It took about 90 seconds for Rianna Montaque to see violence on her X account: a fight in a restaurant that turned into an all-out brawl with chairs smashed over heads and bodies collapsed.
The “Gang_Hits” account has many more clips like that: shootings, beatings, people getting hit by cars. It is part of a genre of dark content that is often promoted by algorithms, which is why it appears spontaneously on young people’s social networks.
Montaque, a soft-spoken 18-year-old from Birmingham, also uses Instagram and Snapchat, and joined several other teenagers at the Bringing Hope charity in Handsworth, where she explained: “You become desensitized. If it comes up in your story that someone was stabbed the other day, you don’t get as angry about it anymore. “It’s normal to see it.”
Often, violent content can hit closer to home. Iniko St Clair-Hughes, 19, gave the example of a gang who filmed a chase of an enemy and then posted it on Instagram.
“Now everyone has seen him flee and his pride is going to make him want to retaliate,” he said. “It will spread in the group chats and everyone knows he ran away, so next time he leaves the house he wants to prove himself. That’s what happens. Sometimes the reprisals are filmed.”
Jamil Charles, 18, said he used to appear in those clips. He explained that images of him fighting used to circulate on social media.
“People glamorize that kind of thing and the smallest thing can escalate on social media,” he said. “A fight can happen between two people and they can crush it (come to a truce), but because the video is on social media and it looks like from a different perspective one is losing, pride will be hurt, so you can go. “Go out and get some kind of revenge and let people know you’re not going to mess with me.”
All of this created anxiety, St Clair-Hughes explained.
“Scaremongering on social media puts you in a state of fight or flight, so when you leave the house you are now either on the front foot or the back foot. So you come out ready to do what you have to do… It’s the subliminals: no one is telling you to pick up a knife and commit violence, it’s just that you see it more…”
Reanna Reid, 18, said she had friends who started carrying knives because of disputes that occurred on Snapchat. Some were boys but she also knew girls who carried weapons.
“It’s not about talking anymore,” he said. “You just use your weapon and whoever wins, wins. It is a source of pride.”
Is there any solution? St Clair-Hughes was pessimistic.
“People tend toward negativity…(social media companies) want us to use their app, so I don’t think they’re going to make it more positive.”
Reid had heard that Chinese TikTok was more restricted and focused on education, and said she was interested in the idea that the same platform could have a different focus in different countries.
Oshaun Henry, 19, sent a strong message to social media companies: “Do better. They have created these things and they have the power to do a lot, especially with AI. They need to set limits and restrictions. “They have done something, they have seen the impact on young people, so now it is time to do something better: investigate, fix.”