If you've seen a lot of officers in Orange Beach, don't worry. The 24th annual Safe Schools Student Resource Officer Conference is in town. Hundreds of officers and deputies from across the state are learning about how to make schools safer. Some school resource officers that I spoke with today say one of the greatest dangers our children face today is social media. That's because they said social media is always a concern, even after the school bell rings.

Over 900 officers, deputies, and school personnel came down to the orange beach convention center this week, to learn different ways to make schools safer.

"The digital world has really affected the school world. We not only have the cyber bullying now that has become an everyday, even if it's outside school it comes into school," says Pamela Revels, the President of The Alabama Association of School Resource Officers.

It seems like the world is changing as often as your phone updates.... SRO's are having to keep up.

"We've been seeing this ramp up for years now, but certainly since 2020, we've seen a huge ramp up of younger and younger on social media. The missteps they are having are detrimental not just currently, but that can follow them for a really long time," says Sergeant Jeff Spaller with the Baldwin County Sheriff's Office SRO and Community Outreach Unit.

"We've been seeing this ramp up for years now, but certainly since 2020, we've seen a huge ramp up of younger and younger on social media. The missteps they are having are detrimental not just currently, but that can follow them for a really long time," says Kristi Bush, the owner of KNB Communications.

Bush travels to schools across the country- teaching parents, teachers, about social media safety. She says the biggest issues come from apps like Tik Tok and Snap Chat.

"I tell parents all the time, delay, delay, delay. Delay as long as you possibly can giving kids social media. I would love to see them not get it until high school," says Bush.

She says SRO's also have to be mindful of online threats.

"Every one that comes through, we have to make sure that it's not credible or if it is credible, we make sure that we stop it, so the digital world has caused quite a challenge for us," says Revels.

Last school year, there were several online threats made to schools locally, some threats made by people who were nowhere near South Alabama. In January, someone made a bomb threat at Daphne Middle School leading to evacuation, but it was a false alarm. Sergeant Spaller says school violence is a nationwide issue.

"There's a lot of copycats. We have a mass shooting that takes place in one place, people see it from across the nation and then they tend to want to act on the copycat, so they have to be take serious," says Spaller.

Bush says the digital frontier makes the job of a school resource officer even harder.

"All of our officers are having such a hard time with things that disappear right? So, you can't see where the chats are, there are pictures that disappear,” says Bush. "I think it ties resource officers hands a little bit because they do not have the inside track that our kids have with one another."

Bush says to combat dangers on social media, education is key, because you could save someone's life.