The pollsters checked in with America.
This is America: Poll finds a nation more eager to protect kids from TikTok than school shootings
Where “won’t someone think of the children?” meets “thoughts and prayers.”
The Minnesota Star Tribune
March 22, 2024 at 2:16AM
America is not OK.
The latest, from Grinnell College in Iowa, finds a nation more eager to protect kids from TikTok than school shootings.
Consensus is rare in this country these days, but a March survey of 1,005 U.S. adults found broad support for the idea of protecting children from the potential dangers of social media.
Protecting children from the very real danger of a school shooting? Not so much.
Ban smartphones at school? Ban children younger than 16 from using social media? Let parents sue social media platforms for content that harms their children? Those sound like great and effective ideas to a majority of respondents. Even the phone thing, which just seems like it would make after-school scheduling an absolute nightmare for millions of families.
Ban the sale of assault rifles? Raise the firearm purchase age to 21? Charge parents with negligence if their child shoots up a school? Bring even MORE guns into school in the form of armed guards or armed teachers?
Nah. The majority doubted that any of these precautions would protect children from being gunned down in their own classrooms. Classrooms where kindergartners run active shooter drills and sing the lockdown song to the tune of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.”
I’m so sorry, children. But this is America, where “won’t somebody please think of the children?” meets “thoughts and prayers.”
It’s March 2024 and already there have been at least 10 school shootings that led to injury or death, by Education Week’s count.
The first of the year was just south of us, in Perry, Iowa, where a 17-year-old brought a duffel bag of guns to school on Jan. 4, the first day back from winter break. Hiding in a school bathroom stall, he posted a final selfie on TikTok with the words: “Now we wait,” backed by music the Columbine killers had favored before he was born. Then, allegedly, he shot five students and three school staffers before turning one of his guns on himself.
Sixth-grader Ahmir Jolliff, just 11 years old, died that day. Perry High School Principal Dan Marburger died of his injuries the next week.
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