Abstract
The toll from gun violence in American K-12 schools has escalated over the past 20 years. School administrators face pressure to prepare for possible active shootings, and often do so through drills, which can range from general lockdowns to simulations, involving masked “shooters” and simulated gunfire, and many variations in between. However, the broad and lasting impact of these drills on the well-being of school communities is poorly understood. To that end, this article applies machine learning and interrupted time series analysis to 54 million social media posts, both pre- and post-drills in 114 schools spanning 33 states. Drill dates and locations were identified via a survey, then posts were captured by geo-location, school social media following, and/or school social media group membership. Results indicate that anxiety, stress, and depression increased by 39–42% following the drills, but this was accompanied by increases in civic engagement (10–106%). This research, paired with the lack of strong evidence that drills save lives, suggests that proactive school safety strategies may be both more effective, and less detrimental to mental health, than drills.
Highlights
As firearm fatalities surge as a major public health problem in the United States (Grinshteyn and Hemenway, 2019), the country has been experiencing more shootings in K-12 school premises than most other nations (Grabow and Rose, 2018)
To quantify the extent of change, we first measure the mean proportion of posts that are indicative of high stress or anxiety and depression for before the drill (Before) and after the drill (After)-drill periods
We find that the mean proportion of posts indicative of stress or anxiety to be 0.281 for the Before period and 0.399 for the After period; an longer-term change (LC) of 42.1% increase (t = 19.1, p < 10−15)
Summary
As firearm fatalities surge as a major public health problem in the United States (Grinshteyn and Hemenway, 2019), the country has been experiencing more shootings in K-12 school premises than most other nations (Grabow and Rose, 2018). School shootings are still rare compared to daily gun violence (Nekvasil et al, 2015)—a cause that leads to about 103 daily gun deaths in the U.S (Ludwig, 2017; Resnick et al, 2017)—current statistics show that school shootings are happening more frequently (Bonanno and Levenson, 2014; Everytown, 2019) Each of these incidents is alarming to both local communities and the nation as a whole (Rygg, 2015), because schools are intended to be safe spaces for children to grow and learn (Williamson, 2019). Every American public school conducts lockdown drills Do they make you feel more safe?” state statutes on this type of drill are often vague and leave the nature, content, and identification of who participates up to the interpretation of school administrators. The drills are unannounced and some present “masked gunmen” actors, simulated gunfire, and fake blood (Gubiotti, 2015)
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