JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Parents and school officials in Duval County are calling on Instagram to remove a page that features photos of students using the bathroom.
The page has posted more than a dozen photos of male students at Darnell-Cookman School of the Medical Arts. The photos, which show most students using a urinal, appear to have been taken without their knowledge.
In the past nine weeks, 13 photos have been posted to an Instagram page labeled as coming from the Duval County magnet school.
While the photos don’t show anything objectively obscene, News4JAX chose to blur the images and scrub the page’s name from our coverage so as to not encourage extra page views.
The page has garnered 128 followers but some were understandably disturbed at the photos.
School district officials say they were not aware of the page until News4JAX contacted them.
A spokesperson later released a statement saying:
“School leadership has been notified and we have reported this account to Instagram. It is critical that individuals immediately report concerning social media content to the appropriate platform directly so the issue can be addressed.”
“It’s disturbing, it’s an invasion of privacy. Then, you posted them on Instagram and social media, things like that. So it’s very disturbing,” said Tim Sloan, parent of a student at the school.
Sloan’s child goes to Darnell Cookman but isn’t featured in any of the photos.
While Sloan said he doesn’t blame the school for this, he added that the people responsible should face punishment.
“I think things like this, you know, it needs to be dealt with severe punishment. I really do. Because, again, people’s lives are being messed up with things like this,” he said. “We have to do something to let them know hey, look, there are consequences to your actions.”
Instagram does have zero-tolerance rules against sexual content involving minors as well as rules against posts meant to bully and/or harass people.
News4JAX contacted Instagram’s parent company Meta to see if the page qualifies as violating either but we haven’t received a response.
As of Sunday afternoon, two days after the school district reported it, the Instagram page is still online and public.