The online radicalization of America’s youth, while garnering headlines as a result of recent school shootings and political violence, is not new. It also shouldn’t be unexpected.
In fact, experts in childhood development have found that people in their teens and early twenties are the most susceptible to ideologically driven influences as they seek to solidify their identities and form connection and community around their developing belief systems.
Unfortunately, this leaves them vulnerable to the most vocal, charismatic, and affirming voices on the internet. Those voices are growing louder and more prominent by the day — at the same time teens are spending more and more time online. A dangerous combination.
Social media is clearly making things worse
Case in point: a 2023 report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) found 60% of U.S. teens (13‑17) agreed with at least four or more potentially harmful conspiracy statements. For teens who spend four or more hours a day on a single online platform (which is not abnormal), that number increased to 69%. For adults, only 49% agreed with such statements. You can see the discrepancy — and the danger.
While each of us would like to believe our kids are too smart to get pulled into these emotional vortices, even the most intelligent teens can fall out of reality and into the abyss as a result of online media that is so enticing and so repetitive.
So, how can parents protect their teens from these negative influences in a world that all but requires young people be online to complete their schoolwork, have social lives, or pursue their interests?
Protecting youth takes more than rules & restrictions
Let’s start by stating something that is quite obvious, but difficult for parents to believe: Knee-jerk responses, such as limiting screen time or monitoring the content young people consume, simply won’t work. There are too many ways around those controls — as well as opportunities to get online away from a parent’s gaze — for these tactics to be effective.
So, in the absence of policing and restricting teens’ behavior, how can parents equip their teens to face the digital wild west that’s out there waiting for them? Fortunately, there’s a method that has proven effective in helping teens navigate their media landscape since before the internet existed: media literacy education.
Teaching teens the skills they need to analyze, understand, and process the messages they’re barraged with every day is a proven way to help them resist online influencers who use young peoples’ vulnerabilities to pull them into ways of thinking that are in direct conflict with their true selves — and their family’s values.
A comprehensive meta-analysis of 160 media literacy interventions from 1983 to 2023, published in April, found that media literacy education delivered positive outcomes related to influence, behavioral beliefs, attitudes, self-efficacy, and behavior (Cho et al., 2025) in teens. Media literacy education has also been shown to improve adolescents’ mental health (McLean, 2017).
Even better? An overwhelming majority of teens surveyed (94%) by the CCDH actually want to be taught media literacy. Unfortunately, just 39% reported having had any such instruction during the 2023-24 school year.
As parents know, it says a lot that teens want to study a certain topic. Now we need to deliver. Not just for our kids, but for all of us to be able to have a public discourse where a free exchange of ideas doesn’t bring the threat of extremist violence.
Jennifer Berger is the Executive Director of Ready Set Screen.
