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Other Voices: Social media is modern gang graffiti

Gaston Gazette - 9/2/2019

It's been almost three weeks since Brandoniya Bennett, an innocent 9-year-old girl, was killed inside her Dallas, Texas, apartment, apparently the victim of a bullet intended for someone else.

The pointless stupidity of her slaying remains hard to reckon with. According to police, Brandoniya died because two gang members and wannabe rappers had a feud over lyrics where one of the rappers, Tyrese Simmons, felt disrespected. Simmons is charged with capital murder in Brandoniya's death.

There was another important element to this killing that police point to that we don't want to get lost -- the impact of social media. Much of the feud over the lyrics apparently took place in the one place that young people can't get away from these days -- on an internet that never sleeps and never shuts off.

In this case, it was Instagram. Sometimes it's Twitter or Facebook (which owns Instagram). The brand hardly matters. The problem is that to social media's many dark sides you can add the propagation of gang violence.

Teens and young adults all over the country, and the world for that matter, are increasingly subject to the turmoil of social media struggles. But in gang culture, it is clear that it can amplify violence. In a recent meeting with The Dallas Morning News editorial board, Dallas Executive Assistant Police Chief David Pughes cited the problem as something police associate with the increase in violent crime.

This is not a particularly new problem for American cities; it's just one that is metastasizing. From Houston to Chicago, police officers have been citing gang activity on social media as a driver of increasing violence. One study out of Stanford University has disputed that. But we are far more persuaded by the accounts of the cops with eyes and ears on the streets than a single outlier academic.

We have called many times for Congress to act to force social media giants like Facebook and Twitter to be more responsible for the content that they publish on their websites. So far, Congress has been reluctant to take a stand.

Cops, meanwhile, are becoming more active in monitoring gang accounts on social media in hopes of stepping in before virtual fights become real ones. It's not the sort of work most police train for. But it's the kind of work they will have to do if they hope to prevent the next senseless killing.

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(c)2019 Gaston Gazette, Gastonia, N.C.

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