Online brutality How grim genre is affecting young people
The Guardian|November 25, 2024
It took about 90 seconds for Rianna Montaque to see violence on her X account: a fight in a restaurant that escalated into a full-on brawl with chairs smashed over heads as bodies went sprawling.
Robert Booth
Online brutality How grim genre is affecting young people

The "Gang Hits" account has plenty more clips like that shootings, beatings, people being run down by cars. It is part of a grim genre of content that is often promoted by algorithms so it pops up in young people's social media feeds unbidden.

Montaque, a softly spoken 18-year-old from Birmingham, also uses Instagram and Snapchat, and joined other teenagers at the Bringing Hope charity in Handsworth, where she said: "You get desensitised to it.

If it comes up on your story that somebody got stabbed the other day, you don't get as upset about it no more. It's normal to see it."

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