Wistaston Academy Facebook experiment on course to reach one million people

Wistaston Academy teacher Hannah Aldridge, 27, from London, wanted to show children the dangers of the web for a class on internet safety.

Within the hour the Facebook post, which asked users to share the picture, exploded as users around the globe liked, shared and commented on the post.

“I’ve just been overwhelmed,” Hannah said. “I know people in Australia and Canada so I thought I would get them to share it.

“Then it all of a sudden within an hour or so thousands of people had viewed it.

“I was shocked. I’ve had people from all over the world messaging me telling me what a great thing I have done.

"People were sending pictures from Iceland, America, Japan and all over.

“One man even messaged from his truck in Saudi Arabia, with camels in the background. It’s just been incredible.”

The post was published on Friday, February 6, and by 4pm it had reached 18,000 people.

Within 48 hours it had 2068 likes and had reached around 450,000.

People from around the world have posted pictures from their own country, displaying the full power of the internet.

The post is now well on course to reach a million people after showing no signs of stopping.

Hannah said: “When I looked last looked it had reached 92 countries. It’s reached 860,000 and it’s not slowing down. It’s just going up and up.

“I’m pretty confident it’s going to make a million.”

It’s not just Hannah and her colleagues who have been blown away by the stratospheric reaction neither.

The Year 5 children were just as shocked at the amount of people the post had managed to reach, which helped ram home the intention of the post.

“They had no idea how far it had gone,” Hannah said. “I asked them how many people they thought had seen it and they said about 500.

"They were really shocked.”

Hannah also revealed that she has been inundated with friend requests from people around the world, despite not revealing her name in the posts .

She said: “I had people adding me on Facebook and I never even put my name to it. People were finding me purely from the picture and piecing my identity together.

"It’s quite chilling really. It really gets the message home about the dangers of what you post online.

“Our children shouldn’t even really have Facebook anyway but they know about it and a lot of them do.”

And despite being praised by thousands around the world, it seems not everyone has had kind word to say.

Some have even accused the school of staging a publicity stunt.

“There have been some negative comments,” Hannah said. “One woman accused us of doing it for publicity.

“I felt like going on and saying ‘do you really think I want my face plastered around the world’?

“But the majority of feedback has been really positive. It’s just been an incredible reaction. I can’t quite believe it.”

To see the post, click here.