A new craze has recently sparked up across high schools all over the country: student-run Instagram accounts about their own schools. Woodside has been no exception.
From accounts dedicated to student fashion to students sleeping in class, numerous accounts have recently been created. One of the most popular accounts is the Woodside Bad Parking Account, which highlights students’ bad parking jobs, and occasionally staff in the Woodside parking lots.
“The first few weeks of school, I would just post people parking bad on my Snapchat story,” Woodside senior and owner of @whs_bad_pparking Nicholas Evans said. “People told me, ‘Hey, you should make an Instagram account.’ So that’s kind of where it all started”
Started in October 2021, the account took off, currently holding about 700 followers. With satirical captions and frightening parking jobs, there’s no wonder why the account accumulated many followers, Woodside students included.
“I think I like the parking one the most because they’ve been the most consistent,” Woodside sophomore Vincent Vazquez said.
Other accounts were created soon after, following in the footsteps of Evans. The Woodside Outfits page holds around 450 followers and is another student favorite.
“I like the Woodside Outfits one, It’s kind of cool to see what people wear every day. It’s nice to see how everyone supports each other in the comments,” Woodside sophomore Izzy Armsby said.
Not limited to Woodside, other schools participated in this trend, with parking and sleeping accounts popping up.
“I’ve seen a few Sequoia [instagram accounts] pop up in my recommended and through TikTok I’ve seen other schools have them too,” Vazquez said.
But the trend is much larger than the Bay Area. Students from all over have not only made similar Instagram accounts but posted them to other social media as well.
“Even across TikTok, you can see schools all across the US which have sleep accounts: it’s the main one,” Armsby said.
This trend, like others, is engrained with a pinch of controversy.
Sleep accounts have been one of the most popular, with @whs.sleeps holding around 720 followers and 63 posts. However, some students are concerned about whether or not taking pictures of sleeping people is ethical.
“Some of the [instagram accounts] can be invasions of privacy. If you truly are sleeping and someone takes a picture of you and sends it in, it can be kind of weird,” Armsby said.
This regard may be valid. According to the Student Press Law Center, California law by statute states that students must get permission from teachers to take pictures of each other in class. Some pages have avoiding this conflict altogether by taking a different approach
One such account, @wildcats_compliments, was recently rebooted.
“It was inactive ever since 2020. We decided to reactivate it and start to reaccept submissions,” Woodside’s Safe School Ambassadors club Social Media Manager, Keira Mahoney, said. “Now more than ever in these stressful times, people need something to brighten their day. Something like a compliment can certainly do that!”
Thanks partially to the trend, the account has seen an enormous amount of interaction from students.
“I started accepting and posting submissions a few days ago, and honestly I’m shocked at how much the page has grown since then,” Mahoney said. “We’ve been receiving around 30 compliment submissions a day which is really amazing to see.”
Despite its recent creation, the account currently boasts a growing 170 followers. But that’s not the point, says Mahoney.
“It’s an amazing feeling both to send and receive a compliment, so my main goal when posting and creating things related to this account is primarily to uplift the WHS community and be positive,” Mahoney said.
