Young people claim to face hate messages with a strong ideological and political charge on social networks without the necessary preparation to assimilate them

The existence of hate speech on the net is not a problem specific to teenagers and young people, nor exclusive to online conversation, but we do know that the digital space favors its proliferation and spread and that the younger population is especially exposed in their daily use of social networks and internet browsing. In fact, 38.1% reported having seen, in the last year, “pages where people post messages attacking certain individuals or groups.” That’s why Fad and Maldita.es, with the support of Google.org, have launched the “No More Haters” project to analyze, raise awareness, and train teenagers and young people (14-29 years) in identifying and managing hate speech they frequently face in their online lives.

Within this project, the main conclusions of the research “Breaking the Chains of Hate, Weaving Networks of Support: Young People Facing Hate Speech Online” -conducted by Fad’s Reina Sofía Center on Adolescence and Youth among young people aged 14 to 29- and the “No More Haters” app, an application aimed at these same ages to help them identify hate speech, overcome prejudices and stereotypes, promote intercultural dialogue, and provide critical judgment tools for online interactions. The app is accompanied by a teaching guide to identify hate speech from the classrooms.

The event featured Fad’s General Director Beatriz Martín Padura; Maldita.es‘s co-founder and CEO Clara Jiménez; Fad’s Reina Sofía Center on Adolescence and Youth researcher Stribor Kuric; and Maldita.es‘s editorial project coordinator Laura Chaparro.

After the presentation of the research and the app, the discussion panel “Hate Speech on Networks. Perspective from Affected Groups” took place with participants Charo Alises, a jurist at FELGTB, and Selene de la Fuente, a lawyer and Equality Technician at the Secretariado Gitano.

For Fad’s General Director Beatriz Martín Padura:

“We want to help make visible the risk that social networks, a natural living space for teenagers and young people, get contaminated with hate speech that is the precursor to discrimination. Fighting this problem largely depends on them but they need support and training to learn to identify it and not participate in its spread. Many might not be aware that by sharing a humorous meme that stigmatizes a group, for example, they are contributing to that dangerous hate speech”.

Meanwhile, Maldita.es‘s co-founder Clara Jiménez Cruz, noted:

 “Disinformation dangerously drives hate messages and has found in social networks the ideal channel to reach the youngest. These types of messages are contrary to the plural, diverse, and respectful education we must achieve as a society. With this project, we hope that young people and adolescents develop critical thinking and know how to identify this type of content».

What young people think 

According to the research “Breaking the Chains of Hate, Weaving Networks of Support: Young People Facing Hate Speech Online” -conducted through various discussion groups of young people between 14 and 29 years to know their perception, attitudes, and experiences with hate speech online- Spanish young people are very aware that on social networks they face some messages with an ideological and political charge at an early age when they do not have the necessary preparation to properly assimilate them, nor to distinguish some boundaries between what is acceptable and intolerable.

They perceive hate speech as a danger and it affects how they behave, their habits, and what they share or not on networks. When talking about their day-to-day experience with these narratives, emotions such as anguish, anxiety, stress emerge, but above all, fear dominates; they are concerned that this hate might cross the screen and reach real life.

Among the vulnerable groups targeted by hate, they specifically identify immigrants and LGBTI groups; also openly feminist women. They consider that the virtual environment is a space that transmits and multiplies hate speech but also generates strategies and tools to combat it (feminist movement, anti-racists…).

The reasons young people highlight about the generators of hate speech are ignorance or inability to debate, lack of contact, bad experiences, immaturity, boredom, inferiority complexes, or the assimilation of harmful codes and behaviors, seeking attention.

In general, young people participating in the study have the premise of not fueling hate, not responding, or trying to reason with people who generate hate because it amplifies it. In their opinion, ignoring deactivates the interest in seeking attention. They know that reporting is necessary, but they understand silence, for fear of worsening the situation or appearing weak, and because of the feeling of protectionlessness and helplessness.

Young people see the internet as a «lawless city» or «battlefield». Too big to be controlled and hate is a counterpart to enjoying the necessary freedom. It is considered that control or regulation depends on the users, anything else would be censorship. Anonymity and depersonalization, the ability to amplify, which helps to generate a sense of belonging to a community, and disinformation make hate speech proliferate online.

One of the dangers of the internet is the normalization and legitimization of certain hate speeches simply because they are very common or have a very high amplification (denialisms, for example).

They consider that platforms do not have adequate tools or the necessary involvement to control hate. They emphasize the need to facilitate control and reporting mechanisms. There is a demand for «filters» that sift true and false news and facilitate that task for users, from a place that does not require such a proactive attitude.

They demand more clarity in the rules, more institutional coordination, involve vulnerable communities, normalize reporting, adjust the penal code, include the figure of the «moderator», the sanctions must be proportionate and graduated according to typology and severity.

What strategies do they propose to combat hate on networks?

oung people believe it is necessary to work on values and emotions. They feel the need to learn to have critical thinking and to work on the development of their own emotional intelligence. They see digital literacy as important to combat hate speech. In educational centers, they demand spaces and contexts to talk about hate speech. Also, to train teachers and pursue exemplary behavior in the family environment.

Regarding the formation of public opinion, they see the need to make injustices visible and raise awareness. Young people confront hate speech with:

• Activism: the young interviewees explain that they adopt an activist stance in the face of hate speech as a claimative way to directly confront the intent of the messages, to harm. 
• Pedagogy: it is very linked to the initial stage of using social networks. Entering the fray to convince against hate. In later stages, pedagogical responses are only adopted when hate comes from their own environment. 
• Reports and blocking: it can become something automated and habitual, although not much confidence is placed in its effectiveness. It also depends on whether it is done publicly (with a more activist character) or privately (with a more pedagogical approach). 
• Care and network: the personal network that the user creates is defined as a stroke of luck that mitigates the impact of hate. It also serves a function for the reaffirmation of one’s own identity. 
• Legal complaints: turning to the judicial system is not easy since it is often not known if what is being experienced is reportable and it can be a long and costly process. In addition, there is also distrust of the police, considering it as a partial and ideologized system.

«No more haters» App and Teaching Guide

The event also presented the “No More Haters. Break the Chain of Hate!” app created so that adolescents can identify hate speech and internalize the keys to combat it.

It is a responsive web-app, in Spanish and English, aimed at adolescents and young people between 14 and 29 years old. The web-app includes games for users to identify and react to situations of hate and earn points if they are correct. The games consist of guessing words related to hate, identifying disinformation, and being protagonists in situations of hate as a victim or witness, to know how they would react. It also includes a points ranking and a hoax search engine for them to consult the disinformation that reaches them.

The web-app can be downloaded from major platforms like Google Play and App Store and can also be played from the web at https://play.nomorehaters.es/

In addition, the web-app includes the option to play in class mode and for that, a teaching guide has been designed to support teachers that include educational objectives, offline and online exercises, and evaluation criteria. The teaching guide, available in Spanish and English, can be downloaded from the project website: https://nomorehaters.es/docs/GUIA_DOCENTE_NMH.pdf

The goal of both the web-app and the teaching guide is to promote reflection and prevent manifestations of hate and intolerance among adolescents and young people aged 14 to 29 years. That is, they can become active subjects in the search for solutions and in the fight against hate; promoting processes that facilitate identifying hate speech, overcoming prejudices and stereotypes, encouraging intercultural dialogue, and providing critical judgment tools for online interactions.

Both the web-app and the teaching guide have been created based on the learnings from the research, from the perceptions, attitudes, and knowledge reflected by the young people.