‘You get desensitised to it’: how social media fuels fear of violence

Young people in Birmingham attest that violent content on apps is having a real-world impact

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.

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