After spending the last year and a half online for classes, students at Eleanor Roosevelt High School have missed out on opportunities to socialize with each other and get to know each other. Social media has been these students’ solution to interacting with each other. A senior at ERHS started an Instagram account, which currently has about 1.2k followers and has only been up for two months, to help connect students at ERHS across the four different classes. The account functions through a Tellonym link where students can send messages anonymously for the creator to screenshot and post on Instagram for students to see.

The owner of the account says that he started the page as an “outlet for positivity for Roosevelt students” because after being online for so long it has left us “disconnected”. He wants the page to be a place where people can find a sense of  “peace and comfort” during these troubling times. All posts on the account pertain to something positive going on around ERHS, whether it be someone complimenting another student or a positive venting space. The owner says that he is proud of what he has done because it gives him the joy knowing that he “bettered the high school experience of those who follow the account”. Although most of the messages consist of students from ERHS, the owner says that the account is not exclusive to Roosevelt students. He says that when he first set up the page he got “a lot of support from the Flowers page”. Because the page is specifically for positive messages only, whenever negative messages are received the owner says he just deletes them and moves on. He states that “I do not have time to deal with drama and I’d rather keep the page positive”.

As of now the owner is looking to pass down the account to a junior after he graduates. Hopefully the positivity of this page can become a tradition for the students at ERHS and something that sticks with them for years to come.