One difficulty with online friendships is that a parent isn't as likely to have casual conversations with their child's friends as they carpool to school or have lunch at home, and a child isn't likely to have casual conversations with their friends' parents, meaning significant distortions in logic can develop by bouncing around the echo chamber of a teenage clique. Bigotry, like drain fungus, grows best when never confronted with personal relationships or at least unemotional logic. Many young people have been getting "red-pilled" by their online, low-responsibility relationships, private misogyny exploding into public violence without any indication of a trigger ... just like the parent of a child groomed for sexual exploitation, the parent of a person groomed for domestic terrorism never has any idea that it was going on.
To be clear, this is in no way intended to be a presentation of judgement, merely observation that there is a common danger young teens have to deliberately, consciously avoid, especially ones who are socially awkward or bullied, such as diagnosed and undiagnosed autistics. In the same way that we teach our younger siblings, "don't let them take you to a second location, always watch your drink, make sure there's a second exit that leads to a public location, don't scream 'rape' - scream 'fire'!" we need to teach our older siblings, "don't let them make you believe violent acts and hatred benefit you in any way, always check the method of statistic collection, be aware that someone else's personal experience is their reality, don't repeat fallacies and buzzwords - analyse the original content for yourself."
(Photo by Gabby K. from Pexels. Used with permission. Text free to share and repost with credit, "cc-by ori neu")
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