A new school year and new gossip. One way gossip gets spread around is social media. Every school year there are pages that pop up all over Instagram. The pages usually use anonymous apps that make it easy to send in gossip about another person. Most of them are taken down within a week or people just stop caring about them. 

The tea pages started back in middle school and sometimes carry on into high school. They can play a major role in a person’s day-to-day life at school and others’ perceptions of them. One of the worst parts about them is when you read them you have no idea if the posts are true or not. The newest page that has been created by a Lake Central student is @lakecentral_teatime. The creator commented on how they “would post anything that is sent to them.”  When asked why they made the account they said, “Mostly for fun and just to see what people had to say about each other.” 

People seem to be invested in learning everyone else’s business. Usually, friend groups find the page and start commenting jokes about one of their other friends. Once that happens the page isn’t fun or interesting to them anymore. 

In some cases, the actual school staff could get involved if the page is posting threatening or false statements about other students. But what if a page is created by a student that doesn’t go to that school? The very popular app among teens, TikTok, has started a trend of creating these pages for other schools in different states. Many different people are joining this trend and going viral on the app. So far at LC there hasn’t been any of those pages created. 

Staying away from these pages could be the best for you and your friends.