Keaton Jones hasn't been back to school since his video about bullying went viral

His mother says he has consistently resisted returning to his middle school

Keaton Jones, the boy whose emotional video about bullying struck a chord with millions of people, revealed he has not been to school since his story went viral.

Keaton became an overnight celebrity earlier this month, when his mother posted a tearful video of him discussing his experience with bullies on Facebook. The video was shared thousands of times, and attracted the attention of everyone from politicians to celebrities.

But even with people like Katy Perry and Justin Bieber rallying to his side, Keaton says he still does not want to return to the place where his ordeal started.

Asked how his viral status had affected him at school, Keaton told ITV’s This Morning: “I don’t know. I haven't actually been to school.”

His mother, Kimberly Jones, said this was Keaton’s own choice.

“He has maintained the entire time, even at its highest high – when, you know, the whole world wanted to come and eat lunch with him – that he didn’t want to go back to school,” she said.

“I’ve struggled anyway, especially being this close to Christmas break,” she added. “But after seeing how big it got, I mean, it just seems like maybe we should let it die down a little bit before we made any decisions, so we could kind of have a reality of what it was going to be like.”

Keaton’s Tennessee school district said in a statement that it will not tolerate bullying, and has an anti-bullying policy in place. Greg Clay, the principal of the middle school that Keaton attends, said he was not aware that the boy had been bullied repeatedly. He added that the situation mentioned in Keaton’s video had been addressed weeks ago.

"It's not as rampant as the video would have you believe," Mr Clay said. "I can't tell you what was done, but I can tell you action was taken with the children."

But Ms Jones claimed on Thursday that she, too, had been the victim of bulling. Shortly after the video of her son went viral, the Tennessee woman was flooded with accusations of racism, based on photos of her and her family posing with the Confederate flag. She told ABC that the photos were meant to be “funny” and “ironic”.

“I’ve been judged and sentenced, my entire family has been judged and sentenced based on two pictures and people who don’t know us,” she said on This Morning. “And that’s something I would not wish on anybody. It’s a little ironic that it’s brought the bullies out.”

A GoFundMe campaign started in Keaton's name was also suspended fundraising after allegations that the page was a scam. The page creator recently posted an update saying he wanted to use the money already collected to create a college fund for Keaton.