If school lockers in reality are actually slowly becoming less common over the years across schools, why do a lot of media still sensationalized them as a symbolic part of school life?

Because reality is unrealistic. Television shows are written by people who had lockers (and often for people who had lockers) and need to be sold to network executives who had lockers. Also, the schools where most shows are filmed are in places that still have lockers. And thus we get schools portrayed as being rife with lockers.

Though I’m not sure how inaccurate this really is. I graduated from high school less than 20 years ago, and the building still has just as many lockers as when I was attending. That’s just one data point, of course. But it’s not like school these days are universally bereft of lockers in the hallways. The transition is as yet incomplete.

I kept all of my textbooks papers and lunch in a large duffle bag ever since grade 7. I kept forgetting my locker combo and was open to attack while my back was turned. So I switched everything to Duffle bags. The TV shows are out of date and out of touch.

Because a certain person’s locker could be a social meeting place and/or a place to leave notes.

@SavoirFaire I’m a bit familiar with that website and trope myself! I’ve mostly figured that was probably the case with television shows and movies too.

I graduated from high school less than a decade ago from a school district where only the high schools have lockers. Although the middle schools at one point used to have lockers until they got removed in the 90s. So I personally never got to see or use one by the time I started middle school. Luckily, some teachers would have extra textbooks for classroom use while we get to reserve a copy for home. My elementary school pretty much manage with these kinds of desks in place of lockers. However, I could imagine how a lot of older schools probably kept theirs to this day, especially the ones from the big cities and towards the east coast.

@RedDeerGuy1 Very, it seems. Even I tend to use my backpack a lot in high school too. Since the lockers I got there from my attendance are very small.

@kritiper It seems to be all stereotype.

I was not aware of the trend to do away with lockers. Where do students put their jackets in winter?

My kids graduated from High School in the last four years, they had lockers.

My daughter used hers multiple times a day; my son never did. But my daughter did all her assignments and had a high GPA; my son was known by his teachers as “the brightest kid who never does his homework”.

I doubt that it is ”...for the last 20–30 years; it is more like the last fifteen. @SavoirFaire got it best: people in their 40s writing scripts for people in their 50s.

They also think kids all go to the mall everyday after school.

Probably because it’s the stereotypical High school setting.
I don’t know where my locker is or what the combination is. I never use it at all.

@Catnip5 Yeah. It’s also traditional. And, depending on the location of the locker, practical! (In my senior year, my locker was located on the 4th floor of the Industrial Arts building, across the street from the main building. SO not practical to go there, ever. So I put some books in it on the first day of school and removed them on the last. The only 2 times I ever visited my locker!)

Lockers were kind of like text messages when I was in school. All of us were at our lockers at the same time, exchanging information and hooking up. We kept a lot of stuff in our lockers. I can’t imagine having to tote all that stuff around.

Where else could you hang a poster of Keith Partridge?

David Cassidy! Swoon! I didn’t have posters in my locker, though. They were on my wall at home. And yes, David Cassidy was up there.

@zenvelo Fair point. Although I did came across this old interesting piece from LA Times about what was going on for some schools in California since 1989. But like you said, there could be a chance how that practice didn’t start to become a lot more prevalent until around the last 15 years later. It is quite an interesting statistic.