Philippines’ worst school shooting puts social media, games in the dock

After two teenagers opened fire at a Philippine high school this week, the first question lawmakers asked was not about gun control, but the internet.

Three pupils were killed and 20 injured at San Jose National High School in Tacloban City, Leyte province, on Monday – the highest total casualty count of any Philippine school shooting.

It has renewed calls to restrict Filipino children’s access to social media and online games, coming months after police said they had disrupted a school shooting plot by teens radicalised online and as neighbouring Indonesia recently enacted its own ban on under-16s accessing “high-risk” platforms.

Philippine National Police confirmed on Monday that one of the students allegedly involved in this week’s school shooting had posted gun-related videos to social media, including footage of himself firing a weapon.

On Wednesday, the Philippine cybercrime agency temporarily banned online game GoreBox – known for its graphic depictions of violence – after police investigations showed one of the suspects was an avid player.

Photographs circulating online also showed one of the pair wearing a shirt bearing the name of German industrial rock band KMFDM, favoured by the perpetrators of the 1999 Columbine massacre, prompting speculation that the attack may have been inspired by that shooting.