In the Wake of Charlie Kirk's Assassination, Get Your Kids Offline

Help them live in the real world

The Time is Now

In the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination and the rise of dangerous AI chatbots, now more than ever we need to get our children offline.

We know that Kirk's murderer, Tyler Robinson, was an avid gamer and was active on the app Discord and in sexually transgressive online communities, like the trans and “furry” communities. Friends described him as “terminally online.”

I am not saying every gamer or social media user will become radicalized in the way he did, but nearly every perpetrator of violent acts like these has a similar online footprint to Tyler Robinson's. Not every child will be radicalized to commit violence, but the nature of the online world is malformative for all of us, especially for children’s developing brains.

Even if kids don’t seek it out, algorithms promote radical views, extremist ideology, and violent and sexual content. Children are exposed to a lot of violence online they would never witness in real life.

Studies show that children are more likely than not to be fed violent content online. 70% of teenagers saw some form of real-world violence on social media in just one year, and in one study, three-quarters of 15- and 16-year-olds had been sent a video of a beheading.

It is not only the content that is dangerous but the medium itself. The design of social media, video games, and interactive internet screens are bent towards addiction and desensitization to the real world. The medium is the message. The medium of the internet is built to feed children extremist views, violent content, and pornography. The algorithms know that a child's developing brains can't hold themselves back from clicking on the next link. It creates an addictive and immersive environment that draws children in and draws them away from their real-life relationships.

And this makes it easy for extremist communities to form. As children’s time and relationships move online they become more disconnected from relationships in the real world. Platforms like Reddit, chat rooms, Discord, etc. pave the way for children to form connections online, fall deeply into these communities, and become radicalized.

Charlie Kirk's murder and other recent acts of violence should warn us as parents that we need to opt out for our kids. But we don't have to despair. It is possible to choose a smartphone-free life for our kids. And the time is now.

Parents Need Help

Parents also need help to do this successfully. I gave a speech at the National Conservatism conference a few weeks ago explaining that even though parents know in their guts that smartphones aren’t ideal for children, it remains extremely difficult for concerned parents to stand against the strong current of screens into childhood. Giving a smartphone to a teen feels like an inevitability. All their friends have them. Schools and extracurricular activities require certain apps. No parent wants their child to be ostracized or disadvantaged. This is a classic collective action problem - no parent wants their child to be the one left out.

We need collective solutions. Parents and families need help.

The good news I share in my book The Tech Exit is that parents working together can provide the collective solutions we need to change the culture. It is possible to beat the digital tech crisis by creating counter-communities that resist screens together. And schools and policy makers can play a critical role in supporting this too.

You can watch my full remarks here:

---

Recent Appearances

• EWTN News in Depth to speak about the role digital tech played in the Charlie Kirk assassination

• Epoch Times American Thought Leaders Interview, “Smartphones are Rewiring Our Brains - Here’s How Parents Can Say No”

• Mama Knows Podcast, “The Truth About Screen Time Limits”

• Axis Podcast, “Can Teens Skip Smartphones Altogether?”