‘It’s a slippery slope’: How young men fall into online radicalization

Reid Brown recalls the first time he got sucked into the algorithm — he was just 13 and watching videos after school when YouTube started pushing him for controversial content.

Over time, the videos have become more and more extreme, says Brown, now 21.

“It started quite harmlessly,” he recalls. “You’re watching something about teen fashion and the next thing you know, the algorithm is directing you to a Ben Shapiro video.”

Though Shapiro describes himself as a conservative political commentator, his views are controversial — and some are downright discriminatory. For example, he has suggested that transgender people suffer from a “mental disorder.”

But he has a total of 9.4 million subscribers and followers across YouTube and Twitter, many of whom are young people, like Brown was when he was pushed in Shapiro’s direction.

While Shapiro is not affiliated with any hate group, experts on media, gender studies and young men’s radicalization say the commentator’s content is widely shared in online extremist communities.

And confronting controversial — and increasingly harmful — views on masculinity, the objectification of women, and the LGBT community are prompting the same experts to raise concerns about how extremist, far-right groups are draining TikTok, YouTube, and other social media apps -Campaign use vulnerable youth and young men to slowly radicalize.

Though TikTok’s decision to remove influencer Andrew Tate’s account for misogynistic content, which the company said it was violating its policies, brought the discussion into the spotlight, but the personal stories of people like Brown offer a unique insight into the impact who may have the content on teenagers.

The videos Brown watched as an early teen were often misogynistic, he said, and it began to affect the way he thought and interacted with people at school.

“I remember repeating some sexist attitudes, things about the pay gap… Especially when I was hanging out with my male friends, we would repeat all those things that we saw on the internet. Lots of sexism and misogyny.”

Seeing his friends demonstrate these things in person made it “more real” than just seeing an idea online, he said.

It can escalate in the comments

This is exactly how online radicalization works, says Ellen Chloë Bateman of Brown’s experience.

Batemen, a documentary and podcast producer covering online radicalization among young men and the incel subculture, describes radicalization as a “slippery slope” that can begin when algorithms push boys into videos that are always become more harmful.

Then “someone might tangle you in a comment thread and tell you to join their discord group [where] The content is getting darker and darker, and it’s failed,” she said. “It’s entertaining for some young guys, and before you know it you’ve stumbled into an extremist subculture.”

Young men who feel lost or isolated are often targeted; They see these groups as a way to escape those feelings, she says.

“The appeal of these hate groups is that they bring a sense of community and power to isolated young men – often for the first time in their lives – and give them a target, someone to blame for the challenges they face in their lives perceive life.”

Some young men might also see empowering messages for women and girls as an assault on masculinity, says Joanna Schroeder, a writer whose work focuses on gender and media representation.

“Maybe they’ll see Me Too stuff … maybe they’ll see a t-shirt or bumper sticker that says ‘The future is female,'” she said. “There’s a lot of encouraging content out there for girls… and when [young men] If they don’t get a chance to talk about their feelings, they may see it as “men are irrelevant”.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean that’s going to happen…but they can feel that way.”

So how can our society offer young men an opportunity to process their emotions in a healthy way?

That’s what Morris Green asked himself – and he hopes his organization can provide it.

Find a healthy outlet

Green is a health education consultant and part of GuysWork in Nova Scotia, an organization now in its 11th year.

Green says he began working with schools in Nova Scotia in 2012 in hopes of giving young men a safe space to talk about their feelings and mental health and to disrupt problematic ideals about masculinity.

These harmful social norms can include everything from pressures on young men to drink alcohol to a desire not to be seen as vulnerable or to ask for help, he said.

There is also often homophobia and a concern that being anything other than straight may be perceived as “not normal” by one’s peers.

“We basically wanted to normalize help-seeking behavior,” he said.

Green says GuysWork sessions focus on fostering a sense of safety and inclusion for young men who may not have an adult role model or someone to talk to.

“We’re really trying to be creative … with the teaching and the facilitation to create that safety for some really important conversations that, in most cases, just aren’t happening.”

And it pays off.

In 2020 GuysWork participated in a study with St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, NS. There, Associate Professor and Lead Researcher Chris Gilham found that GuysWork was able to change young men’s views on some male norms that he said can be harmful to health in the short and long term.

Many of the 180 students who attended said they felt they no longer needed to display a “certain type of typical and traditional masculinity” and could instead be “gentle, caring, kind and considerate,” Gilham said.

Bateman and Schroeder agree that role models are critical to the healthy development of young men. They say it’s important for parents to talk to their children about the type of content they consume online.

“[Parents] need to be on the lookout for signs of radicalization, including changes in language and behavior,” Bateman said.

How to have healthy conversations

While parents can’t get ahead of all the technology their teens might be using, Schoeder said, they can offer help by teaching them media literacy — and do it early on.

“We start doing media critiques with them when they’re quite young so they have the ability to analyze something when it’s presented to them.”

And it’s important to be curious about teens instead of getting angry when they say they’re watching controversial videos, she said.

CLOCK | Algorithms and their agenda:

“Ask them questions about how they are feeling [the content] and then acknowledge their goodness for speaking to you about it.”

As for Brown, he’s a fourth-year mechanical engineering student at Dalhousie University. He said he can avoid being drawn into more extreme content by using social media less – and instead reading literature and various media publications.

For him, the most important thing is the effect of social media.

“Young men are not inherently sexist. I think it’s the algorithms that can really make them that way.”