How to talk to your kids about extremism online

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Two teenage suspects who attacked the Islamic Center in San Diego on Monday, killing three people before turning the guns on themselves, were engaging with far-right extremist content on social media, authorities have said.Authorities are working to determine a motive for the attack, which is being investigated as a hate crime.The gunmen left behind a 75-page manifesto that preached hate, anti-Islam ideology, antisemitism and promoted violence.

The Times also identified social media accounts, 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.Teens 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.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’t be recruited online, but she said, “that’s not true anymore because the [internet] is so personal.”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.“Radicalization 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,” said Morteza Dehghani, professor of psychology and computer science at USC.

Experts say a child can take their phone or computer into their room and spend hours with a recruiter or pre-made content online.On social media, when a child or a teenager feels this intense moral alignment with an online ...