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 and bodies sprawling.
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 which 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 several other teenagers at the Bringing Hope charity in Handsworth, where she explained: “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.”
Often the violent content can be closer to home. Iniko St Clair-Hughes, 19, gave an example of a gang filming a chase of an enemy and then posting it on Instagram.
“Now everyone has seen him running away and his pride is going to make him want to retaliate,” he said. “It will get passed around in group chats and everyone knows that he ran away, so next time he leaves the house he wants to prove himself. That’s what happens. Sometimes the retaliation is filmed.”
Jamil Charles, 18, said he used to feature in such clips. He explained that footage of him fighting used to circulate on social media.
“People glamourise them types of things and the smallest thing can be escalated on social media,” he said. “A fight can happen between two people and they can squash it [reach a truce], but because the video’s out there on social media and it looks from a different perspective like one is losing, pride is going to be hurt so you might go out there and get some sort of revenge and let people know, you’re not going to mess with me.”
It all created anxiety, explained St Clair-Hughes.
“The fearmongering on social media puts you in a fight or flight state so when you leave the house now you are either on the front foot or on the back foot. So you step outside ready to do whatever you need to do … It’s the subliminals – no one’s telling you to pick up a knife and commit violence, it’s just the more that you see it …”
Reanna Reid, 18, said she had friends who started to carry knives because of disputes that happened on Snapchat. Some were boys but she also knew girls who carried weapons.
“Its not a talking thing any more,” she said. “You just use your weapon and whoever wins, wins. It’s a thing of pride.”
Is there a solution? St Clair-Hughes was pessimistic.
“People go towards negativity …[the social media companies] want us to use their app so I don’t think they are going to make it any more positive.”
Reid had heard that Chinese TikTok was more restricted and focused on education, and she said she was interested in the idea that the same platform could have a different approach in different countries.
Oshaun Henry, 19, had a blunt message to social media companies: “Do better. They have made these things and they have the power to do so much, especially with AI. They need to put limits and restrictions on. They have made something, they have seen the impact on young people, so now it’s your time to do something better – do your research, do your fixing.”