Pipiana Coventon | Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Raukawa
CW: Racism
The increasing use of social media in the past two decades has fostered a cyclical system of indoctrination of youth into the alt-right. Think about how you use social media. You’re bored, putting off an assignment, scrolling mindlessly on Tik Tok, and come across a video laying out some ‘facts’. You don’t check these facts, just absorb them and scroll on. The same day, watching TV with your flatmates, eating dinner with your family, or chatting with your lecture buddy, you may share these ‘facts’—which will be taken as truth. These ‘facts’ could be harmless; a stupid joke, a celebrity dating rumour, or a product that will change your life. Sometimes, however, these ‘facts’ are not harmless, but are rather damaging items of misinformation: such as the ‘facts’ shared by alt-right profiles. In understanding that fact and opinion are often indistinguishable online—and that youth can take this information at face value—the increasing role of social media in developmental years becomes concerning.
Paleoconservative academic Paul Gotfried first coined the term alt-right in 2008. The group this term describes feel they are a minority, especially when attention is directed towards actual minorities in the face of injustice. Many of their concerns are rooted in the fear of eventually becoming the minority themselves—and so they continue to ostracise and marginalise others in an attempt to affirm their positions of power in the world. In the past decade, the revival of the alt-right and white ethnonationalism has become a predominant characteristic of Western social landscapes. This resurgence has coincided with the aforementioned increasing use of social media, subsequently crafting an online culture that has become entrenched in bigotry. With the rise of the alt-right as an ideology, there has been a simultaneous development in the way information is distributed and consumed. Traditionally, forms of edited media such as print, television, and radio were trusted sources of information. Nowadays, young people have access to and engage with a far wider range of media, much of it misinformation. This development from traditional to modern media has fostered a culture where youth are indoctrinated into the alt-right online.
Young people are ‘digital natives’, and though social media is still used by older generations, it is becoming an increasingly youth-targeted environment. Reports show that upwards of 90% of teens aged 13-17 use social media on a day-to-day basis. Think of the people around you—it is uncommon to hear of a young person who uses no social media at all. Young brains are particularly vulnerable to social media, meaning that the fundamental changes they go through where they are encouraged to seek social gratification can be warped by online interactions. Children are accustomed to social gratification from peers in real life, but what makes online interactions interesting—in comparison to in person ones—is their permanency. As is an integral aspect of human nature, children and teens do what they have done since the dawn of time; seek friends and groups who will accept them with open arms. Young people’s biology, and their susceptibility to intake opinion as fact, makes them particularly vulnerable to exploitation, and as social media remains dominated by youth, they are the primary audience of this exploitation.
Streaming and video-sharing sites have become pivotal in the alt-right’s rise in both popularity and accessibility. While all social media utilised by the alt-right have dangerous potential, YouTube and TikTok have emerged as particularly insidious platforms. Recent studies examining a wide array of videos across various channels and accounts reveal a troubling trend: that users who engage with mainstream right-wing content, such as viewing Fox News clips, are often algorithmically steered towards more extreme alt-right content. Originally created as platforms for sharing light-hearted content—such as dance routines, cute animal compilations, and slapstick pranks—these sites have quickly developed into vast, unregulated repositories where millions of videos are uploaded daily. Amongst this deluge of information lies a disturbing array of content, including graphic violence, misinformation, terrorist propaganda, and radical alt-right viewpoints. The sheer scale and accessibility of this content presents a grave risk, particularly to younger audiences. It is clear that, for a young person navigating the online world, a single click, like, or comment is all it may take to set in motion a trajectory towards alt-right indoctrination.
Whilst it is easy for the indoctrination of youth into the alt-right via social media to front as a purely digital issue, the consequences extend far beyond the realm of social media and have the potential to create catastrophic impact; some of which we have already seen. The presence of the alt-right on social media has the capacity to alter the future of content sharing and online communication, as growing numbers of youth—trapped in a cycle of indoctrination—are pushed towards fringe social media platforms to maintain harmful systems built on confirmation bias and bigotry. The long-term consequences of the alt-right presence online are real-world violence and fear. This violence and fear, if not directly caused then definitely encouraged by the presence of the alt-right online, is a global phenomenon—take the January 6th US Capitol attack, the 2019 Christchurch Mosque Shooting, and more recently the emergence of EDL riots in England for example.
The increasing indoctrination of youth into the alt-right is heavily influenced by the growing prevalence of social media, particularly amongst youth. Social media platforms form echo chambers where individuals are exposed to like-minded views, reinforcing their beliefs through confirmation bias and reducing the chance of encountering and engaging with opposing perspectives. This dynamic has allowed far-right ideologies to gain a foothold in these online spaces, consequently causing them to become normalised in everyday life. The evolution of technology has facilitated this shift, moving away from traditional media toward a globally interconnected online society. The near-limitless communication afforded by social media means that extremist ideologies can spread rapidly and widely, with little resistance. If unaddressed, this could lead to the far-right becoming more accepted in both political spheres and daily life, posing significant risks to social cohesion and democratic values. Efforts to counteract this trend must focus on creating more balanced online environments where diverse viewpoints can be shared and debated, ensuring that the younger generation is exposed to a wide range of perspectives rather than being trapped in insular communities that reinforce harmful ideologies.