More than a third of middle school students have used technology-facilitated reporting systems (TFRS) to report concerns about friends who are in distress, according to a
study in the
Journal of Adolescent Health. These systems include apps, websites, and texts and are designed to be anonymous or confidential.
Elyse J. Thulin, Ph.D., of the University of Michigan, and colleagues analyzed data from 405 youth who participated in a trial of the Sandy Hook Promise Say Something Anonymous Reporting System and who said they knew a peer in severe distress in the prior 30 days. Data were extracted from the third wave of data collection, October to November 2019, when the youth were in seventh grade.
The researchers found that 80.7% of the youth reported their concern about their peer’s distress, with 37.3% using a TFRS to do so. Youth were more likely to use a TFRS when they perceived lower levels of trust in traditional school-based figures. However, the appeal of TFRS was not purely about discretion, as youth who made use of TFRS were also highly likely to voice their concerns to a parent, friend or classmate, or trusted adult not affiliated with the school.
“This suggests that TFRS offer an alternative, trustworthy avenue for reporting within educational environments where interpersonal trust is a barrier,” the researchers wrote. “As up to 70% of concerns submitted through TFRS are unknown to school personnel prior to the tip, [the] finding from the current study that students are readily using TFRS to report suspected mental distress suggests that these systems may play a crucial role in identifying students who are potentially at risk.”
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