The Times also identified social media accounts,<\/a> believed to be used by one of the shooters, that contained content that idolized school shootings, white nationalism and neo-Nazi terrorism and memes from the online far-right community. <\/p>\nTeens are going online earlier and more often than past generations. And psychologists and psychiatrists say kids, in their formative years, could easily see extremist content online and, in some cases, possibly connect with extremist groups in search of social belonging. <\/p>\n
Anne Speckhard, director of the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism, has studied terrorists for the last 20 years. Historically, it was thought that homegrown terrorists couldn\u2019t be recruited online, but she said, \u201cthat\u2019s not true anymore because the [internet] is so personal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anyone from another part of the world or even another state could spend time grooming someone else over the internet or through social media, Speckhard said. <\/p>\n
\u201cRadicalization required tight-knit face-to-face groups like a local gang or fringe clubs, but today social media algorithms actually simulate the exact environment at a massive scale,\u201d said Morteza Dehghani, professor of psychology and computer science at USC. <\/p>\n
Experts say a child can take their phone or computer into their room and spend hours with a recruiter or pre-made content online. <\/p>\n
How can online radicalization happen<\/p>\n
On social media, when a child or a teenager feels this intense moral alignment with an online group, it triggers this concept called identity fusion, which is this deep visceral sense of oneness, where the boundary between the personal self and the group blurs, Dehghani said. <\/p>\n
\u201cOur experimental data actually shows that this fusion is the primary driver that increases a person\u2019s willingness to engage in radical behavior, and even fight or die for a group\u2019s cause,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
This is one of the ways extremism develops broadly, especially for teenagers, online. <\/p>\n
Another way extremism can develop is when a young person is looking for belonging. <\/p>\n
Speckhard said she interviewed 55 white supremacists and antigovernment militias for her book \u201cHomegrown Hate: Inside the Minds of Domestic Violent Extremists.\u201d During an interview, one man, who said he went to a KKK cross burning, told Speckhard he knew that\u2019s where he belonged \u201cbecause they came around him and gave him a sense of belonging and significance.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody has a need for significance and belonging and purpose in their life,\u201d she said. \u201cBut many of us are not getting it in our lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when a young person can turn to the internet and fall down rabbit holes. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf there is extremist content, the algorithm will just feed you more and more and more,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
What are the signs a young person is being radicalized?<\/p>\n
A person\u2019s teen years are spent discovering who they are. There is normal teenage rebellion, and there is radicalization, and sometimes it\u2019s really hard to distinguish between the two, Dehghani said. <\/p>\n
Dehghani advises that parents look out for shifts in the boundary between themselves and the group that they\u2019re beginning to align with. That includes a sudden, visceral connection to a different group, a change in identity or morality. <\/p>\n
Another red flag is that the child might start defending, talking about or favoring an online group with cult-like attachment.<\/p>\n
A more extreme example is if the teen starts using \u201cpurity-related language,\u201d which are words associated with physical or spiritual disgust, cleansing this corruption, or viewing groups of people in degrading ways, Dehghani said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a warning sign that they are not only generating extremist rhetoric, but [it\u2019s happening because] they\u2019re most probably absorbing it,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
What can parents do about it?<\/p>\n
Parents should try to break the echo chamber in which the child or teenager is receiving their information.<\/p>\n
For example, Dehghani said, if a parent suddenly sees that their child is taking a very moralized perspective toward something such as immigration, or another social topic, it\u2019s beneficial to expose them to the diversity of ideas that exist around that issue. <\/p>\n
Parents can also engage their kids in conversation about their routines online and express interest in the sites they\u2019re visiting. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two teenage suspects who attacked the Islamic Center in San Diego on Monday, killing three people before turning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330059,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[136989,3409,2568,135238,136991,7244,2585,3410,48,52,51,47,50,49,136988,7087,7656,136990,4412,360,22586],"class_list":["post-330058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-anne-speckhard","tag-child","tag-computer-science","tag-extremism","tag-far-right-extremist-content","tag-group","tag-internet","tag-kid","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-morteza-dehghani","tag-parent","tag-person","tag-social-belonging","tag-social-medium","tag-teen","tag-teenager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330058\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}