Last week, a bipartisan pair of U.S. senators (Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn. and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.) sent a letter to the chief executive officers of the world’s largest social media companies, pressing them for answers on how school districts can easily become verified and address fraudulent accounts on the platforms.

The letter, sent to Meta, X (formerly known as Twitter), Snapchat, TikTok, LinkedIn and YouTube, cited research from the 2022 Schools and Social Media: The Critical Need for Verification and Dedicated Reporting Processes report released by the National School Public Relations Association (NSPRA) and the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN). That report detailed how the lack of dedicated verification and reporting processes for federally recognized K-12 education institutions on social media platforms is harming students and draining school districts’ time.

Highlighting school districts’ struggle to prevent the harm to students and staff caused by malicious and fraudulent social media accounts due to the lack of dedicated verification and reporting processes, the senators’ letter asked platforms to provide answers to the following questions by Thursday, Oct. 26:

1. What is your process for allowing schools and districts to verify their official social media accounts and pages?
2. What process do you make available to schools and districts that wish to report online harassment and bullying affecting their students?
3. Will you consider implementing a dedicated process for schools and districts to verify their official social media accounts and pages?
4. Will you consider implementing a dedicated process for schools and districts to report fraudulent social media accounts/pages?

We urge responses to these important questions from the social media platforms as we will continue to monitor and update their responses to us. NSPRA and CoSN will also lead and engage in conversations with these social media platforms to move these efforts forward on behalf of our members, with the support of our education partners.