Building resilience in youth — from hate, discrimination & radicalizer technologies
“Ideas are a pattern of information that helps us understand and navigate the world around us.” Chris Anderson, head of TED.
Indeed! Ideas are crucial to the make-up of our world view so much so that they can construct an alternative world we perceive and live in. Ideas are in fact the most powerful force shaping the human culture, but not all ideas are equally constructive or good for all humanity.
Some of the most dangerous ideas in human history are of discrimination, intolerance and hate. These ideas can strip away the humanity of the those who are discriminated against, and those who discriminate.
Discrimination and hate come in waves, followed by paramount societal changes. In the recent past — the last 150–200-year history we have seen these waves come and go in many cultures and regions including the United States. Today we are facing another wave, which is reflective of our current times. This wave of discrimination, intolerance and hate is trans-national, technologically savvy and global. An act of hate in one part of the world gets avenged in another, and so the vicious cycle continues.
It is ironic that the technologies that were supposed to bring us together has been unwittingly dividing us and radicalizing the young minds.
Much of the ubiquitous technologies and the ideas they spread — including the dangerous ideas of exclusion and hate are targeted towards our youth. Just as not all technologies are equally useful, not at all ideas benefit everyone. The personalized content and information bubbles combined with the recommender algorithm that tips heavily towards inflammatory content, have become the great radicalizer of today. The radicalization into hateful ideas was different a decade ago. Today the transnational communities spanning across a multitude of social platforms from the mainstream Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to the anonymous 4Chan can radicalize the young minds with the click and a scroll.
As a counter to these trends the worried adults — parents, guardians, educators try to filter ideas and limit the technologies that spread them. Each year we see more and more apps focused on screening and filtering content, limiting what the young minds watch, read and hear. Realistically we know that all these efforts and policing apps are not enough. One innocent looking video of a so-called life coach, or one gaming message board of a website can lead the young minds down a perilous path of intolerant and hateful content. Before they even realize, their world view alters.
The recruiters of these extremist ideas and ideologies will find new ways as new technologies emerge.
We can employ technologies to filter and control the content but only to some degree. What we essentially need is to prepare our young minds to be able to reject these ideas when confronted by them. To equip them with the tools that can help them make good decisions — of inclusivity, fairness, kindness and empathy. And to build the resilience to overcome the ups and down of life without succumbing to intolerance and hate.
Prevention is a long-term effort in comparison to intervention. While intervention at its core is individual, prevention requires community efforts.
Just as it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a community and society to prepare our children from intolerance and hate. In this instance the village includes the parents, educators, school systems, city and state legislators — ensuring that our young minds are prepared to thrive in this diverse and connected world.
For this very reason of community building we at Project Pluralist are providing workshops, curriculum, facilitation guides to educators and schools to build resilience against discrimination and hate and to equip them with pluralist skills of empathy, fairness, collaboration, inclusion. Resilience and self-efficacy. Reach out to us to learn more.