Violent Media, Toxic Online Spaces, and Youth Aggression

00:00:11 – Introductions by Executive Director of Children and Screens Kris Perry.

00:01:51 – Moderator Micheal Rich on violent content and role of interactive media in amplifying violent content on screens for youth today.

00:03:50 – Brad Bushman on four effects from media violence exposure and how parents can intervene.

00:15:10 – Moderator follow-up: How does violent media influence the bystander effect?

00:19:17 – Stephanie Fredrick on cyberbullying, including why youth cyberbully, and warning signs for parents to look out for.

00:30:43 – Moderator follow-up: Can you talk more about the rise of the bully-victim?

00:33:19 – Jun Sung Hong on adolescents’ experiences with and participation in online hate.

00:45:06 – Rob Eschmann on online threats and offline community violence.

00:59:42 – Moderator follow-up: Can you talk about how social media can be an accelerant in violence rather than cause?

01:03:18 – The panel addresses questions from the audience.

01:04:05 – Q&A: How does your research relate to the interplay between online and offline worlds?

01:05:14 – Q&A: Are there ways that parents can block violent content such as podcasts and other media that get through filters?

01:09:40 – Q&A: How does a parent balance protecting their child and helping them be aware?

01:14:47 – Q&A: How does violence and hate spread between and among groups online, such as in-group versus out-group hate and bias-based harassment?

01:19:39 – Q&A: How do we protect children from AI-generated hate or threats?

01:23:40 – Wrap-up with Children and Screens’ Executive Director Kris Perry.

[Kris Perry]: Hello, and welcome to today’s Ask the Experts webinar, “Violent Media, Toxic Online Spaces, and Youth Aggression.” I am Kris Perry, Executive Director of Children and Screens. Young people today are exposed to more disturbing content than ever, from graphic news videos to cyberbullying and online hate. Research suggests that this kind of exposure can be linked to more aggressive behavior as well as negative effects on their mental health and social lives. In today’s webinar, expert panelists will examine what we know and what we’re still learning about the link between digital media and youth aggression. The discussion will examine where children encounter harmful content online, how it affects their development and behavior, and what parents and caregivers can do to help protect and empower young people in today’s complex digital landscape. Now, I would like to introduce you to today’s moderator, Dr. Michael Rich, who is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, Director of the Digital Wellness Lab, and practices adolescent medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital. Dr. Rich is the founding director of the Clinic for Interactive Media and Internet Disorders, which is the first evidence-based medical program addressing physical, mental, and social health issues related and associated with digital technology. Also known as “the Mediatrician”, Dr. Rich offers research-based practical answers to parents’, teachers’, and clinicians’ questions about children’s media use, and both the negative and positive implications for their health and development. Welcome, Michael. 

[Dr. Michael Rich]: Thank you, Kris, and thank you all for being here. I also wanted to offer to everyone, not only the resources of the Digital Wellness Lab, which are free online at digitalwellnesslab.org, but also my recent book, The Mediatrician’s Guide: A Joyful Approach to Raising Healthy, Smart, Kind Kids in a Screen-Saturated World. Now, all that being said, media violence – violence on screen – is probably the best research effect of screen content that’s been done. It’s been researched since the 50s. And we are looking today not only at the violent contact–content on screen and how it affects kids, but also how the interactive media environment may actually amplify and actually move beyond just learning violence, but to actually doing violence, both in a psychological and a physical way. That being said, I want to ground this in that deep research by introducing you to Dr. Brad Bushman, who has been doing this research for over 35 years as a professor in the School of Communication at The Ohio State University. He has been a violence expert for President Obama and has testified before Congress several times, has published hundreds of peer-reviewed journal articles, some of which coauthored with me, actually. And he has been cited tens of thousands of times and published in top scientific journals and featured extensively in the press, from BBC to The New York Times to NPR. Thank you for being with us, Brad. But I look forward to what you have to share. 

[Dr. Brad Bushman]: Thank you, Mike. So, the first thing I’d like to do is thank you for attending today. And then I’d like to just say that what I will present about violent media facts is not based on my opinion, but rather based on hundreds of scientific studies conducted over half a century. And many scientific organizations and professional organizations have warned parents about these effects. Here’s a list that I have on my webpage, which will be available after the webinar. And today, I’d like to talk about four media violence effects: the aggressor effect, the victim effect, the appetite effect, and the bystander effect. The aggressor effect is the more you consume, the more aggressive you become. And I’d like to give you an example of a study conducted in our lab with my colleagues in the Netherlands that involved 112 Dutch boys. By the flip of a coin, they played a violent or nonviolent video game for 20 minutes, and they rated how much they identified with the character in that game, such as, “I wish I were a character such as the one in the game.” And after gameplay, we measured aggressive behavior. They could blast a partner with loud noise through headphones. Their partner was a boy in another school in a different city in the Netherlands, and they were told that noise levels eight, nine, and ten could cause permanent hearing damage. So, this is a serious measure of aggressive behavior. And, it involved a competitive reaction time task in which the winner got to blast the loser with loud noise through headphones. And first the target score would turn green, and that was a cue for both participants to set the level of noise for their partner from level zero; they did not have to behave aggressively if they didn’t want to. Level one is 60dB to a 65, 70, 75, 80, 85, 90, 95, 100, and 105dB. They were told levels eight, nine, and ten would cause hearing damage, but that was not true. The threshold of pain for the human ear is 120dB, and ours only went up 105dB. And the noise they delivered to their partner was a combination of noises that people really hate, like fingernails scratching on chalkboards, dentist’s drills, sirens all mixed together. And, in actuality, there was no partner – a computer controlled everything. And the so-called “partner” randomly chose noise level for the participant, and the participant randomly won half of the 25 trials. So here’s a sample of the noise level, if you can hear it. And here are the results of our study. First, the good news. Participants who played a nonviolent game, indicated by the lower line, the more they identified with a nonviolent character in that game, the less aggressive they were. Now, the bad news. Participants who played a violent video game – the top line – the more they identified with the character in that violent game, the more aggressive they were. In fact, if they identified with that character like 2.5 or above on this scale, they’re willing to give a complete stranger noise levels loud enough to cause hearing damage. And here are some of the participants’ comments. “I blasted him with level ten noise because he deserved it. I know he can get hearing damage, but I don’t care.” Another boy said he liked the violent game “because in this game you can kill people and shoot people and I want to do that, too.” Another boy said, “I like Grand Theft Auto a lot because you can shoot at people and drive fast and cars. When I am older, I can do such things, too. I would love to do all these things right now!” So you can see these boys wished they were like the characters in the game, in the violent game. Next we have the victim effect, which is the more you consume, the more you fear. This is related to the Mean World Syndrome. Heavy media consumers adopt a mindset that the world is more violent than it actually is. So for example, in Charles Bronson’s obituary, it stated, “Television characters are now a thousand times more likely to be murdered than are real people.” So, fear of being the victim of violence is a strong motivation for some young people to protect themselves, such as by carrying a weapon or behaving aggressively, or trying to get them before they get me. And for some children, exposure to violent media can lead to symptoms such as anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, sleep disturbances, nightmares, and social isolation. Next, we have the appetite effect: the more you consume, the more you want. So in 2018, the World Health Organization added gaming disorder to its reference book. Although the American Psychiatric Association reference book does not include gaming disorder, it does include a section on problem video gaming which requires five or more warning symptoms over a one-year period. So here’s some examples: not wanting to do other things that you used to like; having problems in school–or work, school, or home because of your gaming; lying to people close to you about how much time you spend gaming. So, these are some warning signs. Finally, the bystander effect: the more you consume, the less you care. People who consume a lot of violent media become numb to its effects. They’re less physiologically aroused by real depictions of violence. They show less empathy towards violent victims. They perceive those victims as injured less, and they’re less likely to help them. So, for example, one study found that children are less willing to intervene when they saw two children, two younger children fighting if they had previously watched a violent film compared to a nonviolent film. Violent video games are especially problematic because feeling empathy requires you to take the perspective of the victim, whereas violent video games encourage players to take the perspective of the perpetrator. So, for example, first-person shooters, the player has the same visual perspective as the shooter. So, being a parent is tough. It’s the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. And researchers have studied different interventions parents can use to reduce harmful violent media effects. And here’s a list of three, and I’ll briefly go through each one. The first one is called instructive mediation. And here parents just talk to their children about violent media effects, such as what alternatives their children can use to resolve conflict and how unrealistic the violence is and how guns are not toys – things like that. Parents can also reassure their children when they become frightened. So, I highly recommend these two books by my friend and colleague, Joanne Cantor. The one on the left, “Mommy, I’m Scared”, is great for parents, and the one on the right, Teddy’s TV Troubles, is great for children. And these resources will be made available later. Parents can also be good examples by avoiding violent media themselves, at least when their children are not around. And research shows that these instructive mediation techniques work very well. But unfortunately, parents rarely use them – less than 10% of the time, in fact. But you should use them. Another type of mediation is called restrictive mediation, which involves restricting access to violent media. So, parents can use filtering devices to restrict violent content on TV sets and computers. We did that with our kids. Parents can keep screens in public places, such as the kitchen, where they can be monitored, not in the child’s bedroom. There should be no screens in the child’s bedroom. We did that, too. And when our children went to bed, we took away their tablets and cell phones. Parents can also restrict the sheer amount of media exposure. So, for example, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended no more than two hours of entertainment media per day. So I know a parent who bought these carnival tickets and gave their child four tickets. Each was worth 30 minutes, and they could trade in these tickets for media exposure. Like if they wanted to watch a whole movie, a two hour movie, they had to give them all four of the tickets. The third is social co-viewing, and this involves parents consuming violent media with their children without discussing this. This is a terrible approach because children may assume the violent media is no big deal if their parents say nothing about it. Thank you very much. And maybe there’s some time for questions.

[Dr. Michael Rich]: Thank you, Dr. Bushman. And we do have a little bit of time, and I’m going to use my moderator prerogative to ask one question that I think leads into our next speaker. And that is, let’s talk a little bit more about the bystander effect. It refers back to larger bullying research, and really how we can think about bystanders and upstanders in the situation of the media exposure.

[Dr. Brad Bushman]: Yeah. Well, it’s really important to be a bystander in an emergency situation, but unfortunately, violence in the media reduces the likelihood that that will occur. Because people assume that, if they’ve consumed a lot of violent media, that it’s no big deal, and that violence victims are not really suffering, that there’s little reason to intervene. And our own research has shown that they’re slower to intervene in such situations so violent media can interfere with being a bystander in an emergency situation. 

[Dr. Michael Rich]: Well, I want to thank you for your lifetime of really important work in this area. Particularly as I was an author of the American Academy of Pediatrics policy statement on media violence in the famous, now very famous year of 2001, when we got to witness real live, you know, media violence in terms of the 9/11 events. And we are seeing, you know, still seeing repercussions of that in adults who were children at the time that they witnessed that. So, I think I will ask one more question. And let’s see, if there’s one question. I actually had one more question for you, too. That is, could you describe the nonviolent game that you used in the violent game versus nonviolent game? Because it was interesting to me that the more they identified with the character, the less likely they were to be violent to their partner. 

[Dr. Brad Bushman]: Yeah. Actually, we had several violent games and several violent– nonviolent games, and we randomly assigned them to play one of them. We wanted to draw broader generalizations. So, some examples of the nonviolent gains were like Tony Hawk’s Skateboarding and FIFA World Cup soccer. You know, in soccer, for example, if you commit a bad foul, you get a yellow card for doing that. And if you commit a really bad foul, you get a red card, and your team has to play with just ten players instead of 11 players. So, violence in those kinds of games is– are penalized. 

[Dr. Michael Rich]: Well, thank you, thank you for that. And, I look forward to our group discussion at the end. I really appreciate your reference to the bullying situation because our next speaker, Dr. Stephanie Fredrick, is an Associate Professor of School Psychology and Associate Director of the Alberti Center for Bullying Abuse Prevention at the University of Buffalo, SUNY – State University of New York. Her research investigates risk and protective factors for youth involved in both traditional bullying and cyberbullying, youth digital media use, and school-based mental health prevention. She’s a licensed psychologist, a nationally certified school psychologist, and associate editor of the Journal of School Psychology. And she is dedicated to applying her research to practice, and frequently partners with schools to consult and provide trainings as she’s about to provide to us. Thank you, Dr. Fredrick. 

[Dr. Stephanie Fredrick]: Thank you so much. And thanks to Children and Screens for inviting me here today. I feel very honored to be a part of this very esteemed panel. So I have, I have

eight minutes to cover cyberbullying, right? So that is, it’s going to be a whirlwind, a little bit. So, yeah. So, my interest really since, you know, the past 15 years or so has really been to really look a bit more at cyberbullying, why youth engage in cyberbullying, what protects them from some of these adverse outcomes that we know, you know, youth are often experiencing this. So, when we think about cyberbullying, I think one of the most important things that really should be discussed and talked about is how bullying and cyberbullying looks different, or is different, from peer conflict, right? From maybe typical teasing behavior, or just kind of general aggressive behavior among children and adolescents. And how we typically differentiate bullying in the literature is by looking at three main characteristics. And so the first is that the behavior must be intentional. So, the person that was engaging in this behavior must intentionally engage in it – or I’m sorry – must engage in it to intentionally hurt the other person. So just, you know, walking down the hall and accidentally bumping into somebody, you know, typically is not considered, right, bullying behavior. The second characteristic, and this can get a little bit messy and tricky, but with sort of what usually is considered true bullying behavior is that there’s a power dynamic between the person perpetrating and then the person that is targeted. So much so that the person being targeted feels as though they cannot defend themselves. Right? Stand up for themselves, typically due to one or more reasons. Perhaps the perpetrator has more social status. Maybe they have more friends. Maybe they have great relationships with teachers. Right? And so teachers, you know, don’t believe the child if they’re reporting. Right? Because, “So and so could never do this behavior.” Right. Maybe they have more money. You know, maybe the victim identifies with a marginalized community, right? Within larger society. Maybe they’re more technologically savvy. So, it could be a lot of different reasons why we see this power dynamic. And then the third one is that the behavior should be repeated over time or there is a high likelihood that the behavior would be repeated over time. This can get tricky, right, in the digital space, right? So, if, like, one person posts content or a picture and then other people reshare it, comment, heighten it to give it more exposure, does that count as repetition? You know, so it can get really tricky and messy sometimes. But that being said, usually when we are trying to conceptualize and define cyberbullying, we do tend to try to take these characteristics into play to really differentiate it from other, sort of, more general aggressive behavior. So our definition is, use of a digital device to inflict purposeful and repeated aggressive behaviors involving a power imbalance and causing distress for the victim or target. And we have really, really relied a lot on the resources from our colleagues, Dr. Patchin and Dr. Hinduja, from the Cyberbullying Research Center with this, sort of, conceptualization. I just wanted to talk a little bit about, you know, how frequent this is. So it really, kind of depends, a little bit on the time frame in terms of when we’re asking young people.  Usually up to about 35% of teenagers say that they’ve experienced cyberbullying over the past couple of months, or maybe the school year. It gets a little bit higher – over half of teenagers report that they’ve experienced cyberbullying at some point in their lives. We have unfortunately seen an increase in cyberbullying over the past five years or so. We have actually seen a decrease, though, in other more traditional forms of bullying. There has been a lot more awareness, particularly school-based prevention and intervention practices, which I think have really helped with that. But still trying to figure out, you know, how we can best support youth, right, like youth in terms of cyberbullying prevention. We know that it happens in school, as well as out of school. You know, cyberbullying is different from traditional bullying in that it can occur 24/7. But that being said, we are seeing quite a bit of it actually occurring during school hours. So, just a little bit under half of high school teachers report that cyber bullying occurs in their classroom. We know that a lot of schools across the country are navigating and trying to figure out cell phone policies and use of– media use throughout the school day. So, this might change as we start to maybe see some more restrictive practices in terms of cell phone use during school hours or on school grounds. And then there’s a really strong overlap, generally, just between what we consider more traditional forms of bullying. So physical bullying, relational bullying, verbal bullying, such as teasing, things that happen in person – whether that’s during school, before or after school, extracurricular activities – and involvement in cyberbullying. So if we see students that have a lot of some of these risk factors – so they engage in aggressive behavior, you know, towards their peers in person, and they maybe have a long history of that – all of a sudden we give them a phone, right, or device, it’s very likely that they will engage in these similar behaviors, you know, in these online spaces as well. I think when cyberbullying was first a bit trendy to talk about back in, like I would say like 2010, 2011, I think there was a lot of hype and fear that all of a sudden young people that generally are very respectful and responsible and kind. All of a sudden we would just see everybody and sort of engaging in cyber bullying behavior. We don’t generally see that. There’s certainly some more risks and exposure, some of the things that Brad was just talking about. But generally how people are offline, you know, is typically how they are online. You know, with, of course, with some exceptions and exposures and things like that. But, that’s generally what we are seeing. And if you have a child that’s more at-risk or more prone to bullying in person, they will be more at-risk and prone to bullying in these online spaces as well. And just a couple, warning signs to look for, particularly if you’re a parent of a child and you’re not quite sure whether you feel like they might be involved or they might be cyber bullied within their online spaces. And so we generally look for some behavioral changes around device use. So, are they kind of upset when they’re using their phone? Do they really try to avoid talking to you about things that they’re doing online? Are they hiding or sneaking device use? So if you have a rule as a parent that cell phones can’t be allowed, you know, overnight in their bedroom and you find that they’re sneaking that, that’s certainly a warning sign to look out for any sort of change in media behavior. All of a sudden, do they not want to use their phone or are they excessively really sort of obsessing over, kind of, their phone use? And then one thing we really look for is really signs that correlate greatly with mental health warning signs. So any sort of change in behavior, particularly over a week or more, that is, you know, as a parent, you’re like, “Oh, that just doesn’t seem like my child, right? My child just– it’s really out of the ordinary for them.” So if they liked going to school, but they all of a sudden don’t want to go to school. They have these changes in eating and sleeping habits, or they sort of show other symptoms kind of related to depression. And then in looking and thinking about warning signs for cyberbullying others, those first three boxes are really talking about how that person is really, sort of, in person. So do they engage in aggressive behavior towards others in person, or are they overly concerned with social status? Do they have this overall sort of lack of empathy for others? And then are they, you know, sort of switching hiding device use, do they have sort of multiple accounts? Do they get really upset, right, when they don’t have access to their device? So just a couple of warning signs to look out for. Of course, this doesn’t mean absolutely, you know, if your child meets all these boxes, that means they’re involved in cyberbullying. But just a couple things to look out for. And, you know, there’s a lot of different reasons why young people, you know, engage in cyberbullying. Some that make it a little bit different from traditional bullying. We generally see low adult supervision in these online spaces. We see trends over time, right? Like when we as adults start to get on certain platforms, our kids get off of it. Right. So like, if you think about Facebook, we all got on and kids found other places, right, to hang out online. There tends to be lower bystander intervention in online spaces due to various reasons. Lower levels of reporting. There might feel some of this protection behind a screen. And overall, this is just a time in their lives where we see a heightened vulnerability to peer-related issues, peer conflict, that can sometimes lead to harassment or bullying behaviors. And then we typically think of protective factors sort of at various levels, including within your child or with, like, the individual level protective factors, protective factors at the family level, and then at the peer, at the school level. We see things like greater levels of self-esteem, social skills, coping strategies, using technology responsibly are all protective factors. Overall parental support and warmth, ongoing communication, particularly around device use. Brad talked a little bit about that in his presentation. And then just overall high-quality, positive peer relationships, high perceptions of school, positive school climate and other kinds of positive relationships with teachers and others, like coaches, for example, are all protective against involvement in cyberbullying. And then I think I’m out of time here, but I just wanted to mention a couple of resources. So, at the Alberti Center for Bullying Abuse Prevention, we have lots of different resources for bullying and cyberbullying for parents, for students, as well as for educators. So, check us out. The link is there. And then this is sort of hot off the press. But with my colleagues, we just published a book for families, educators, and other professionals working with youth on cyberbullying, helping children to navigate digital technology and social media use. This was just published this month. And if you purchase it on the publisher, Wiley’s, website and use the code PSY20, you can get 20% off. So, I just wanted to share that as well. And then we are very active on all sorts of different social media platforms, so please feel free to stay connected and follow us. So, thank you so much.

[Dr. Michael Rich]: Thank you, Doctor Fredrick. We have one minute for a question, and I’m going to throw it at you fast. And that is one of the interesting things I’m finding in the clinical cases that I’m seeing, the kids I’m taking care of, is the rise of the bully victim. And that is something we don’t see so much in traditional bullying, because it was always the big boys giving wedgies to the little boys on the playground, or the mean girls, you know, ostracizing and dissing the uncool girls. Can you talk a little bit about the rise of the bully victim? 

[Dr. Stephanie Fredrick]: Yeah. So, I definitely think we’re seeing more, kind of, fluidity across bullying roles. And it really sort of depends on context, but we definitely know that there is a rise in that, you know, young people both perpetrating aggressive behavior as well as, sort of, being the victim is becoming more common. This is also the group that has the most negative outcomes, in terms of mental health, school performance, things like that. But we are definitely seeing some more of that, and it’s definitely, I think, it is a more dated viewpoint. I think to think of somebody as like the bully versus the victim versus these are the bystanders, because we are seeing, depending on context, depending on who’s involved, it’s really going to be very fluid across these roles, certainly.

[Dr. Michael Rich]: Including the fact that, sometimes these kids feel protected by anonymity, and there’s a certain fluidity of that power differential that is essential to the bullying dynamic.

So anyway, thank you very much. I’d love to introduce now, Dr. Jun Sung Hong, who’s an Associate Professor at Wayne State University School of Social Work and a visiting professor at Ewha Women’s University in Seoul, South Korea, where he will be in two weeks. For the past several years, he’s primarily researched factors associated with bias-based bullying and peer victimization, both face-to-face and cyberbullying of racial, ethnic, minority, immigrant, LGBTQ, juvenile justice involved, and economically disenfranchised adolescents and young adults. He’s collaborated with scholars in South Korea, Taiwan, Sweden, Scotland, Switzerland – my God, this is a long list – all the way through to Ukraine, which is dealing with its own bit of bullying and violence in these days. And recently, he was honored by being a Fulbright scholar. Thank you for being with us, Dr. Hong.

[Dr. Jun Sung Hong]: Thank you very much for the warm introduction, Dr. Rich. And thank you. I would like to give a shout out to both presenters before me, Dr. Fredrick and Dr. Bushman for their very innovative work as well as their very innovative presentations. I really enjoyed and learned so much from this. So my topic is on adolescents’ experience with and participation in online hate and what parents should do to intervene. My presentation is a little bit less academic, like I’m not really sharing so much of my research. It’s more so, like, what research and what you know, other sources of information have found. So I’m giving an overview of what online hate looks like and what parents might be able to do to intervene. So to give you a little background, as we all know, the digital age has resulted in a rapid exchange of ideas and information. And it– and this has become even more, even faster and faster. And there’s also transformation of social interaction. In fact, we spend a little less time, you know, face-to-face, and we spend much more time like, you know, online, on the phone, you know, etc. But unfortunately, the digital age has also resulted in amplifying the spread of hate speech. So this is becoming problematic even more so than before, and people who spread hate speech are doing so, you know, via technology which makes spreading of hate speech even faster. And we’re seeing this more and more, not just in the US, but in other countries, especially in Europe. And a lot of it stems from, for example, misinformation about certain groups, like, for example, like immigrants or migrants. And that has resulted in, you know, not only hate speech, but also violence against people who are, you know, of minority status. So a definition of hate speech is any form of expression that seeks to humiliate people based on certain group characteristics, whether it’s race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. And young people, especially teenagers, are especially vulnerable to hate speech, both as a victim and as a perpetrator. So the question is, why are young people vulnerable to online hate speech? It’s because teenagers tend to encounter hate speech or hate messages much more frequently because they spend a lot of time on the internet. So if you have kids who are, you know, of teenage, you know, teenager age, you might see that they spend a lot of time on the internet and the social media. And online extremism is a growing problem in many countries, including the US, and in recent years. So we’re seeing this a lot more than before. And in other countries, such as, like, UK or in other European countries. There was one study that was conducted. It was a focus group study with teenagers from various European countries including Denmark, Germany, Greece, UK, etc. And they asked the participants to identify characteristics of haters and their motive. And this is what these participants had shared. One said that maybe, some of the characteristics of hate victims might be due to, like, shy or quiet in real life and feel bad about themselves. Another says, “Popular people who have doubts about themselves with superiority complex to feeling strong or to gain a status.” So they might reinforce hate in order to gain status. And also individuals with negative experience or vulnerable situations, they might post comments as a way to become part of society, so they might resort to hate speech because they want to feel like, you know, they exist. So of course, not surprisingly, there are several consequences of online harm or being a victim of online hate speech. One is, harmful content might remain visible to the audience, and it cannot easily be removed from the platform. And also, some might feel victimized everywhere, when they use, like, for example, their phones that they receive like hate speech on their phone, then they might feel victimized every time they use their phone. There’s also an increased sense of prejudice as well as psychological and emotional problems such as, you know, similar to, like, experiences of a trauma victim, who typically experience, like, low self esteem, feeling of fear and insecurity and sleep problems. I do want to share a little story. As an instructor for a class, I had a student who was transgender. She identified as transgender, and she actually shared information about what it’s like being transgender. And it seems like it was well-received by the audience. So, she gave a presentation in my class on what it’s like being transgender. And the students really, really were very positive about the information that she provided. Shortly after, she received hate mail from, you know, somebody anonymous. And they posted really negative as well as rude, disgusting messages of her transgender identity on her– on her phone. And of course, she tried to report this to the police, but to no avail. The police said that they could not do anything, and this left her quite distressed. And she was experiencing, you know, various, you know, problems, including mental health problems, depression, anxiety, as well as eating disorders or eating problems. So that is a good example of, you know, psychological and emotional problems that are associated with online harm. And there’s also deterioration of social police and so many victims of online harm, they might feel distant from their families as well as their friends. So the next question is what can parents do? So if you’re a parent, then you have a very important role. So unfortunately, there has always been a cultural gap between parents and youth. And some of you might be able to relate to this. You know, oftentimes the youth or teenagers especially, they tend to be much more tech savvy than the parent. And for parents, it can also be very challenging to understand their children’s point of view. But experts have recommended the following steps. One is if you’re a parent, it’s important to set clear ground rules. It’s also important to lead by examples of your own digital habits, for example, avoid oversharing. It’s also important to use parental control when necessary to monitor usage, and block access to inappropriate content. Talk candidly about the dangers of inappropriate behavior. Enroll your children in an identity protection service to mitigate the impact of oversharing, and to ensure that children’s privacy settings limit who can view their account. So this is especially relevant for parents of younger kids. But what about parents of older kids, like teenagers? Oftentimes there’s conflict between parents of older kids and teenagers, because teenagers expect, you know, privacy. And so parental monitoring doesn’t always work. Parents also need to be aware of the following. It’s important to know that using social media is neither beneficial nor harmful. It really depends on the adolescents’ own personal and psychological characteristics of whether social media might be beneficial or harmful. But we do see adolescents relying more and more on technology for their everyday activities, including schooling. Also, adolescents’ experiences are affected by how they shape their own social media experiences, and both visible and unknown features built into the platform. Adolescent development is gradual and continuous, so age-appropriate use of social media needs to be based on adolescents’ level of maturity and home environment. And in relation to, for example, racism or hate crime – or I’m sorry – hate speech. Racism is built into social media platforms, and we’re seeing that much more than before. And social media can become, you know, a tool that helps or harms, you know, an adolescent when it comes to like, hate speech or, you know, hate crimes. And here are just some recommendations. It’s important for youth to be encouraged to use functions that create opportunities for social support that promotes healthy socialization. Social media youth functionality and permission should be tailored to youth developmental capacities. So it’s important to consider the youth development. In early adolescence, for example, those who are in middle school, like ages 10 to 14 typically, adult monitoring is advised, but the monitoring needs to be balanced with the youth’s need for autonomy or privacy. This is where, you know, sometimes the youth might have, you know, conflict with their parents, especially if the parents tend to be, you know, overly monitoring. Adolescents’ exposure to content on social media that depicts illegal or psychologically maladaptive behavior, that needs to be minimized, reported, and removed. The parents still need to be proactive in, you know, to some degree in terms of monitoring. And one thing I do want to throw in is that, you know, oftentimes, as I mentioned before, parents are not as, you know, tech savvy as their adolescent children or their teenage children. And it’s important for– however, it’s important for parents to really try to be, you know, up to date with what’s out there, because we always see, like, new things being developed, you know, and new technology being developed. So it’s important for parents to also be, you know, informed of what’s out there, how it’s being used, what benefits there are, what harm there are, etc. Adolescents need to be routinely screened for signs of problematic social media use. For example, if they’re seeing– if you’re seeing signs of, you know, the adolescent or the teenager, having trouble sleeping, having sleep difficulty, who is, you know, on the media, like constantly, who is not eating, who is not doing well in, you know, in their school, etc., then parents really need to be aware, you know, of that and try to find out like what they can do. Use of social media should be limited so that it would not interfere with sleep and physical activities of adolescents. Oftentimes we hear that adolescents are not getting enough sleep or they’re not eating properly because of, you know, their overusage of the media. And, also, the last two are also very relevant, for, you know, parents who are raising, like, you know, adolescent children. So it’s really important to be aware, and it’s also important to be up-to-date, you know, in terms of what’s out there and how they’re being used by, you know, adolescents, including their own children. So, that’s all I have for now. If you have any questions, I’ll be happy to answer any. 

[Dr. Michael Rich]: Thank you, doctor Hong. We’ll move the questions to the end of the discussion if we can, so we can stay on schedule. Thank you for that. I have a question already for you, but you’ll have to wait for it. I want to now introduce doctor Rob Eschmann, who is a writer and educator, filmmaker and a scholar, from Chicago. He is an Associate Professor at the Columbia University School of Social Work and the Faculty Associate, at Harvard with us, Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Doctor Eschmann writes on educational inequality, community violence, racism, social media, and youth well-being. His research seeks to uncover individual, group and intuitional institutional level barriers to, racial and economic equity. He pays special attention to the hero efforts that everyday people make to combat those barriers. And I’m very much for looking at the positives and looking at the strengths. So thank you very much, Doctor Eschmann. I look forward to what you can teach me.

[Dr. Rob Eschmann]: Thank you. Thank you for the introduction. Thank you for having me. I’m glad to be here presenting, and learning from all these good folks here. I was looking at my background slide and thinking, man, I don’t need to talk about half of this because we’re getting it, straight from the scholars here. The title of my presentation today is Online Threats and Offline Violence. This research is a little bit different than what I’m hearing from other folks in that I’m not looking at how or the effects of online exposure to different acts of violence impact youth, but I’m more looking at in high violence neighborhoods, how does social media facilitate or reduce actual acts of violence. And so I want to be clear here that for me, that the origin of the problem of community violence is not coming from online interactions here, but it’s more that, when we look at neighborhoods that have a higher than average level of violence. So they’re often neighborhoods that have been impoverished for generations, or folks have lack of access to opportunities and resources and equal education and end up being, you know, with a lack of opportunity, you have the growth of the informal drug economy and that folks who are adjacent to violent networks that come out of that can sometimes see more violence in their communities. So, I’ll talk a little bit about the background of the research. I know we don’t have a whole lot of time here. I’ll talk to you a little bit about the study that we designed and who we’re having conversations with and then share some excerpts from interviews that we conducted with young people who are in violent networks. So first, a little bit about the background. And when we started this research, there was not much that had been done on social media and real world violence. And so we kind of pulled together knowledge from you know, several different strands of research. So cyberbullying, which, you know, we’ve been hearing about today, is an umbrella term that includes various forms of online or electronic bullying or harassment. The online inhibition effect refers to the tendency for people to be a little bit more hostile online than they are in person. And when we think about real world violent networks, there’s a difference between how comfortable someone  would be insulting someone from a rival gang in a face to face setting versus online. And so we can, it can facilitate more hostile acts between folks who may be combative in face to face settings. We know that there’s an increase in digital tools for tracking violence. The police have hired a lot of officers whose work is largely done online and identifying hotspots or, you know, sometimes I know were in Boston there was a thing where cops were using social media to shut down parties with underage students, but then all the parties they were shutting down were always in black and Latin neighborhoods and never on college campuses where you have underage partying too. This concept, adaptive structuration, which refers to how the intended process of technology can evolve, as groups use it for their own purposes. And one example of that is what my colleagues and I call it, internet banking, which is where gangs use social media sites to incite dares, trade insults or make threats of violence which may result in homicide or other forms of victimization. And those are, that’s what I’ll be giving examples of today. So, I’m presenting from a project called the Chicago Internet Banking Project. We interviewed 33 gang connected black and Latin adolescents and 17 violence prevention workers who themselves were former gang members who had been employed to work with gangs to try and stop violence before it started. We recruited folks from violence prevention organizations using a snowball sampling method. Interviews lasted between 45 and 90 minutes with follow up interviews. And we use a grounded theoretical approach where we really try to go and have these conversations without preexisting understandings of what we would find and allow the data to speak for itself. Here you can see some characteristics of our sample. 20 of 33 folks were, youth were Latin, 13 black. About half were open about their gang membership. Eight did not have an affiliation with the gang and eight did not want to answer that question. And this is published in a paper that you all can find. And so a couple key themes that come out of this is one that youth interpret online posts given their knowledge of real world, face to face beefs or violence or activities of violence, and so that there is an immediate connection between the physical and the digital, right? We think about this idea of the fallacy that what happens online is separate from the real world. And here we have examples of how these things are married, and the minds of the youth. So Jared, an 18 year old, says “There’s one girl posted up a picture of my boys hats and shit that they took and that got to me. I was like, man, that’s my guy passed away. And a couple days later they took a cap from his candles and it’s like, man, it just felt like I wanted revenge for what they did. But I mean, it got to me. It is what it is. But it did affect me.” And the interviewer says, “What are the first thoughts when you saw it?” Jared says, “Man, I’ll kill these motherfuckers, man.” And so this is an example of, seeing, right? Like someone posting a hat, which can be an innocuous post until you realize that that hat was stolen from a memorial of someone who died from gang violence. And so now this, this, this post is going to continue a gang war by making, you know, a beef that was preexisting even worse moving forward. Another example comes from Franco, another 18 year old, in a Latin neighborhood in Chicago who says, “One of my friends posted up a picture of our boy that had rest in peace, that he had died. And there was this one op” –  which is a word that the young people used to refer to, members of opposing gangs or people on the other side of a beef – “that commented to disrespect. I know who he chilled with–just for him disrespecting my boy that he passed away– it was just me and my boys and two of the guys. We knew where he was and we knew what we could do, so we went after him. We were looking for him and what we did, we just beat his ass.” And so part of in these interviews, we told people not to talk to us about, we explained clearly as researchers the things that they could say that we would, we would be required to tell the police that they’re planning to do acts of violence, and we ask them not to give us, that type of information. And, and I think that this is an example of someone who is in a violent network who engaged in violence because of someone commenting on a post in a disrespectful way. So if you know that someone is mourning a loss and you don’t like them, to their face you might decide to be more respectful. You’re not going to say something to them when you see them at school, but with the distance, right? The online disinhibition effect in this situation facilitates acts of real world violence in the sense that you are now seeing something that is more hostile than you would be comfortable being in person, in a comment in a way that feels more innocuous or more safe. But it can lead to you being tracked down and hurt. Another theme that came out of this is relationships. And the ways that people perceive relationships influence their interpretation of threats in a post. So, for example, specifically referencing or calling out people by name, increased the perceived seriousness of a threat that when there’s no name attached, people you know, a lot of young people would say, oh, that person’s that serious. They’re just trying to sound tough. But when they mention someone’s name, then all of a sudden this seems like someone is being targeted, means that we may see a real violent act as a result. So here’s an example, from an interview with Marcus. “How do people communicate threats?” Marcus says it’s “Very common. They won’t even put it on your page or in your messages. They’ll put it right up as a status and tag your name in it so that everybody can see.” And so when you have Facebook networks where you have large groups of friends from a neighborhood or from a school, and if someone tags you in a post, this means that everyone can see you’ve now been challenged. And now if someone is challenging your street credibility, then you feel that you need to do something in order to prove that you are actually tough and that no one can mess with you right? Another quote from Patrick, where he says, “Yeah. It was this person that I grew up with. We got into a beef on Facebook with some other boy and boy was talking about, oh, I’m going to catch you, I’m going to shoot you. And my friend thought he was never going to catch him and shoot him, and he caught him and shot him.” And this is another example of online threats and youth needing to make decisions about when these online threats can turn into real world violence, when it means that they are in danger, and, versus when people are just talking trash and this is an example of someone who did not, correctly interpret an online threat is really being someone being after them. And as a consequence, an act of violence happened. I’ll give one more example here. Logan says, “Yeah, a couple of times, actually, like on gang pages or on exposing pages like a couple of people we never knew who was behind the screen they’ll make a page, they’ll name it by a random name, and the Facebook page will be about just putting people’s names out there and, like, making up lies about them. You know, a couple times that put me in like, so-and-so does this, you dated this and this, you know, or another page about gangs. Like, they put my face upside down, you know, with bullets like so and so soon to burn. You know, like, now they got my face. They recognize me on the street.” And so this idea of putting someone’s face upside down it’s a sign of disrespect. And so, one thing that you’ll see when you, if you look at gang graffiti on walls in, in certain high violence communities, you will see gang symbols and then you’ll see gang symbols upside down, which is what the opps do to to disrespect that gang and to often they’ll do that in that gangs territory as a way of showing we came to your house and we disrespected your gang and no one did anything. And it’s a form of, challenging the idea that this is an organization that is deserving of respect or fear. And so this is a page that is intentionally designed to put people out there and to make them look bad in a way that incentivizes them to go out and, you know, engage in acts of violence in order to reclaim their status. And so this is right. This is another example here. Now, I want to re-emphasize here that community violence does not begin on social media. And so, right, I think there’s sometimes social media gets a bad rap, and it’s seen as being the origins of violence, the origins of you know, people being, you know, becoming hateful. And I, and I think it’s important for us to like one, you know, I mean, I’m studying youth in a high violence neighborhood, but I think in general, it’s important for us to recognize, to relate, right, the ways the social media facilitates the things that are happening in face to face environments, rather than just, being the only instances that people have access to ideas that that may encourage them to engage in violence. We also have research on social media being used for violence interventions. And so from the same project, we learned about ways that former gang members use social media to see where threats are taking place and where violence is about to happen. And then that online investigation directs their in person intervention to be able to stop violence before it happens. So in the same way that we can see social media facilitate acts of violence, it can also be used to prevent acts of violence when, you know, people who do this work are given the resources to do the work. Right. So we know that social media has radically changed how we disseminate information. And we like to just suggest a human centered approach to utilizing social media where we continue to make sure that we are not analyzing or trying to understand online interactions without understanding the context of the face to face interactions. And so I see Michael, which means my time is out. Thank you. Time is up. Thank you so much. Very happy to share and answer any questions. 

[Dr. Michael Rich]:Thank you very much, Rob. You brought up a really important point throughout this, both in terms of the risks but also the potential benefits. And, and that really is that, we may be a step behind the kids when we think about the online and offline space. For them, it is a single seamless environment for them. You know, they move back and forth between them. And I think the particular danger, perhaps, of the online space as we old farts would call it, you know, that, is that, absent, a real time interaction, you know, the asynchronous nature of it allows people to be a little more edgy, a little more, you know, pushing to get a reaction.And also to not be able to read the other person, the receiver’s responses to it. And so it can actually in this seamless environment, it can actually serve to accelerate what’s already going on as opposed to cause it. I would love for you to talk to that a little bit. From your experience. 

[Dr. Rob Eschmann]: Yeah, absolutely. I think that that is what we’ve found over and over. That you have long standing beefs or gang wars that have been happening for years and years, and so people do not need social media in order to engage in those acts of violence. And I think that that’s important for us to, you know, acknowledge, right, I’m a social media researcher, but that I’m right, I’m also someone that is invested in removing the barriers that people have to achieving the American dream. And in the neighborhoods where we’re talking to youth, you know, these are kids who are in schools that are underfunded, they have parents who have been excluded from the workforce. Right. Lots of people from the neighborhood have been incarcerated. And so you have the human capital being you know, taken out of this community and, and what’s left behind between vacant lots and, right it ends up explaining violence without us needing to look to social media. So what we are doing is showing how additional acts can be facilitated in a context where violence is already higher than it should be because of the civic neglect that we can measure and that people have been measuring for decades. And so I think that our part as researchers is to understand the context and explain the context and understand the policies that can change in order to provide more resources and opportunities to disadvantaged communities. But then also, think about how we can use technology to intervene, given what we know about the context and the problem. And I think that’s something that, you know, there are a lot of good people who have been doing this work and who, really, right, you said that the youth are ahead of us, but also the violence prevention workers are ahead of us. And that before organizations had any kind of policy or plan or training on how to use social media, these folks had figured out that if you are friends with a few of these kids on social media and you see what they post, that information is golden because it allows you to know who to call, who to talk to, when you want to find the person who you know is hurt and bubbling and ready for violence and then you go and you buy that kid a donut, and then now you’re able to, you know, to stop a hotheaded response before, it takes place. 

[Dr. Michael Rich]: Thank you. And I’d love to invite our other presenters to come on camera. I have a host of questions for everyone. And I will actually start off with, expanding the idea that Rob brought up, you know, social media kind of being part of the community just as the face to face part of the community. I would want to expand it beyond what we call social media, which, first of all, everybody has a slightly different definition of, and I have found that really social media is not the only part of it. This is any interactive digital media, whether it be texting, gaming, when people game with each other online. So I want to throw this out to the group to sort of say, how do we see our specific areas of interest playing out in this kind of seamless digital physical environment back and forth? I’ll point a finger at you, Doctor Bushman, just because you’re at the top of my screen. 

[Dr. Brad J. Bushman]: ]Well, our own research has shown that if you could play video games in isolation or you can play them with other people online, and there’s a difference in, whether you’re playing a cooperative way where you’re playing with another person to kill a common enemy, or you’re competing against each other to kill each other. And we found the latter aggressive behavior is higher in the latter types of video games.

[Dr. Michael Rich]: Anyone else? Thoughts? Well, we can move to, a really important question from one of our audience, which is, are there ways that parents can block violent content from unsuspecting areas or unsuspected areas, like maybe podcasts, that get through parental filters? We did hear from Dr. Hong about hate speech. Hate speech is hard to filter to, technologically. Much harder than imagery is. So, I would love to hear what people think about how parents and frankly, the kids themselves can protect themselves from, hate speech in particular, but, the larger violent milieu, if you will, out there in the interactive media space.

[Stephanie Fredrick]: One of the things that we try to talk about within our, our research and our work with, with schools and others is just this kind of accountability both from the platforms but then also from young people themselves. And so I do think there is like some aspect of, yes, I think platforms are getting better at being able to identify, taking things down, being a bit more quick to respond to reporting and things like that. But then also I do think as parents or educators or, you know, I do think it’s also on us to teach, and talk with our kids about what does hateful content even look like? Or, you know, what, you see somebody being harassed online. What are some things that you can and should do in this situation? And so just kind of talking through some of those various options. And the more we can do that, the younger they are, right. You know, the better I think these things happen, before maybe we as parents expect them to. 

[Dr. Michael Rich]: Excellent. Yeah. And, I have often been asked by parents, what can we do? What filters, what software is out there to protect my kids? And I said the most important software to protect your kids online sits between your kids ears. It’s about empowering them. Educating them with being digitally literate and with understanding that they have a responsibility to themselves and to the community at large, for what they both consume and create, so that you can interrupt that escalation that occurs often online. Which may play itself out IRL in real life, as Rob has demonstrated. But, I think that this is really important. I do think that you are also right that we need to hold the platforms responsible for things. And I want to mention that the inspired internet pledge which we challenged the community with a year ago. And we were told, “Oh the tech companies will never do this, you know, their legal departments will stop it.” But the inspired internet pledge is to challenge those tech companies, to tune their product for emotional and psychological wellness, to listen and respond to those who have encountered harm. And thirdly, to share data with each other on what works and what doesn’t, to preserve the wellness of their users. We were told no one would sign on. We now have over 50 signatories, including big ones like TikTok, and, Pinterest and others that are, getting on board with what is in fact not a legally binding, but an aspirational goal. But it allows us and their consumers to hold them to those standards and, and say, you know, our use of your product will depend on how well you adhere to what you’ve promised to do. So I think that we can reach out and ask them to join the human community in terms of seeking the wellness of their users as one of their outcomes. I think that it is a really important question we have too, is how does a parent balance both protecting their child, but also helping them be aware of the world that’s out there? In other words, how do we build that software between their ears to allow them to protect themselves? As opposed to depending on us entirely to protect them?

[Dr. Rob Eschmann]: I will say too I think that my insight from this comes more from being a parent and then being someone who studies tech that I think it is, you know, a lost cause to think that we will be able to anticipate all harmful content that they will have access to. I’ve been very careful about trying to limit access to things from my kids, and I know how to make it so that when they play video games, they only hear their friends and not random people. And then, my youngest, who was ten at the time, told me that he heard someone using the N-word, in a video game on the VR headset right on the Oculus. And I was like, I didn’t know that the chat was a function with VR. Right. And – but this is one of the spaces where I had not figured out how to do any functions.But I had a relationship where he came to me and talked with me about what he experienced. And I think that that is what’s most important is keeping that line of connection open, where kids don’t feel like they need to hide problematic things that happen online, and that where you have that relationship where you can deal with it as a parent, the same way you would deal with it when something happens in school. And so if they trust you enough to tell you that I think that you can, it will be easier to find ways to move forward.

[Dr. Jun Sung Hong]: I just wanted to piggyback on what Rob just said, which is and which he provided an excellent insight. I think that, you know, this really needs to start earlier because, you know, when you’re a parent of an adolescent is quite different from when you’re a parent of a younger child. Whereas, like, you know, when you’re a parent of an adolescent and you try to limit or monitor, you know, your children’s social media usage, then there’s a lot of like, rebellion and kids, that’s the age where kids expect to be, you know, they expect privacy and they’re trying to be autonomous. So I think having those conversations that Rob mentioned, is very important, especially early on. And it’s also important for parents to be informed of, you know, what’s out there, because, you know, we’re seeing like all these new technologies every day there’s always something new that’s appearing. And parents oftentimes say, you know, “I don’t know much about this. You know, I know much less than my kids who know way more than I do.” etc. But it’s really important for parents to be informed of what’s out there, how they’re being used. So parents kind of need to kind of educate themselves as well. 

[Dr. Michael Rich]: This is absolutely true. I’m often asked is the media and when should I start my child with media literacy? And I say the moment they start using media and I include board books in that, you know, right from the beginning, we are teaching them how to synthesize and understand and decode that information that’s being sent to them. And I think that, one of the things that’s really quite interesting is that I am often asked by parents or told by parents that they dread the internet talk more than they dread the sex talk, because correctly or incorrectly, they think they know something about sex, but they’re utterly convinced their kid knows more than they do about the internet. And they don’t like not being the expert. So one of the things we recommend is exactly what Rob clearly did with his kid, which, applause to you, my man. It is that we mentor them in the use of these devices. And the reason I use the word mentor rather than teach is teaching is thought of as a one way communication from the expert to the learner. Mentors learn as much from the mentee as the mentee learns from the mentor. And Rob learned from his son. Oh. Oh, wow. This happens. So if we approach mentoring them in these tools not with fear, not with blame or shame, or this is right and this is wrong, but with curiosity and learn it together with them. We are not only helping them understand, you know, how to bring executive function to bear on some of this stuff and really, managing it in ways that respect themselves and others? But we’re also learning from them, and we are opening a dialog that continues forward, not in the blame and shame environment, but in a mutually curious and mutually caring environment. So I think we’ve gotten a really great example of how to do that, built in right here. So, okay, I do want to touch on the basis of violence that occurs between groups online. And that means sort of, if you will, micro groups such as the gangs that Rob has worked with. But, macro groups such as Dr. Hong has spoken to in terms of racial groups, ethnic groups, etc.. We’ve, you know, seen lots of examples of, anti-Muslim, anti-Asian and anti African American groups. And I think that one of the things that often gets also gets amplified and accelerated in this space is that kind of group, in-group versus outgroup, hate that’s going on online. 

[Dr. Jun Sung Hong]: So, I guess, like, based on my research, a lot of my research has focused on not just bullying, but also bullying among, like, out of outgroup, you know, among outgroups. But it’s also important to really, look at, you know, race based bullying can be very complex. And it does occur not just out of the group but also within the group as well. So we see – we do see, like, for example, what I call interracial bullying, where you’re being bullied by somebody who is, you know, same ethnic identity as you like, for example, I’m Asian and, I get bullied by other Asian kids, which happened before when I was younger. But that’s another story. I think there’s a need for us to focus on that as well, and to recognize that, you know, race is race based bullying or any type of bullying based on, you know, what we call bias based or identity based. It is very complex. However, that being said, I know that, you know, my own studies, recent studies as well as, you know, what’s presented in the news media shows that there’s been a lot of uptick, you know, hate crime against various, like, minority groups. Whether it’s African-Americans, Asians, you know, other races, sexual orientations, etc., like who, you know, are perceived to be different from the in-group. So, I know there’s been a lot of, you know, cases of like, hate crimes against like, as well as, like, bias based bullying, perpetrated against certain, like, groups. And that’s something that we need to see more research being conducted. 

[Dr. Michael Rich]: I think Dr. Frederick’s research spoke to that a little bit. You know, the idea of why are people, you know, bullying each other, why do people end up being the haters or the hated? You know it really, it appears to be a part of human nature to seek to feel better about oneself by othering other people in one way or another, whether it’s by race or by gender or you name it, almost anything. 

[Dr. Stephanie Fredrick]: And I’ll just – I’ll just very quickly just, you know, add the literature. I mean, you know, Dr. Hong’s work and others has really found that this bias based harassment and bullying is much more harmful. We see much worse outcomes, when someone is targeted, based on their identity or a perceived identity. And so it is certainly something that, you know, should be further considered for research and practice for sure. 

[Dr. Jun Sung Hong]: And I do want to throw one more thing. And I’ll be really quick. And being somebody who has done research on bullying, there’s been numerous, like, interventions and schools, many schools are required to have some sort of intervention in place because now all 50 states must have some sort of anti-bullying like measure. Unfortunately, we’ve seen modest, like, results have been quite disappointing because a lot of it stems from the fact that many of the interventions have been what’s described as one size fits all, rather than taking into account some of these differences in terms of characteristics which might reinforce, like, bullying. And that’s something that needs to be addressed in these interventions. So I just want to quickly point that out as well. 

[Dr. Michael Rich]: Absolutely. Some of the interventions are actually the institution perpetuating bullying, using its power differential to punish the perps, if you will, and, you know, protect the victims as opposed to trying to address the culture in the community. That that will, you know, give rise to bullying as opposed to, caring for each other and taking care of each other. So I think, one final question. It’s going to be a hard one for you, which is looking forward, how do we protect children from AI generated, hate, if you will, or threats? I’m noting in particular the recent, AI bot that a young man fell in love with, created, fell in love with, and then was urged to, die by suicide as a result of. Let’s think a little bit about AI and how that plays into this, particularly when it’s combined with the clearly volatile nature of humans.

[Dr. Rob Eschmann]: Well you know I will say that for me, the biggest threat of AI is one, loss of jobs as different things that become automated. But then two, it makes it easier to create more misinformation faster. I think that when we think about bullying or online racism or online hate, it’s often about misinformation being shared. And people who are in certain echo chambers fall prey to believing the things that they’re reading. And this is something that we know that white supremacist groups have been intentional about using technology to spread hate from. You know, like in the 90s, MartinLutherKing.org was a white supremacist website that spread lies about Martin Luther King. And I wouldn’t advise people to go to the site. I know that my computer told me, be careful, there’s a virus here when I tried it while I was writing my book. And so I think that is what we’re going to see is that it will be possible to create information that convinces people racism is good, and that DEI is bad, and that critical race theory is the real danger to society and ways that people end up voting against their interests. And we can see now the kind of changes that have been happening and support for politicians that are hurting communities around the country comes from people believing myths about vulnerable communities that don’t start with misinformation, but that are egged on by misinformation. I think that’s what AI can do. What can 70 Russian hackers do in an hour? Now they can do a thousand times that with access to AI tools. They can write the fake op eds and create the fake websites faster. 

[Dr. Michael Rich]: Absolutely. And you’re right about AI also taking jobs. And what happens as a result of that is that the missing information that is put out is, you know, immigrants are taking your jobs, not robots. You know, and it appeals to people’s desire to others, to also to, not realize that they too need to change with the times and be able to code those robots if they want to stay in the workforce. So I think this is a really critical piece. We have to look at the whole ecosystem. It’s not just what’s happening online. It’s also how it affects all these things outside the online space and how it can basically accelerate and amplify those effects. So it looks like we are just about at time. I want to turn this back to Kris. Thank you for making this possible for us all, Children and Screens. I see this as the beginning of a good dialog, among us all. And, let’s all follow Dr. Eschmann’s lead and lead as parents rather than as researchers or doctors or social workers. Let’s lead as parents to preserve the future of those young people that we’re taking care of. Thank you.

[Kris Perry]: Thank you, Michael, and the entire panel for today’s sobering discussion on violent media, toxic online spaces and youth aggression, the kind of impactful research that you heard about today is essential for understanding and driving positive change for children, families and communities. Whether you’re joining us for the first time today or have engaged with our work for years, we invite you to support this work by contributing to our Research Grants program. Every dollar you give goes directly to funding critical research that helps inform better policies, smarter design, and healthier environments for kids growing up in a digital world. Thank you.