Gaming platforms exploited to promote hate and violence among minors

ISD Senior Resident Research Fellow Julia Ebner went on ABC’s Good Morning America to discuss how popular gaming platforms are being exploited to promote hate and violence, in what can become a slow radicalization of minors.

“You increasingly see minors, and including, even school kids, being lured into these spaces and not realizing what is even happening to them that they are actually slowly being radicalized towards neo-Nazism or towards white supremacy,” she explained. Julia shared with reporter Reena Roy one modified videogame (“a mod” of Call of Duty) where users can play on the side of Nazis.

Julia noted that gaming communities are specifically targeted in hopes of recruiting members into ideologies. Some online games disguise “a very strong, and sometimes even dangerous extremist ideological component to it,” she said.

The full interview is available on our YouTube channel.