Just when we thought the increase in mass shootings was behind us... Yesterday, there was a shooting at a Washington high school that killed two people, including the shooter, and injured four students.
The gunman who shot up his high school cafeteria was teenager and freshman, Jaylen Fryberg. Right now, it is still unclear what Fryberg's motives exactly were but his social media pages suggest that he was struggling with relationships problems and dealing with troubles at school.
Fryberg seemed to be a popular student among his peers. He was crowned homecoming prince, a football player, an avid hunter and a member of the Tulalip Tribe (His grandfather is the director of fish and wildlife for the tribe).
News sites say that if you were to look into Fryberg's social media pages, you would see that he clearly a very troubled young kid. His posts go on and on about his relationship issue with his girlfriend and even mentions something aggressive about his brother, both of whom were victims of his shooting spree.
With the heavy social media usage, people are often posting online hints and clues about their unhappiness and depression. It makes me wonder that if people are using Twitter, Facebook and Instagram as platforms to advertise what is going on emotionally with them, maybe we should open our eyes and try to do something about it.
I think we are too use to social media that we are becoming numb to what people are posting. Nothing seems to really pop out and rarely do we think, "Maybe they need help." If we were to be a little more cautious when browsing our friends pages, we might pick up something that may end up a serious issue.
Also, when people read a friend's post about them being upset or depressed they ignore them a lot not only because we're so used to it, but we believe these people are attention seekers. I agree posts should be taken more seriously, but how to weed out those who are looking for attention as opposed to those who really need help.
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