Social Media + Guns Can Be a Deadly Combination for Teenagers
We need to talk about how juveniles appear to be getting guns through apps like Snapchat, as well as beefing with each other online until bullets start flying in real life.
The search warrant was heavily redacted, considering that some of the people it mentioned were underage. But the salient details were there. In the three months I’d been pulling records during visits to Denver’s Lindsey-Flanigan Criminal Courthouse, I’d already seen many like it, each describing the days and hours leading up to the moment a juvenile was shot. And like other warrants, my eyes were immediately drawn to the words “social media” and “Snapchat.”
I think by now we’ve all accepted that social media is negatively affecting kids’ mental health—in May this year the U.S. Surgeon General all but said it. What I didn’t appreciate until recently is that social media is likely one of the main drivers behind youth gun violence in major American cities. These online platforms are where fights can escalate between kids until someone pulls a trigger “IRL”. And at least around Denver, where I work, mobile apps are also where juveniles (those under 18) can reportedly buy guns.
I began to investigate youth gun violence after a high-profile incident in March 2023 at Denver’s East High School, when a student shot and wounded two school deans as they searched him for weapons. The event attracted attention from national media—as well as attention to an alarming statistic: Denver Public Schools found 16 real firearms on its campuses throughout the 22’-23’ school year. Data I got from the district in an open records request shows that DPS is discovering even more fake guns:
Since the East shooting, most local publications have been focused on what Denver Public Schools is doing to make its campuses safer, which I do think is worthy of coverage. But based on conversations I’ve had with one of the district’s school psychologists—a friend of mine—I knew that focusing on school safety alone missed the bigger picture. The vast majority of shootings involving young people are happening off-campus. And as I’d soon come to learn—including confirmation from Denver’s Chief of Police Ron Thomas—one of the main breeding grounds for violence is social media.
In a 12-page investigative package titled “Young Guns” that I published in this month’s edition of Denver’s city magazine, 5280, I dedicated one spread to the ways social media is exacerbating youth killings. But I wanted to highlight it again on this newsletter because, aside from a very recent ProPublica piece, I haven’t seen the issue get the national attention it deserves. Part of the reason is because these stories are mostly anecdotal; it would help to have a quantitative study to show, statistically, how often social media is a factor in youth gun deaths. But after many weeks of sourcing information from teachers, students, police search warrants, and former gang members who now work as youth violence preventionists, here’s a recap of some of what I learned:
A Wild West for Buying Guns: It doesn’t matter that you have you be 18-years-old to legally purchase a gun in most states (and in Colorado, if Democratic lawmakers have their way pending a court challenge, 21). At least, those age requirements don’t matter when kids can find weapons for sale on Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok. In the Denver area, violence prevention workers told me that there are code words kids use to find firearms available for purchase. “Pole” is slang for a gun, and MOM stands for “Metal on the Market.”
Purchases are Further Hidden by In-Game Chats: To further hide communications from prying eyes, some gun transactions occur in a nontraditional form of social media: chat rooms of online games including Fortnite and the mobile gaming platform Roblox. “No one is paying attention to that,” one former gang member, Dane Washington Sr, told me.
Burner Accounts: Kids may maintain one social media account their parents know about, but many kids maintain multiple burner accounts, and sometimes use those for their most extreme posts, which may include threats and insults to peers they’d never say in person. “They’ll come to school the next day, and it’s just utter chaos because there’s been hours and hours on social media going back and forth,” a middle school teacher named Gene Fashaw told me. “So by the time they see each other, there’s no respect, no love, no empathy.”
Shoot First: In the age of smartphones, when everyone has a camera in their pocket, losing a fist fight and having that filmed and posted on social media becomes just another way to be embarrassed. Instead, Washington told me, one increasingly common ethos he’s hearing from kids he’s trying to dissuade from gun violence is: “I’m not even gonna give you the chance to fight me; I’m gonna shoot your ass.”
Too Late: Law enforcement can only demand to see private social media profiles and messages if a judge signs off on a search warrant. That’s a good thing from a privacy perspective, but it does mean that police can’t easily prevent sales of weapons on social media, and usually can only get a search warrant to see what’s going on in social media backchannels after a shooting or homicide provides probable cause. Social media companies also appear to be either unwilling to comment or are being vague about their roles in gun violence.
Meanwhile, according to stats I obtained from the Denver Police Department, youth shootings in Colorado’s capital have been on the rise:
Still, the most alarming story I heard is not one I included in my recent piece. But the information arose after a youth violence interventionist I was interviewing on background (meaning he didn’t want his name used) mentioned that there’s far too many guns being sold to, and exchanged between, young people for them all to be stolen or even 3D-printed—which is increasingly the case. There are adults selling some of these guns to kids, he told me, particularly in Black communities. And as evidence, he pulled up screenshots on his phone involving a Snapchat exchange that one of his gun-carrying mentees, who is under 18, allegedly had with a stranger. The kid had shared the screenshots with his mentor—the guy I was interviewing. And in the messages I reviewed, the young person inquires about a gun, and is told by the stranger that spreading the word about his Snapchat page and helping earn him 40 more “likes” would earn the kid a free gun. That doesn’t sound like a lot of page-follows in exchange for a free weapon, but after that, the stranger tells the kid that boxes of ammo will be $100 each. According to the youth worker I interviewed, this whole arrangement actually happened—the young person went to a 7-Eleven on Denver’s east side to meet the seller and received a gun. The seller was allegedly a white guy. And also an adult.
The messages I reviewed are apparently now in the hands of Denver Police. I’ll be following whether the department actually discovers anything using them.
It’s now been two weeks since my feature was published October 1. During that time, two more teenagers in the Denver metro area have died by bullets. Those investigations are also ongoing. But I wouldn’t be surprised if, once any search warrants become available, there’s mentions of social media in them.
Lead image, creative commons license by Vectorportal.com