Factors Associated with Endorsing Hateful Content Online Among Adolescents and Young Adults in the United States

Background: Understanding processes of radicalization into extremist ideologies is a growing area of scholarship across disciplines in the United States and globally. There is concern surrounding increasing youth engagement with right-wing extremism online and its relationship to real-life acts of mass violence (Norman & Mikhael, 2021). These findings are relevant to social work practice as practitioners are imperative in developing and maintaining multidisciplinary efforts to prevent acts of mass violence. This study uses public data accessed via the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR; Costello, et al., 2020) to explore what may precipitate engagement and subsequent endorsement of hate content among young people online.

Methods: The current study selected individuals between 15 and 30 years of age who had viewed hateful content online in the 3 months prior to survey completion (n=507). Data were collected via online survey in 2017 from demographically balanced panels administered by Survey Sample International (SSI) to generate a nationally representative sample. Hierarchical logistic regression was used to examine the research question. The first step in the model included descriptive variables such as race, gender, level of education, region of the United States, citizenship, parent’s citizenship, current living situation, and age. The second step included variables representative of behaviors, including online crime victimization, risk taking, self-esteem, and closeness to family and friends. The final step included variables previously found to be associated with viewing hate content (Costello, et al., 2016; Hawdon, et al., 2022), including: level of satisfaction with the United States, overall political views, level of trust in politicians, and estimated daily internet use.

Results: The analysis demonstrated that level of satisfaction with the United States, overall political views, and level of trust in politicians are significantly predictive of hate content endorsement among young people above and beyond other variables. Conservative political views were correlated with endorsing hate speech online [AOR: 1.26]. Interestingly, having a higher degree of satisfaction with the United States [AOR: 1.23] and higher trust in politicians [OR: 1.19] were significantly associated with endorsing online hate speech. In addition, individuals living with parents were significantly less likely to endorse hateful content online than their peers who lived alone [AOR:.278].

Implications: The findings reflect much of the current scholarship– leaning right politically is indicative of endorsing hateful content online (Hassan, et al., 2017; Hawdon, et al., 2022). While it may seem counterintuitive that heightened satisfaction with the United States and trust in politicians were significant, it should be noted that these data were collected in 2017 – at the height of Donald Trump’s popularity as President. Findings from this research may aid social work practitioners in efforts to prevent incidents of hate-based violence in real life, and potential incidents of mass violence. The negative association between living with parents and the endorsement of hateful online content should be explored to better understand the role of social support in violence prevention efforts.