Middle school students used Snapchat to pretend to rape black classmates in the locker room — and it shows a dangerous trend

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October 23, 2017 7:19 PM

A Snapchat video of middle school students simulating the rape of black students shocked community members in Virginia.

White middle school students on a Virginia football team took a video simulating sex acts on black team members.
The video was captioned, "What really goes on in the football locker room."
Some experts see this type of behavior online becoming more prevalent.

A Snapchat video of middle school students simulating the rape of black students ignited fire in the small Virginia community of Glen Allen, The Washington Post reported.

The video, which was captioned, "

disturbing a trend of racist behavior on social media by young people, often minors.

At a school district in Pennsylvania high school students posted an image of themselves standing in front of pumpkins carved with racist messages like "KKK" and an image of a swastika, Philly.com reported. More than 200 students walked out of school in protest after the photos appeared online.

And in St. George, Utah, five white female high school students uploaded a video to instagram shouting

I thought people were bette... @ 7

Posting racist and sexually explicit images online may be becoming more prevalent.

"Social media may elicit a kind of competitive or 'one-upping' culture that fuels peer competition around who is the most daring or carefree,"Dara Greenwood, Ph.D., a social psychologist and a professor at Vassar College, told Business Insider for a previous story about social media usage in young people.

Students "may want to push the envelope in ways that seemas they attempt to both fit in and stand out from their peer groups," she said.

Students may also be lured into a false sense of anonymity, as they aren't directly communicating with the people they share their images with.

Greenwood cautions that social-media use among students can also become a form of peer pressure, enticing students to participate in behavior they might not otherwise.

School districts must respond harshly to harmful racist imaging that appears online, told NBC.

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