Gun Content May Be Targeting Your Kid Online, Warns New Report Calling for Transparency
There’s no shortage of disturbing content to worry about your kid seeing, from porn to real-world violence, when they open their phones. Now internet safety group Children and Screens wants you to be aware of yet another type of risky content: guns being marketed to kids.
Through a new report, released on Tuesday, the group is calling for more transparency around the topic from social media platforms.
“Parents deserve to know what their children are seeing online and how platforms operate behind the scenes — especially when it comes to something as complex and sensitive as firearm-related content,” said Children and Screens executive director Kris Perry in a press release.
According to a recent analysis by Sandy Hook Promise, an organization working to protect children from gun violence that collaborated with Children and Screens on the new report, gun-related content often pops up…
- When young people are searching for unrelated topics, like gaming or entertainment videos. If they’re playing a video game that features guns, for example, the platform might recommend content from a “firearm influencer.”
- Alongside sexualized or graphic images.
- In the form of videos, regularly recommended to youth, showing unsafe gun handling, such as waving firearms.
Boys may be particularly susceptible to such content, according to Nicole Hockley, co-founder and CEO of Sandy Hook Promise and mother of Dylan, who was killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy. “They’re forming their sense of self and identity, and yet they’re then getting served content that is talking about firearms make you powerful, firearms make you sexually attractive, firearms are the way to solve your conflicts,” she told Today.
She added, “Firearm manufacturers have been targeting children as a future consumer,” and noted that boys have admitted seeing this content on a weekly basis.
Popular platforms often fail to disclose how frequently firearm-related content is served to minors, according to the report. Further, social media platforms can detect when kids are struggling emotionally, especially when they are depressed or lonely, making them further vulnerable to such content.
The organizations offer a set of recommendations for platforms that would help parents better understand how firearm-related content reaches their children online. And it outlines six key questions that tech companies could help answer — such as how often minors see firearm content, how engagement is influenced by user data, and whether emotional or mental health indicators affect recommendations.
“Parents should be in the driver’s seat when it comes to online safety for their kids,” said Hockley.
Being aware of the problem is a good start — but having ways to know what, exactly, your kid is viewing would be even more helpful, the report contends. “Greater transparency gives parents the information they need to be better equipped to support their children’s well-being and safety,” Hockley said. “Social media platforms must strengthen oversight and protect youth from harmful firearm content.”