Instagram seems to be working on a new school-based version of stories. The new ‘School Stories’ feature will give a school it’s own specific story and only allows students to see and contribute to it. No outsiders would be able to see any of the content.
The idea behind this new feature is to give students a safe space on social media to share with one another, keeping it away from the eyes of parents and strangers. Although it hasn’t been confirmed whether teachers can access it or not.
The possible feature was found by a TechCrunch tipster, who noticed it in the social media platform’s code. It suggests that ‘School Stories’ would be closely monitored by Instagram to prevent any bullying. The coding states that “School Stories are manually reviewed to make sure the community is safe.”
Instagram has yet to mention or announce anything about the useful feature. So it’s not certain when it will actually launch, but this isn’t the first time a new feature has been discovered from the program’s coding. Features like video calling and nametags were previously spotted by tipsters, and both eventually launched even though Instagram never commented on either item.
This isn’t Instagrams first experiment with designing a school-like feature. This past summer the app tested out a ‘college communities feature’ which gave college students the opportunity to find other students in their classes and allowing them to DM each other.
These features can be seen as similar to Snapchat’s past school components. In 2015 Snapchat had an ‘Our Campus Story” feature, but it didn’t last very long.
Even though coding exists for this exciting innovation, it doesn’t necessarily mean it will launch and become permanent. Instagram may just ditch the idea altogether and leave it for a later time.
So unless Instagram makes an official announcement on ‘School Stories,’ all we can do now it wait and see.