764 and Nihilistic Violent Extremism with Dana Grueser

In this episode, we interview Dana Grueser about her experiences with Nihilistic Violent Extremism (NVE), including the 764 Network, as well as the red flags that physicians should look out for.

Dana Grueser is a parent advocate and public speaker who nearly lost her son after algorithms drove him to Nihilistic Violent Extremism networks that groom minors toward violence and self-harm. After fighting to get her son the help he needed — and encountering professionals who missed the warning signs — she now speaks and writes to help parents, educators, and frontline providers to recognize the behavioral and digital red flags of online radicalization and exploitation before they escalate to crisis. She also advocates at the state and federal level for stronger child online safety legislation.

Dana Grueser's Substack: https://substack.com/@slowtechrevolution

Resources:

1. Letgrow.org
2. www.protectyoungeyes.com
3. Smartphonefreechildhood.org
4. Wearemama.org

Transcript

Unknown: 1:02

Hello, I'm Captain Matthew Turner, and welcome to another episode of the GSA Set podcast. In this episode, we interview Dana Gruser. Dana Gruser is a parent advocate and public speaker who nearly lost her son after algorithms drove him to nihilistic violent extremism networks that grew minors toward violence and self harm. After fighting to get her son the help he needed, and encountering professionals who missed the warning signs, she now speaks and writes to help parents, educators, and frontline providers to recognize the behavioral and digital red flags of online radicalization and exploitation before they escalate to crisis. She also advocates at the state and federal level for stronger child online safety legislation. Her Substack can be found in the show notes below. Can you tell us about the personal experiences that led you into this work? Yes. So my son was targeted by an online network that grooms children into self harm, producing CSAM, live streaming their suicides, or committing acts of violence, whether it be at school against you know even their families, those groups are now under the umbrella of nihilistic violent extremism. At that time, it was just known as 764 There's unfortunately a lot of splinter groups at this point. It's kind of taken on a life of its own, and over the course of about six months, he had a complete 180 fell into a complete metro house spiral, and we nearly lost him. It's a miracle that we didn't, and after that, you know, during that time, I was also fighting to get him help, and unfortunately, a lot of the professionals I was speaking with were not picking up on the warning signs, even after an FBI bulletin had gone out about 764 and watch out for these warning signs, watch out for cut signs, things of that nature, and nobody was picking up on it. Really, that experience led me into this work, somewhat at my son's request too, because he didn't want this to ever happen to another kid. You know, he was brainwashed. He didn't understand. You know, he had no clue what was happening to him while this was happening, and he said, "I don't want this to ever happen to any other kid like me. These people need to be exposed and found out. So, you know now I'm working to help parents, educators, and people working on the front lines with with teenagers, young adults, and children to really recognize these signs before it's too late. I've been reading your Substack, and I really encourage our listeners to go check it out. It's it's pretty heavy stuff. Not easy to write about. Sometimes it takes me a minute to recover from those posts. But again, I think if anybody can take something from our story, you know, just again recognize these warning signs and help out kids, and and recognize it before it's too late. That's really why we share it. From your perspective, what are the most concerning mental health trends among adolescents today. Unfortunately, I feel like there are too many of them. You know, the Anxious Generation came out about two and a half years ago. At this point, and in that book, it was highlighted about self harm. For instance, has gone up 188% for girls, 48 percent of boys. That figure for boys is, I would suspect, worse now with this online extremism, right? That's since 2010. Suicides, 167 percent for girls, 91 percent for boys. Depression, 145 percent increase for girls. 160-1% increase for boys. Like these are terrible numbers. I mean, just look around, right? I mean, you just have to open up your eyes and look around and see that kids are really hurting right now. They're they're not wanting to be in school. You know, they're having to get more mental health treatment. These rates of everything from self harm to depression have just increased so much. One of the things that I find the most concerning that a lot of times isn't looked at is screens replacing real world connection and real life activities as well, and that I feel like is a big root cause of all these other things-the self harm, the depression, the anxiety. Right? We we hear, you know, even for older adults, one of the most protective factors for not developing dementia or not developing mental health problems is having social connection, whether that be family or friends. Kids are not getting that now. I mean, I live in a neighborhood in Denver, where it's one of the best neighborhoods to raise kids. The streets are fairly safe for kids to be able to ride their bikes. There's pocket parks and parks everywhere, and I rarely see kids outside. If it was, you know, the '80s or '90s, I mean, you know, there would be kids all over the place. I wouldn't even be able to get my car down the street, right? My. Talk about this, like we have to be on screens because none of the other kids are outside or doing anything or hanging out. So one of the stats in the anxious generation was that kids spending time with their with their friends has gone from 160 minutes per day to 40 minutes per day in that same time frame. I mean, that's huge. Again, when I was a teenager, again, this was, you know, ages ago in the last century, as they say now. If I was at home, it was because my mother was like, "No, really, I have to see your face at some point. And now with my kids, I'm like, "Why? Why are you here? Why are you not out with your friends? So I, I really think that that's that's a huge problem. So, how do you think social media platforms amplify this anxiety, depression, loneliness, and self harm that we're seeing in teenagers? So, I think the first thing to understand is that most people, most adults, think that harmful content has some sort of like there's some sort of moderation for that. There is, but it's it's it's sorely lacking, right? It's and and the social media platforms these companies have lowered the amount of you know moderation, whether it be the software that they're using or the you know they have fewer workers, right? That are actually looking at this stuff. So if they take down one video, there could be 1000s in that in the place of that that are still up. I have done a lot of advocacy work with survivor parents that have reported videos that their children were watching of self harm or suicide content, and they've reported this daily, like you know, particular video pieces, day after day after day for years, and it's still up. So my son was able to find gore content and then got led into the 764 nihilistic violent extremism pipeline through that gore content. His first exposure to that was on Roblox when he was eight years old. His exposure to it continued through YouTube, Reddit, and people think a lot of times you have to search the dark web for this stuff, but it is really on these platforms. So YouTube does a fairly good job of moderating gore content, but there's still these content creators that'll find ways around it, or they'll show less violent videos, get you hooked on that, and then try to off-platform you to other platforms where there's less moderation. So I think one thing is parents have to understand that this content is very easily accessible on mainstream platforms, even with parental controls set at max. I was a parent that went through their kid's phone, had parental controls set at max, didn't allow them on social media, and they can bypass all of that and write in about three three seconds and and see this stuff anyway. A lot of this content will have very innocuous sounding titles. So on my daughter's Chromebook, for instance, she was watching a lot of videos that had titles such as "Funny Couples Dance, but it shows the couple dancing. Then the boy grabs the girl by the head, pretends to snap her neck. She falls to the ground, and then they get up and start dancing again. So we're looking at a direct thing that is normalizing domestic violence. I would never know just looking at the title that that's what that video is about. Same with these get ready with me videos. A lot of times they're get ready with me, but it's the girl talking about how she's going to eat four almonds today and nothing else. So I mean, this content is just whether it be you know extremist content, gore content, eating disorders, self harm, what have you. It is it is rampant online. There's a ton of it, and children's feeds are very different from adult feeds. There's a lot of advocates that are doing you know accounts where they set it up and they basically say that they're a teenager and the things that come up in their feed right off the bat, not even with any looking or saying what they're interested in or clicking on any videos, it gets dark really fast. So I think the reason for that is Johann Hari talked about this in Stolen Focus back in 2022. But these social media platforms have figured out that the more depressed, anxious, angry, or shocked you are, the longer that you will stay on, and there are these internal documents through these lawsuits, right in LA and New Mexico, that they knew this, and they're feeding us this content anyway. But you know, they also know that if you saw nothing but that, you would obviously be upset and leave. So they pepper it with videos that might be, you know, cats and putting on makeup or things that are innocuous, but then every fifth video or 10th video-I mean, it's like this in my own YouTube feed-is something that's disturbing. The more you click on that, that's the more your feed becomes that. It's insidious, and I'm-I'm actually glad you mentioned Roblox. Just recorded an episode with Dr. Ajit Mon. She mentioned Roblox specifically, and one of the things is that typically they'll wait up to like 10 games of Roblox before they start to really feed you that sort of stuff. So like parents will watch like the first game or two. It'll seem nice with this group of friends, but yeah, it's really insidious, really evil behavior. Yeah, I wrote a post about Roblox just about two weeks ago, on my Substack, said they were back in news because of their lack of safety. Yeah, really bad. Yeah, and trying to push these lawsuits into arbitration, and I had a conversation with my son about it, and he finally opened up about some of the things that he saw on Roblox when he was seven or eight years old, so we're talking nine or 10 years ago, it was just one of the games was dismembering yourself. This is marketed as a kid's game. I mean, back then it was you know Roblox is a safe educational game for children, and we're all on lockdown, and right, we're all in COVID, and what are what else are the kids going to do? So this seems like a viable alternative. It's online Legos. That's what it looks like. Legos online. Yeah. Yes, exactly. This is how it was marketed. He talked about another game where it was, you know, just building stuff, right? But then there's some game mechanic that basically picks up your character, brings them toward a button, and even if you close out of the game because you're like, wait a minute, I don't want to be drugged toward this button. There must be something wrong. It drags you towards the button and makes you click on the button, and then it shows you gore content. I had no idea that this was happening, but this was his first exposure to this again at eight years old, and I'm a parent that was pretty tech skeptical, and didn't allow my kids on a lot of things. So, so if it can happen to my kid, it can happen to any kid. Well, that actually leads us to the very next question. So, your advocacy we've touched on online extremist grooming and harmful digital communities. What should military healthcare leaders understand about this issue? I think that this today's extremism is not only you know more rampant online, but it's it's different than what we used to think of. So so when I was a teenager, it was more of the you know the skinheads, and you really had to go looking for this. Again, now it's just part of the normal feed, especially for boys. They're really exposed to a lot of extremist ideology, and for my son, he he didn't realize that was what he was being desens you know he's being desensitized into believing these things, he didn't realize it until he was hospitalized. You know, there's so much anti-Semitism, right? And it's not even left wing or right wing. It could be a mishmash of all of it. So it's it's it's sometimes harder to pick out. It starts out again very insidious, where it might be just a little left of center or right of center or right, and then it just gets worse and worse the more they look at it. And I feel like for kids today too, there's so much of a lack of belonging and and purpose, so they're more susceptible to it. And for military families where their kids are getting you know moved more often, there's that disruption in their social circles. Right, they might be having to change schools, there might be a deployment. They're also more susceptible to it because they don't have as much in real life connection. So, looking at it from an emergency medicine perspective, what warning signs do you think EM physicians should be watching for? So, this is where I really want to drive these points home because because I was bringing up warning signs. My child was a walking, talking warning sign for 764 involvement by the end of it, and nobody was really listening to me. So, in the fall of 2023 the first FBI warning went out about 764 Watch out for these warning signs. If you see these and you're a mental health professional, you need to be digging deeper because this could be a 764 case. So my child arrived at the emergency room with self harm covering almost every inch of his torso, front and back, and his arms and the tops of his legs. Anything that he could cover with a shirt or a pair of pants had self harm, and it was noted that he had anarchy and numerals carved into his body as well. He actually has some permanent scars from from that. That was not flagged as being cut signs. We now know that those are cut signs for 764 and other extremist groups. So I would say self harm, especially if it follows symbols, patterns, numbers, that is a huge red flag right there, but just any amount of self harm because these kids are being groomed into providing self harm content, you know, to post online and show their allegiance to these groups, or just for clout or what have you. Any significant or sudden shifts in behavior. Appearance, interests, or sudden turns in mental health. I would say there is a normal amount of that for teenagers, right, where they're trying on you know new trends or new interests or new groups, but it's outside of that. And the thing with my son, he was showing a lot of those signs, and it was chalked up to this is normal teenage stuff, but it was it was way more than that. Like he went from liking a lot of different kinds of music. He's a musician, right? Everything from jazz to heavy metal to I can only listen to black metal. There's a lot of extremism within black metal and a lot of 764 within black metal. That was it. That was the only thing that he could listen to. It became a very narrow interest. A lot of us versus them type of speech too. So talking about online groups and and online friends, and you know saying things about these groups and friends. And I would say, you know, where's that coming from, or who is that? Who are you talking about? Is that somebody at school? And it would be an immediate us versus them, like you don't get it because you're not one of us, and just shutting down the conversation. He had some a little bit of existing anxiety and depression, but it became to where he was self-harming on an almost daily basis. Extremely depressed, didn't want to leave the house. Also, sleep, spending a lot of time online, like at night, sneaking his phone when he wasn't allowed to have it. So anything where you're seeing where they're compulsively or addictively being on their phone, I would say that's also big thing to watch out for. When my son was hospitalized, he did not have a specific plan to commit suicide, you know, that night or the next day. So they wanted to send us home and put us on a wait list for a partial hospitalization program. However, my son mentioned that he had a self harm incident where he cut himself too deep and was afraid that he was going to bleed to death. Right? He was saying that he could not stop thinking about killing himself, that he really didn't want to because he would hurt his family, but that he was scared that those repetitive thoughts that were, you know, running through his head were going to take over. And also, there's some mental health professionals that talk about acute suicidality, so where you know there isn't even necessarily a longstanding mental health issue, but sometimes these kids, especially because you know they're teenagers, they're impulsive. Something can happen, and they may have gone from being mostly fine to committing suicide within a matter of hours. I've talked with a lot of survivor parents where their kid was sextorted, and a few hours later they were dead. So I think we have to look at that whole paradigm differently. This isn't like adults where they're, you know, getting rid of their belongings and getting their affairs in order. Right? These are kids. They're impulsive. Things can happen online, or they might be being coerced by one of these extremist groups, and you know, either that switch flips, or they accidentally just take it too far, and I think we just need to recognize that this isn't necessarily. Oh, this kid has a thought-out plan. Now we need to get him impatient, right? This can happen very quickly. So if we see any of these warning signs, we really need to be considering putting these kids impatient. Talking about your son, it sounds like even at the age of eight, on Roblox, he was being exposed to this sort of content. So, how early should clinicians begin discussing digital health habits with children and their families? This may shock you, but I would say infancy. How many times do you walk through the store and you see an infant or a toddler holding a phone while they're being pushed around in their stroller, oh, every single day, yeah, right. So I sat on a panel about school violence last fall, and a preschool teacher there was talking about her preschool students that were sharing with the teachers about violence, gore content-you know, self-harm content-that they were seeing online, preschool students, because their parents are handing them a phone, right, so they can watch YouTube Kids or whatever, so we can eat dinner in peace and get through the store in peace, and and they don't realize again how rampant this content is. You know, she talked very specifically, like the things I used to worry about with high school kids. Then it was middle schoolers. Then it was elementary school, and now it's literally preschool and toddlers. I have several friends that are teachers, you know, that work in the school system or they're school psychologists, and they talk about kids in kindergarten that are talking about self harm or wanting to kill themselves or talking about things that they see online that are violent and/or disturbing, so it it really needs to start in in infancy. Do you believe social media use should be assessed routinely as a part of adolescent health screening? I think it should be assessed again at at the. Could see in toddler or preschool level, but definitely if we're talking about elementary age and up, 100% and a lot of teenagers, they're doing all of their communication online, so they're not even texting or calling anymore. They're communicating in DMs with their friends, so they've replaced even phone calls and texts with a layer of technology with social media. They're on it all the time. They feel like they can't put it down because they might miss out on something. Even schools are requiring sports teams members, so these kids, right, to sign up for social media to be able to track when's practice, when's the next game, where's the next game? I mean, we're forcing kids a lot of times that you know, if you don't sign up for this, you can't be on the team. This is the only way to communicate. I know at my kid's school, I've been asked to sign up for probably I don't know eight or 10 different apps to be able to track their their grades or what the teacher is you know communicating about what's going on this week or assignments or whatever, and I'm like, I'm just, I'm not doing it. I'm sorry, I can't keep track of eight different apps just for one kid's school. It's, it's too much. No, I totally get it. So it definitely seems like the earlier we can possibly intervene and really start giving these families the resources that they need the better. So, if you could change one aspect right now of how the healthcare system addresses digital wellness, what would it be? This answer, when I give it, kind of shocks people. But I think the term digital wellness, or you know, the push about parental controls or finding balance with technology, right? I think that all of these things they sound good, but they don't necessarily work to keep kids protected. These platforms, these social media platforms, are not safe for children. Like end of story. You wouldn't let your kid have a pack of cigarettes. You wouldn't take your five-year-old to an R-rated movie, right? But you're handing them platforms that are designed to be addictive that have harmful content. So, and and kids can bust through parental controls again within three minutes. And a lot of these titles and video descriptions and stuff they are designed to evade detection of content moderators. So I really think we need to shift away from putting the onus back on parents to to be wholly protecting their kids against these big tech companies that have designed these platforms to be addictive and suck up all of our attention. Right? Like, how are we supposed to withstand this? We can't. So, with the best of intentions, right? So, I think we really need to move more towards going back to more in real life connection, in real life activities. My kid now, two years after he went through this terrible experience, I put him on a full digital detox, you know, to reset his brain and get him just off of this stuff. Like he had to really-I mean, it was like leaving a cult. Really, he still has a flip phone two years later. He's now on social media a bit because he wants to be able to promote his band. He has band, and they're on Instagram. And he's-he gets on, he posts, you know, "Hey, we're going to play at this gig. Come see us, and then he's off. He just doesn't engage with it any more than that, right? I think that that's an okay use of it, but this day to day using it, even getting on and just scrolling for hours at a time, it's just not helpful. It's disruptive to actual real social connection. You know, we're trying to balance something. It's again, it's like if the tobacco industry came and said, "Well, you need to teach your kids how to smoke cigarettes so that when they're older, they know how to properly smoke cigarettes. That sounds nuts, right? It's the same thing with it's the same thing with social media. Technology is great for you know my kids do FaceTime with their grandparents across the country, that's great. They can have a face, somewhat face-to-face interaction with them, right? We can type out our papers on, you know, and be able to erase it instead of doing it with whiteout on a typewriter. Like these things are great. That doesn't mean that you have need to have a smartphone in your hand, especially as a child. So, are there any good resources that you recommend for parents concerned about online safety. Letgrow.org, which was started by Lenore Skenazy. She also wrote the book Free Range Kids, and she has a lot of free activities for parents and for teachers. There's actually a school program as well for kids to get into more in real life activities and gain more independence, and I think this is something important for kids. Is gaining that purpose and independence will help keep them off of screens. And if something does, I don't want to say if it's when. If your kid is online, there at some point they're going to see content that's not good, or they're going to face online bullying, or any of these things that happen. I think it makes them more resilient, you know. Like my son had the benefit of having hobbies that were not online that he could go back into when he wasn't allowed to be online anymore. So it made him a little bit more resilient, and it helps parents to kind of realize what your kids can do. You know, they can ride their bike down to the store, and you know, I said my kids. We have a super target about a half mile. They'll ride their bikes down and grab a pack of apples or whatever, and they feel so great once they've done that. They're like, I really helped out. I went and you know got a pack of apples for mom. So I think that that's a good resource. Protect young eyes. Chris McKenna, he talks a lot about blocking things at the router level and routers that can really work well for that, so that your kid can't bypass parental controls and things as much. So I think that that's a really good resource for anybody that has anything in their house that's connected to the internet, which is all of us. Smartphonefreechildhood.org has some great resources for parents as well as wearemama.org. I actually run a chapter of Mama Mothers Against Media Addiction here in Denver, so they just have a lot of write-ups, good resources for parents. Again, really getting at the root cause of the issue, not just this is how you set up your parental controls. This is how you talk to your kids about what they're doing online because a lot of times they're not going to tell you. So I just again I think we need more than the standard expert advice on that. Nice, and I'll put all those resources down in the show notes. Yeah, thank you. Do you have any closing thoughts you'd like to leave on? I think that just you know if your kids are online, you you cannot guarantee their safety, and I know that that's a very bleak outlook, but it's it's the truth right now. The there's a law called Section 230 that basically says that social media platforms are not liable for whatever content they put up because it's considered free speech. There's the Senate Cosa Act is trying to add a duty of care so that platforms can't have this type of content that kids have a reasonable expectation of safety. Big tech is trying to fight that. They're putting another bill in the House right now that removes that language. So I think until these platforms are made safe by design, right? Both content-wise and with these, you know, addictive features being taken away, if your kids are going to use them, you cannot guarantee their safety. So, really, going back again to trying to do as much real-world activity and real-world connection as possible, I think right now is really the solution. Solution. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. We really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you for having me.