Before March 2022, 28-year-old Zeb Ross didn’t have a social media presence. No Instagram, TikTok or Twitter. He did have a personal Facebook account for a little while, but got rid of it when he was a teenager because, according to Ross, “there’s good and bad with social media, but it can also be a distraction.”

As increasing child abuse rates continue to plague many homes in Haywood County, a recent red herring took hold on social media, leading the Waynesville Police Department and Haywood County Sheriff’s Office to investigate an alleged human trafficking ring that doesn’t seem to exist.

“Living the dream” is what comes to mind after spending a couple of hours with the Perkins brothers and their construction crew on top of a mountain in Nantahala. 

Think Facebook’s ban of Donald Trump is justified? It’s a fascinating issue, one that gets to the heart of the differences between the internet and more traditional news sources like television, radio and newspapers.

The Haywood County School Board and central office administration will undergo unconscious bias training on Tuesday, Jan. 26. The training has been scheduled as part of the plan, created by Superintendent Dr. Bill Nolte in response to the situation created by a Facebook post of Nolte’s last year. 

One of the loudest voices against masks and vaccines during recent public comment sessions in Haywood County also serves on a nonprofit health care board that’s charged with managing more than $12 million of taxpayer money meant to support public health. 

Five Western Carolina University students are no longer enrolled at the school after appearing in a pair of videos that featured racial slurs and surfaced on social media the first weekend after classes began. The university community showed overwhelming support for the students’ departure from campus during a march held Wednesday, Aug. 26, drawing more than 800 people. 

A pair of videos that appeared on social media over the weekend elicited strong reaction from many in the Western Carolina University community who decried their contents as racist. 

I became aware of a Facebook group recently called “Finding Solutions — Waynesville.” On the surface it appeared this group was looking for solutions to the town’s social issues of homelessness and addiction, so I joined in so I could observe and perhaps offer valuable resources to the discussion — after all, The Smoky Mountain News has covered these issues extensively in the last several years.

Editor's note: some names in this story have been changed to honor a request from the family of the deceased. 

At 13, Tuscola High School freshman Zemra Teuta was like almost any other American teenage girl — she liked popular music, boys, hanging out with friends and chatting on social media. 

Zemra, however, wasn’t like every other teenage American girl. She was different.