We were hunters and gatherers for 90% of human existence. That means our brains are still wired to prioritize the things that kept us alive when we were living on the land, before the domestication of animals and the construction of cities. One thing that kept us alive was living in a tribe and cooperating. Attracting a tribe and fitting in was a requirement of life. That is why kids and teens are hyper-focused on doing what their friends do and working to be cool and accepted. Online influencers count on this drive to maintain their income streams. One way to attract kids online is to be a kid doing what kids love to do, playing with toys and video games, opening new packages, and hanging out with friends acting goofy. Netflix’s Bad Influencer offers a glimpse of the kid influencer “scene,” and the lengths that some parents will go to attract and keep a following.
What is Bad Influence about?
The limited documentary series has gone viral for good reason. It’s definitely entertaining, but also deeply unsettling. It is a perfect way to raise awareness about how scary a life all about social media can be. Bad Influencer is a documentary that focuses on a tween who becomes an overnight social media star and brings her friends to stardom with her. What started out as a fun hobby quickly turned into a living nightmare. It may seem glamorous to be famous online, until you learn that the child influencers spent the majority of their childhoods working long hours acting out video ideas, risky stunts, and performing pranks that sometimes went too far—all under the pressure of adult producers/parents hungry for views. Check out Intimacy With Minors Encouraged at the Hype House for a similar story of underage exploitation.
SPOILER ALERT: The show takes a chilling turn when the mother of the main character is accused of, and videotaped, sexually exploiting these kids on set by positioning herself as one of the only adults supervising them to control them. Some survived the battle with only a few scars, while the main character is stuck living this nightmare over and over again. It may be funny, exaggerated, and attention-grabbing, but it also paints a dark picture of a digital world where clout matters more than character and children are left to pay the price.
Psychology Behind the Fame Obsession
From a psychological point of view, being an influencer is cool to children because they have a natural need for validation, attention, and social connection.[1] Although the minimum age on most social media platforms is 13, it is reported that children ranging from 8-17 are found scrolling through online platforms soaking up content too mature for their ages.[2] Sadly, unlike real-world relationships, social media platforms offer fast, unfiltered dopamine hits through likes, shares, and views. Without proper guidance, this can make kids tie their self-worth to online numbers, which can result in low self-esteem, fear of missing out (FOMO), performance anxiety, and digital addiction.[3] As a result of social unlimited social media usage, kids can also experience anxiety, depression, and even poor quality of sleep.[4] Counteract this monster and help your child build emotional resilience, red flag awareness, and digital literacy by taking our GKIS Social Media Readiness Training Course. Geared for teens or tweens, it’s the perfect giftbefore that new device or video game.
What You Can Do to Help
Bad Influencer is not just a show; it’s a cautionary tale that shares the pressures kids face online every day. It is easy to get off topic and want to pull the plug on all electronics just to protect your child from their dangers, but that is not always possible. Technology and online platforms are all around us, and it is better to set your child up for success than to try to keep them out of the loop. Connecting with your child over what they find interesting can help create a trusting relationship where you can notice if things start to become a little off. Our free Connected Family Screen Agreement can help you and your child co-create rules around how to safely navigate online platforms. This way your child can thrive in the digital age without losing themselves in it.
Thanks to CSUCI intern, Elaha Qudratulla for researching and co-writing this article.
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe. Onward to More Awesome Parenting,
We know there are dangerous sites on the internet. But most of us have never accessed the dark web, where visitors are anonymous and access to the unthinkable is possible. Recently I visited and discovered that kids and teens easily access it to purchase illegal goods such as fake ids and drugs. Find out what is on the dark web, how easy it is for kids to access it, and what you can do to prevent it in today’s GKIS article. Caution: this article contains graphic descriptions of illegal activities, sex, and violence.
What is the dark web?
The dark web is the part of the internet that is not visible to regular search engines (like Google or Chrome) and requires the use of a special browser named Tor. Once Tor is downloaded and opened, you have arrived at what many call “Onionland.” Tor uses the onion router hidden service protocol, meaning that the Tor servers derived from the onion router offer users complete anonymity. Also, every website ends with .onion instead of .com, .org, or .gov.
The dark web is a criminal underworld where bad actors online sell and purchase illegal goods like drugs, weapons, counterfeit money, bank accounts, passports and ID’s, and much more. Dark web online shops are set up with customer reviews very much like Amazon which gives users the confidence to purchase from specific vendors. There is even a darker side to the dark web which consists of images and videos of gore, pornography, child sexual abuse, bestiality, and even live murder shows called red rooms where paying customers can tell the person torturing the victim what to inflict on the victim next or how they would like to see the victim killed.
Clear Web Versus Deep Web
The clear web is the part of the internet that can be accessed from any browser. It’s the smallest part of the web, which is astonishing because it seems that the content there is infinite but in actuality, it only accounts for about 4% of the content on the web. Some browsers, like Google, will censor certain websites. The search engine used by Tor, Duck Duck Go, does not censor and will not save your search history.
Then there is the deep web which is not to be confused with the dark web. The deep web is the largest part of the web. It consists of all the content that is not indexed and will not appear on regular search engines. Many government and private company websites exist there, where you would need an exact address to access them. Accessing without permission is illegal.
Is it easy to access the Dark Web?
It is very easy to access the dark web. I’ve included the steps here so you can recognize them if you ever come across these searches on your child’s browser.
To access the dark web, all you have to do is:
Purchase a VPN for extra security and anonymity (optional)
Download Tor
Access Hidden Wiki Links
Use the links on Hidden Wiki to help guide you through the dark web
Create an anonymous email
Purchase bitcoin (which is an online currency)
Find an online store through the hidden wiki that carries the products or services you are looking for
Using the hidden wiki as a guide, you can follow the steps above by merely clicking links and it will guide you through. You can easily find the hidden wiki by typing “hidden wiki” on the search bar in the Tor app.
Dark Web Dangers
Fake IDs and Drugs
So, as a GKIS intern, how do I know that teens are accessing the dark web? I became interested when high school students that I worked with all had fake IDs and were getting into L.A. clubs. I asked how they got them, and they told me from the dark web using bitcoin. They also disclosed that they illegally purchase study drugs like Adderall and Modafinil as well as club drugs like cocaine and molly. I was shocked yet intrigued, so I followed these directions on how to get onto the dark web. I couldn’t believe how easy it was to access.
When I brought up my idea about writing about the dark web at our intern meeting, Dr. B worried we’d be publishing a how-to article. But I argued, and the other interns agreed, that there are plenty of YouTube videos showing the step-by-step process of accessing the dark web. Parents need to know about this!
It is mind-boggling how dangerous access to the dark web can be. As if purchasing illegal drugs from anonymous criminal vendors isn’t enough, consider that purity is not guaranteed. Drugs like cocaine and heroin have been known to be laced with fentanyl, an extremely powerful opiate that kills even the most severe addicts. And consider the risks teens take in 21-and-older clubs. Interaction with adults on the dark web can lead to any type of exploitive situation online and offline.
Violence and Pornography
Consider what watching violence and pornographic material can do to a child’s developing brain. For some kids, watching explicit material can lead to stress symptoms characteristic of clinical disorders such as acute stress disorder and PTSD. For others, they may become desensitized to shocking online content which may lead to craving and seeking increasingly dangerous content to experience that same rush. This type of explicit material can have a similar effect as addictive drugs due to the release of dopamine and endorphins.
Dopamine helps the brain recognize incentive salience. Incentive salience is the desiring attribute that includes a motivational component to a rewarding stimulus. In other words, dopamine is released when a reward is anticipated, and it motivates us to keep seeking that anticipated reward.
When shocking material is viewed, the opiate system in our brains begins to activate by releasing endorphins. Endorphins gives a sense of euphoria and eases pain, which is what heroin does. So, more and more shocking material may be craved due to dopamine released from the anticipation of viewing the shocking stimulus – and endorphins help ease the pain that the shocking stimulus caused. Endorphins are also what causes the “runners high” that people talk about after a good amount of cardiovascular exercise. So when we experience pain, endorphins are released to help ease the pain.
Hate Groups
An extremist group discussed in the media recently, the “Proud Boys,” is a group that is known for supporting President Trump and for their extremist chauvinist beliefs. If you search for their website on Google, you will likely not be able to find it. But if you use the search engine Duck Duck Go, it shows up right at the top.
Hate groups design their content to radicalize vulnerable adults and youth to their agenda. There have been many incidences where radical Islamic groups have radicalized western youth to fight for their cause. They do this on the clear web too. But when they need to be more discreet, they can use the deep web by creating a .onion site.
Facebook and other social media sites are on the deep web and their web address is www.facebookcorewwwi.onion. It is important to talk about these issues and set rules with your kids. because if they do not learn it from you they will learn from someone else who may not have the best intentions.
Without parent management tools, like those we recommend in our GKIS Screen Safety Toolkit, kids can spend hours over months interacting with extremists. These interactions can be moved offline and can result in child and teen trafficking as well as other crimes.
How You Can Keep Your Kids Safe From the Dark Web
If your kids have open access to the internet, GetKidsInternetSafe has an entire toolkit to get safety dialed in. Check out our GKIS Course Bundle in the plus and deluxe package options, which offers all of our GKIS courses plus bonuses for families with kids of all ages. Our course bundle option offers parent and teen education, communication tools, parenting tools, and tech tool recommendations. Our course summary page with the details can be found HERE.
Thanks to Andres Thunstrom for contributing to this GKIS article. Andres has been advised to never visit the dark web again. J
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.
The internet offers virtual neighborhoods to satisfy any interest. For kids and teens, online neighborhoods can be dangerous. The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates that 940 hate groups are operating in the United States. Fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic, immigration fears, an increasingly global economy, troubled race relations, and divisive politics, the number of hate groups in 2021 was more than a 55% increase since 2000. When one considers that the Internet is worldwide, the potential for online hate is staggering. Hate groups and cults have a powerful recruitment tool with the internet. Too many of our mass shooters have been radicalized online, meaning that their opinions have become extreme. Our kids may not only view manipulative recruiting information but they may also be assessed for vulnerabilities. Could your teen be at risk?
Those who commit hate crimes were often radicalized online.
In 2015, 21-year-old Dylann Roof walked into a Charleston church and shot and killed nine innocent people. Like Isla Vista shooter Elliot Rodger, Dylann posted a hateful online manifesto before his rampage detailing his violent and racist beliefs. Along with photos of him standing on and burning an American Flag and aiming his gun, his manifesto titled “an explanation” detailed his “disdain” for blacks, Jews, Hispanics, and patriotism.
“I have no choice. I am not in the position to, alone, go into the ghetto and fight. I chose Charleston because it is the most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to whites in the country. We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the internet. Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me.”
His hate crime was not a split-second decision. The shooter had spent months online in white supremacy forums escalating into hate and violence. He didn’t have to look far online for hate.
No longer do hate groups and cults have to rely on interpersonal contact, newsletters, and rallies for recruitment. New members can be recruited and groomed slowly and deceptively from the safety of their bedrooms.
Websites and social media posts are inexpensive and easy to design, offering big reach and control over the content. Internet platforms are the perfect tool for grooming, behavioral manipulation, and coercive thought control. By the time a teen is ready to pack their suitcase to join the group, they may have been expertly brainwashed over months to adopt a radicalized web of beliefs.
The Red Flag Strategies of Hate Groups and Cults
By learning about the strategies hate groups and cults use to attract members, you will be better able to recognize dangerous online sites.
Here are some of the ways bad actors online radicalize their victims.
Attract Your Attention with Sensational Messaging
The bad actor will put up clickbait, which is messaging based on deception and false facts to trigger intrigue, suspicion, and paranoia. An example of a clickbait question is, “Did you know that Martin Luther King Jr. was not a legitimate reverend?”
Attempt to Isolate You by Exploiting Emotional Vulnerabilities and Destabilizing Friend and Family Support
Isolating you from those who look out for you starts with probes that assess if you are being supervised and are willing to engage with them with questions like, “Where is your computer?” “Are you alone?”
Then, the bad actor will attempt to win your trust by pretending to be understanding and friendly with comments like, “I know what that feels like.” “You can trust me.”
Once the victim shows interest and openness, the bad actor will challenge your belief system and attack your trust of family and friends. If the recruiter can tap into your fear and insecurity, they can then start to target blame on the people who protect you with comments like, “Do your parents overlook and dismiss you?” “Do you feel lonely and misunderstood?” “If they loved you, they would not control you as they do.”
Promise a Cure for Emotional Pain
Once they have you sharing private feelings and information, they’ll promise to be the one to help you out with promises of protection, secret intimacy, romantic unconditional love, belonging to a community, wealth, fame, power over others, escape, or a spiritual “answer.”
Intense unrelenting pressure to build trust and a sense of belonging
Once they have you on the hook, they will overwhelm you with manipulative messaging. Online blogs are highly effective in nurturing belief change with long narratives dispersed over time. Cyber communities bond with a sense of special belonging, shared values and practices, and a fierce sense of specialness and pride. The goal is to tempt you into slowly sacrificing your free will and becoming increasingly reliant on the group to do your thinking for you. Members are often encouraged to troll others in support of radicalized beliefs.
Marketing Techniques and Products Targeting Teens
Inducing guilt by providing offers of friendship and gifts leaves subjects feeling that they owe the recruiter and must give back. Hyped meetings, branding, and merchandising support the power and exclusivity of the group (e.g., slogans, symbols, colors, mascots, music, video games, and customized slang).
Tests of Loyalty and Intimidation
Once they have you joined up to their cause, bad actors will demand your blind obedience with ideas like, “We have direct authority from a divine power.”
Invitations and Offers for Wealth and Travel
Once you are engaged with them, they may ultimately try to get you to send them money, recruit others, or travel to meet them in person. They do this by offering you money, gifts, leadership positions, and affection.
Who is susceptible?
If you are thinking that only older teens are susceptible to online recruitment, think again. Many hate group websites include a kids’ page with coloring pages, puzzles, animated mascots, videos, and downloadable music and video games (sometimes with racially intolerant content like torturing or hunting the target populations of their hate) for early grooming. Like with all big brands, the sooner they rope in a customer, the more influence they’ll have and the more profit they’ll make.
Perhaps you’re thinking government surveillance and regulation will keep your family safe. Unfortunately, regulation to block hateful cyber conduct is only in its infancy. With America’s protection of civil liberties, it’s left to parents to police child access to online content.
Even with parent monitoring, it’s difficult to keep up. Digital natives often actively seek causes to get behind in their healthy quest for individual identity, even if it means joining somebody else’s civil war. Rolling Stone Magazine wrote of three Muslim teens who were taken into custody at the airport on their way to join ISIS after a long period of online grooming, all without their parent’s awareness. It’s impossible to know how many young people have been radicalized through Internet content, and those prosecuted are protected by sealed records due to minor status.
Teens are onboarding traits that make them fight for social justice.
To prepare teens to find their own tribes, their brains take on new ways of looking at things. Teens often become idealistic (meaning they over-overestimate positive outcomes without being cautious enough), omnipotent (meaning they think they are more powerful than they are), and more committed to their own way of looking at things (also called egocentrism). They seek simple answers in a confusingly nuanced world and are primed to seek spiritual fulfillment, meaning, and a sense of belonging.
When I was young, I was shy and eager to please. As a tween, sometimes my dad would say sensational comments to provoke me into an argument. We would then engage in heated debates littered with respectful confrontation and presentation of evidence. It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized that he was teaching me assertiveness in the face of authority. Although he required obedience, he made it clear that blind obedience was not acceptable and provided me with a safe place to experiment with critical thinking and speak up with questions and complaints. Most importantly, he taught me that there is no shame in standing up for what’s right and in risking failure. That is the kind of loving, fun, and safe training ground every child needs to build resilience. Love and safety build resilience, not oppression and long lectures.
If you’re a tween or teen taking out Social Media Readiness Course, ask your parents if they’ve ever come across hateful or radical ideas online. Share with them the red flags of manipulation that you learned from this article and ask them if they have any ideas how you can avoid these dangerous ideas online.
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetYourKidsInternetSafe.
The incel movement was discovered by the general population in 2014 after a mass murderer posted on Facebook, “The Incel Rebellion has already begun…” Starting as an inspirational social movement, incels has been tied to at least four mass murders and, most recently, as a mass shooting threat for the October 2019 movie premier of The Joker. Like with other hate groups, radicalized young men use incel ideas to boost their tattered egos and justify sexist and even violent behavior. How can we prevent our kids from being victimized or radicalized by this crazy movement?
What is an incel?
The term incelwas first coined in 1993 and is short for “involuntarily celibate,” a non-derogatory term for people who’ve had a hard time finding an intimate relationship.
The incel movement began when a young woman named Alana was working in a university math department. While she was at her desk, a man walked up and said, “I am 27 years old and have never been on a date.”[1] Alana noticed the man needed someone to talk to, so she listened. She discovered that she too could identify as an involuntary celibate. After she found love, she created an online support group for “INVCELS” who were distressed due to intimacy problems.
Early in the group’s development, a primary rule was adopted that members could not blame others for their problems. Instead, each member was required to commit to self-improvement. At that time, haters and blamers were kicked out of the group.[2] Over time, Alana left, the movement grew, and different sub-groups of incels formed.
Social Movement to Hate Group
Researchers believe that the boasts and posts of social media feed into a hopeless cycle of compare and despair for some users.[3] For the more radical of social media users, there are online forums where one can find validation for their despair. Radicalized incels adopt hateful belief systems typical of a broader online manosphere on forums like 4chan, Reddit, and Voat. Incels overlap with extremist men’s rights vlogs that offer pickup artistry tips and espouse the hateful rhetoric of alt-right and white supremacy groups, inciting suicide among fellow incels, the assault of sexually successful women, and violence toward sexually successful men.
Further spurred by the #MeToo Movement, radicalized incel groups spew hate and use their comradery to threaten and intimidate others. Some stereotype people who have successful relationships as “Chads” and “Stacys.” With young people unsupervised online hours every day, hate group forums can influence vulnerable teens. In my book, Screen Time in the Mean Time, I describe how “the Internet platform is the perfect tool for grooming, behavioral manipulation, and coercive thought control.”
The Black Pill
The black pill is an analogy from the movie, the Matrix. In the Matrix, Neo has two options of pills to take, the blue pillto stay in the Matrix, and remain in the comfort of blissful ignorance or the red pillto face life’s harsh realities.[4] Incels use the term black pill to describe the fatalistic perspective that women control the world, and incels are hopeless to get sex because of biological determinism, meaning they were fatalistically born with intimacy-crippling features like low attractiveness, small penis size, or shyness.[5] They believe they lost their chances of intimacy at birth because they lost the genetic lottery.[6]
Group Think & Radicalization
Online forums offer violent incels a community of like-minded individuals to escalate hateful philosophies. In psychology, we call thisgroupthink, reflecting the dynamic of one’s ethical, moral, and rational values eventually dissolving into the group’s character. Individuals joining a group in search of support are vulnerable to a group’s coercive and sometimes irrational group opinions. Groupthink differs from individual opinions in that members ultimately fail to think for themselves, instead of becoming dependent on group principles.
Mass Murder
In May 2014, a member of the incel group shot and killed six people in Isla Vista, California.[7] His name was Elliot Rodger, and he was 22 years old. Fueled by the philosophies of other members of the group, he felt revenge was his only solution. Rodger felt rejected by women. He blamed handsome people who were happy for his lack of intimacy with women. The Incel community saw him as a hero.
In April 2018, Alek Minassian killed ten people driving through a crowded street. He posted on Facebook, “The Incel Rebellion has already begun… All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!”[8] Alek carried out the attack for the same reasons Rodger did, hatred for those who did not have intimacy problems.
In October 2015, Christopher Harper-Mercer killed nine people at his community college campus in Roseburg Oregon before killing himself.[9] He too identified as an incel.
In February 2018, another man who was part of the incel community, Nikolas Cruz, was charged with killing 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.[10]
Clowncel
In September 2019, the FBI reported to partners in the private sector about a threat from online incel communities regarding unspecific mass shootings threatened to occur at the premiere showings of ‘the Joker’, slated for October 4, 2019. A September 2019 report by the Department of Defense reported on the same threat.
Those making these threats were reported to be a side group of incels who identify as clowncels. They chose this movie because they resonated with the beliefs of the main character, Arthur Fleck. Arthur is a poor, mentally ill stand-up comedian who is a victim of violent thugs and a society that views him as a freak. In the movie, he retaliates against society by becoming a criminal mastermind known as The Joker.
Support positive online and offline peer relationships rather than restrict unhealthy friendships.
Teach your teen how to avoid cyberbullying by teaching empathy, social and netiquette skills, and complex problem-solving.
Just as parents keep an eye on their teens’ school and after-school activities, they must also monitor their virtual activities.
Model healthy balance and self-care.
Implement healthy eating, sleeping, and exercise habits and explain why that is so important for strength and health.
Love and compliment your kids loudly and unapologetically for all they are.
Reinforce that the self is made up of far more facets than a beautiful face.
Remind your teen that what they see on social media and in advertisements isn’t always the real deal.
Thank you to CSUCI intern, Andrew Weissmann, for teaching us about the incel movement, and how it has splintered off to be a hate group with coercive access to kids. For more information about how to protect your kids from the grooming techniques of cults and hate groups, check out the GKIS article “White Supremacists or ISIS? Are Hate Groups and Cults Seducing Your Teen Online?
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.
Onward to More Awesome Parenting,
Tracy S. Bennett, Ph.D.
Mom, Clinical Psychologist, CSUCI Adjunct Faculty
Works Cited
[1] ReplyAll Gimlet
[2] ReplyAll Gimelt
[3] bbc.com Facebook lurking makes you miserable by Sean Coughlan
[4] medium.com by Ethan Jiang
[5] medium.com by Ethan Jiang
[6] bbc.com/news/blogs-trending Toronto van attack: Inside the dark world of ‘incels’ by Jonathan Griffin
[7] The New York Times What is an Incel? A term used by the Toronto Van Attack Suspect, Explained by Niraj Chokshi
[8] The New York Times What is an Incel? By Niraj Chokshi
[9] The New Yorker The Rage of the Incels by Jia Tolentino
[10] Babe.net by Harry Shukman
