No doubt

Things like this were certainly better before social media, when a trend like this would be contained to a school and would be less likely to spread across the world.

I think if we knew what the capabiltiies of social media platforms would be 25+ years ago, it would certainly be something we would see coming. The idea that a teenagers telling a bunch of other teenagers hundreds of kiometeres away what dumb and dangerous idea they came up with is probably one of the more predicable things that has happened.