Segment 5

The podcast discusses how social media impacts crime across different age groups. Children are vulnerable to grooming and exploitation, while teenagers can be influenced by online culture. Adults face risks of radicalization and organized harmful behavior, as seen in the Buffalo supermarket shooting. Older adults are exposed to misinformation online. Theories like routine activities theory and self-control theory can be applied to understand these crimes. Overall, social media creates an environment where harm can spread rapidly across various age groups. So for the fifth segment for this podcast, it's going to be a little bit different than how the rest of the podcast has been, but describe how social media has affected crime. I want to focus on this point of how age groups are affected by social media crime, and one of the main goals of this podcast is to show that social media crime affects every age group differently. So children are especially vulnerable to grooming, kidnapping, and exploitation. Alicia Koskiewicz, I'm pretty sure I forgot the last name, but Alicia's case shows how a child can become a suitable target when the offender uses false identity and private communications. So children may not understand manipulation when it's disguised as friendship. They may believe they're speaking to someone safe, and for children, the criminological issue is that that invulnerability, they are still developing judgment, they may trust too easily, they may not know how to recognize grooming. And guardianship, guardians are aware of the private online communications, offenders can take advantage of that lack of guardianship itself. So for the next age group, it's teenagers. Teenagers experience social media crime differently. Teenagers are influenced by identity, peer pressure, relationships, attention, and belonging. And the Slender Man stabbing shows how online culture and peer reinforcement can influence violence behavior. And the Bianca Devins case shows how online relationships can become connected to obsession and violence. And for teenagers, the criminological issue is often social influence. Teenagers are born with identity, they may be more sensitive to an online validation, emotional relationships, and digital communities. So social media can intensify these pressures. And for the next age group, adults face a different type of risk. They face radicalization, ideological violence, or organized harmful behavior. And a major example would be the Buffalo supermarket shooting that happened in 2022. So the offender was Peyton Gingron, who was 18 years old. He carried out a racist mass shooting at a top supermarket in Buffalo, New York. And the end result was 10 people were killed, and most of the victims were black community members. So this case is strongly connected to online radicalization. Gingron consumed extremist content online, posted writings connected to this racist ideology, and mindstreamed part of the attack on Facebook itself. And from the perpetrator's side, I feel like the criminological behavior involved radicalization, hate-based ideology, target selection, and planning and desire for an online audience. So I feel like this is important, because Bender did not just document the crime, it helped shape the offender's worldview and give him a platform to spread that violence. And from the victim's side, I feel like the victims were targeted because of race and location. They were not targeted because they personally interacted with the offender online. This shows another way social media can influence crime. Online ideology can lead to this offline victimization of people who never participated in the online space at all. And applying this theory to this case was a little difficult, because I didn't go too much into researching it, but for the routine activities theory, it applies well because of the online extremist spaces give the offender access to harmful materials, reinforcements, and a digital audience. Social learning theory also applies because the extremist beliefs can be learned and strengthened through repeated exposure to online content. And another one could be the self-control theory, because it applies to the violent decision-making and disregard for any consequences. And I feel like although this crime also involved planning, it cannot be explained by self-control alone. This investigation involved online evidence, writings, digital activity, live stream footage, and hate crime charges. Law enforcements examined how online radicalization influenced the attack. Another age group is the older adults. They experienced social media harm in a totally different way. In the COVID era, misinformation spread heavily online, and older adults were often exposed to false claims, conspiracy theories, and manipulative content. This may not always look like traditional street crime, but it can cause real-world harm. And from a perpetrator's side, the offenders may not be only one person. They may be the misinformation networks, influencers, fake news pages, or people spreading false claims for money, attention, power, or ideology. And from a victim's side, the older adults may feel vulnerable because of the isolation, the trust in familiar platforms. Another one could be a limited digital literacy or emotional reactions to fear-based content. And theories that could be applied to this subject itself is that the routine activity theory is that social media creates suitable targets, motivated spreaders, and limited guardianship. And self-control theory applies when people share emotional posts quickly without verifying them. And some older adults are helped through family support, fact-checking, public health communications, digital literacy programs, and platform warnings. But misinformation is hard to investigate because it spreads across networks, not always from one clear offender. When we compare all age groups, I found a pattern. Children may be groomed. Teenagers may be influenced by online communities and relationships. Adults may be radicalized or drawn into this ideological violence. And older adults may be manipulated through misinformation and exploitation. So I feel like for the end of this segment, I feel like the crimes are different, but the central issue is the same. It's that social media creates this environment where influence, opportunity, and harm can spread quickly.