Flash mob-style Tweet encourages teen dating safety

Feb. 12--NORMAL -- Nearly 500 identical messages supporting teen dating safety thundered across social media on Friday.

The Town of Normal, Unit 5 schools and the Normal Police Department joined the effort by using the social media tool, Thunderclap, to simultaneously share a post on Twitter to raise awareness for Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention Month.

Thunderclap is an audience engagement platform that amplifies any message above the usual posts on social media. The campaign was sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Each tweet automatically posted Friday morning with a link to information on teen dating safety and a message: "Healthy relationships are violence free! Encourage respect early."

"By using Twitter, we can really reach the teen population. A large percentage of our followers on the Unit 5 Twitter page are high schoolers," said Dayna Brown, Unit 5's director of communication and community relations.

The message reached an estimated 3.7 million people in a matter of minutes, according to the Thunderclap website.

"Any time the town and police department can work with the school district, it's a good opportunity to build relationships and show the public we're serious and teen dating violence isn't acceptable," said Brown.

Around 10 percent of high school students reported physical victimization and 10 percent reported sexual victimization from a dating partner in the 12 months before a CDC survey in 2013.

To learn more about how to prevent teen dating violence, visit VetoViolence.CDC.gov.

Follow Julia Evelsizer on Twitter: @pg_evelsizer

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