I do think that it’s a genuinely difficult and complicated issue, from the perspective of “why are the kids behaving this way”. It’s a problem of parenting; a problem of how the parents were parented (basically: “my parents didn’t oversee my technology use and I turned out fine, so I’ll do the same”); and most significantly (in my opinion) a completely new technology landscape. Parents do need to get better at parenting, but that doesn’t let Meta (Facebook, Instagram), Google (especially YouTube), and ByteDance (TikTok) off the hook for algorithms that feed young impressionable people with abhorrent content solely because that is what makes their platforms the most money. Parents can and should be helping their children learn to avoid harmful content or restrict their access to said content, but they’re fighting against the tide as long as the platforms themselves want to feed that content to them.

One thing that’s less complicated is this: regardless of the underlying causes, teachers should not have to put up with abuse. Abusive students should be removed from the classroom, whether they’re abusing the teacher or other students. Their education is important and I understand why schools and education departments are hesitant to do this, but the physical and mental wellbeing of others should be more important.