Shootings reflect how America's young men are being radicalized online | Opinion

The nation is grappling to understand what led a 20-year-old man born to two social workers in an affluent Pennsylvania suburb to shoot a former president. But what happened to Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania a week ago has happened in classrooms across America for the past quarter century. In the post-Columbine generation, where over 398,000 students have experienced gun violence at school, countless children have died at the hands of fellow young people who were radicalized to idolize violence. Unlike Trump, these children didn't have Secret Service protection.

I am grateful that this condemnable act of political violence didn't become something worse, and my thoughts are with all victims' families. For our nation to heal, though, we must realize that what happened July 13 reflects a national trend: America's young men are being radicalized to idolize and commit acts of extreme violence.

The FBI has not yet revealed an official motive for Thomas Michael Crooks, but what former classmates have revealed about Crooks matches the profile of many school shooters: Crooks was a loner, often bullied and had an interest in guns. From Parkland to Uvalde, countless investigations of teen shooters reveal that shooters had warning signs of radicalization that went undetected. Crooks' warning signs were ignored, too.

The Columbine effect

On April 20, 1999, two 18-year-olds at Columbine High School murdered 12 students and teachers using semi-automatic weapons. Twenty-five years later, over 100 teenage boys have planned or executed attacks with the explicit goal of mimicking or outdoing the tragedy at Columbine, Mother Jones reports.

Columbine changed how Generation Z would experience school. Born in 2003, I grew up with annual active shooter drills, where we would have to barricade our classroom doors with desks and talk with our teachers about what classroom items we could throw to stop a shooter. From Sandy Hook to Marjorie Stoneman Douglass, 413 school shootings have occurred since Columbine, with the average shooter being male, 16 years old and motivated by a desire for infamy.

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A 16-year-old doesn’t begin joining Columbine fan clubs overnight. Radicalization pipelines are gradual, and teenagers can be recruited by white supremacists in places as innocuous as a Discord server for their favorite video game.

"Different online groups that attempt to attract and radicalize new members may target specific men, but all races, ages, and genders are vulnerable to online radicalization for any cause," said Sarah Daly, a criminologist who specializes in studying mass violence and radicalization. "However, young white men may be a specific target group, as they may be specifically susceptible to the message that they are not being given (or losing) benefits or advantages to which they believe they are entitled."

One in six gamers under 18 say they have seen content online that suggests the white race is superior or that other races should be eliminated, an NYU report revealed. Without their brains fully developed, kids who spend excessive time online on sites that recommend radical content can have their worldview completely rewired by extremist communities online.

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Eighteen-year-old Payton Gendron was drawn to popular imageboard site 4chan in March 2020 because of "boredom," he said in an interview with The Guardian. Two years later, he shot 10 people at a Buffalo grocery store and left a 180-page manifesto, filled with anti-Semitic and racist rhetoric stripped directly from 4chan posts.

How to identify warning signs in radicalization

America's male teenagers are in crisis: Boys are falling behind in school, enrolling in college at lower rates, struggling to form relationships and experiencing suicidal ideation at higher rates. In a culture that discourages men to talk about their feelings, isolated teenagers can find a warm welcome in alt-right and incel communities online, who tell them their struggles are entirely the fault of women and racial or religious minorities.

Right now, our nation has an opportunity to reject a status quo where the radicalization of young, white males has been continually dismissed as one-off tragedies. What happened at the Trump rally was a horrible act of political violence, and we must make every effort to prevent any young person from idolizing or copying Crooks.

Radicalization can happen to anyone, and if a child is spending excessive time online, avoiding people, talking in an "us vs. them" mentality or suddenly caring about political issues, parents should check in, said Daly. As many teenagers are struggling post-pandemic, teachers, parents and friends need to be aware of warning signs and help at-risk youth so they don't feel drawn to incels and white supremacists.

"Teenage boys may benefit from finding other in-person outlets and interests to find healthy friendships, such as clubs or gaming groups," said Daly. Connecting boys with mental health treatment and limiting screen time can also be helpful interventions.

More change needs to happen, but before we start any sort of conversation about gun laws or social media regulations, our nation needs to realize that there is a silent crisis among America's teenagers. To prevent political violence, we must prevent those at-risk from being radicalized to support it in the first place.

Meredith Perkins is an intern on the Opinion team at the Enquirer and currently attends Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, studying English and diplomacy. She is a native of Independence, Ky.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Trump shooter matches profile of many school shooters