Tonye’ Kenner was born and raised in Washington, in parts of the District that have long struggled with gun violence, so when she became a mother, Kenner decided to move her three children to Temple Hills.
“When it comes to safety, I feel like they’re a little bit safer in Maryland,” she said.
But this mom said despite moving them out of the District, she still worries for their safety and well-being because of social media. In recent years, one of her daughters had to change schools after a dispute on social media turned physical.
"It happened on social media for a couple of weeks and ended up spilling into the schoolhouse where they ended up getting into a fight all because of all this he said, she said stuff," Kenner recalled.
But Kenner counts her family lucky, as researchers like Desmond Patton say social media is all too often fueling disputes among young people that can turn deadly.
“In the communities that I work in, cyberbullying means life or death,” said Patton, a University of Pennsylvania professor.
Patton began studying how inner-city youth violence plays out over social media after observing an online fight between two young Chicago rappers -- Chief Keef and Lil JoJo -- in 2012.
“They were beefing on Twitter for a couple of weeks … And then Lil JoJo posted his exact location on Twitter and was like, ‘I want to do something about this beef. Meet me here.’ And he was murdered in that exact location within three hours," Patton said.
Chief Keef denied involvement, and the rapper's killer was never caught. But the killing inspired Patton to create the SAFELab, where he documents how kids of color relate to the internet. Patton calls social media a megaphone that can accelerate conflict.
“Twenty years ago, someone would step on your shoe, and you would get upset about that and want to fight about that,” Patton said. “Now the stepping on your shoe is happening on social media, and now you have thousands of people that are expecting you to do something about it."
Andre Wright, assistant chief of the Youth and Family Engagement Bureau for the Metropolitan Police Department, said there's real reason to be concerned about how quickly a life can end after a simple post.
“It could be minutes. It could be minutes. I mean, there are cases where children are making these threats to one another while they're driving to meet each other,” he said.
Too often, innocent people are caught in the crossfire, including 10-year-old Makiyah Wilson, shot and killed outside her Clay Terrace home in 2018.Federal prosecutors say several men opened fire in the neighborhood "because of a petty social media feud." In October six men were sentenced for their role in her murder.
Data directly linking social media to violence is hard to come by, but some researchers see a connection between the explosion of social media apps and a rise in youth homicide rates.
Federal data show that, among people ages 15 to 19, homicide rates declined from 2006 to 2014 but increased 91% from 2014 to 2021.
Among people ages 20 to 24, the homicide rate increased 49% in roughly the same time frame.
“The youth are very savvy with using social media to be able to get messages across to their ‘opps,’ or individuals who they feel are their opposition,” said EZ Street, a community activist and radio personality who also works as a violence interrupter in the District.
He said much of his work is focused on teaching kids conflict resolution and relationship building – an effort to address the trauma he said many young people who go on to be involved in the criminal justice system experience as kids.
“These kids experience things when they're very, very young that they should not be seeing, feeling, experiencing, and then they end up in a system, you know, committed because what happens? Hurt people. Hurt people,” he said.
He knows what it's like to lose a mentee to violence that started online and ended a real life.
“Like, one minute you're working with the kid and, you know, you're seeing them in one of your programs … Then you hear the next day that so-and-so is no longer with us because the kid, you know, was on the internet and said some things and somebody saw the video and bam," he said.
Patton, the University of Pennsylvania professor, said social media should be thought of as a neighborhood -- a place where young people are living their lives – and that communities working to end gun violence should pay attention to what’s happening on those virtual streets.
“We are focused on improving upon the physical realities of violence prevention and getting guns off the street and intervening in real time,” Patton said, calling that work incredibly important. “But what we've missed is that a lot of the translation of that, the arguments of that, the acceleration of that, the amplification of that is happening in a comment section."
Tonye' Kenner’s son, Tony, who's focused on getting into college, said the risk of online conflict is part of why he doesn't spend a lot of time on social media.
"I definitely limit how much access I give the social media. Like I say, I do it for entertainment and just observe things so I can keep up with the trends and know what's going on to protect myself,” he said.
Pressed on what he means by protecting himself, Tony added, “I'd rather know what's going on then be out here naive and blind.”
A spokesperson for Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said the company acts against reported content that violates community standards, such as removing language that incites or facilitates “serious violence.”
The spokeswoman said when warranted, the company will disable accounts and work with law enforcement when it believes there’s a “genuine risk of physical harm or threats to public safety.”
Reported by Tracee Wilkins, produced by Katie Leslie, shot by Steve Jones and Jeff Piper, and edited by Jeff Piper.
