit less connected social skills, are less productive, and are disengaged.

Slippery Rock Area School District Superintendent Alfonso Angelucci said smartphone and internet use is “a fact of life right now.”

“We use various Twitter accounts to provide information to students and parents in the community, so in that way, it's been great,” he said. “But sometimes, when it's used to spread a rumor that in the past wouldn't have spread as fast — that's the drawback.”

Angelucci said the best way to deal with these issues is to confront online problems with online solutions. If there's a teacher or school staffer familiar with the issue surrounding the rumor, that person takes to social media to rapidly dispel the rumors. Otherwise, he said, concerned teachers could always call him and get the truth.

“From Harrisville to Portersville, it's more than 100 square miles. The social media helps keep us in touch with everyone,” he said. “I think it's like anything else; if used properly, it's a good thing. It's just about being cognizant of the age level we're dealing with, (about) staff being keen listeners and helping out when they can to de-escalate before a situation reaches authorities.”