Five dangerous online trends parents haven’t heard about — but should
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Derek Q. Jackson
Submitted photo
When you can see what your kids see, you don’t have to live in fear of it. You can step in, guide them and walk alongside them. That’s what safety really looks like. Not control, but connection.”
On Sept. 10, 2025, a young man showed up at a university in Utah with a rifle and fatally shot Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA.
For most people watching on the news, it seemed sudden, shocking, senseless. But if you peel back the layers, what happened wasn’t random — it was the slow build-up of small choices, quiet frustrations and online habits that stacked on top of each other until something broke.
Tyler Robinson, who has been charged in connection with the shooting, had no criminal record. He grew up in a conservative family, dropped out of college and shared an apartment with a transgender roommate. Much of what shaped him happened online, away from the eyes of his family.
Here’s what parents need to hear: the same patterns that pushed Robinson toward secrecy and escalation are showing up in the lives of kids every single day. Most won’t end in violence, but they often end in bad decisions, despair or secrecy that keeps parents in the dark.
Here are five of those patterns, how they work and why they matter.
1. Games as micro-economies
Kids don’t just play games anymore — they live inside them. Take Roblox for example: kids earn money, trade items and risk losing it all. To adults, it looks like play. To kids, it feels like a real economy.
Here’s why: In the real world, a $20 bill only matters because we agree it does. In Roblox, a rare skin or badge works the same way — it’s valuable because peers recognize it. That’s why scams hit so hard. A fake site promising “free Roblox” isn’t just offering fake money — it’s dangling a shortcut to belonging and status.
Robinson’s story wasn’t about video games, but the principle is the same. He traded one kind of belonging for another. He stepped away from the identity his family gave him and found new “currency” in online groups that validated his anger. For him, the approval of those groups appeared to be worth more than anything else.
And that’s the danger: some kids, young adults and even adults will give up almost anything if it means they get to belong.
2. AI as the new imaginary friend
Every generation has had invisible friends. The difference now is that the invisible friend talks back.
Many kids lean on artificial intelligence like a companion that never leaves. The problem isn’t that AI lies, because the truth is that most of the time it’s accurate. The problem is that it almost always agrees with you. A teen who types, “I feel hopeless,” will likely see, “I’m sorry you feel that way, that must be hard.” It sounds caring, but it doesn’t challenge the thought. Agreement comforts, but it also removes the mental brakes that can stop us from doing something we shouldn’t.
We don’t know if Robinson ever used AI. But his private chats with his roommate worked the same way. They didn’t push back on his belief that “some hate can’t be negotiated out.” They reinforced it. And that’s how echo chambers grow — not through lies, but through endless agreement.
We don’t need more mirrors. We need someone to ask, “What would a person who disagrees with me say?” By the way, that’s a good prompt for your ChatGPT.
3. Echo chambers can kill
When adults talk about echo chambers, they usually mean politics. Left vs. right. Fox vs. CNN. But for young people, echo chambers are personal.
An echo chamber is any place where everyone agrees and no one challenges. For teens, that could mean depression groups, body-image forums or radical spaces where despair is amplified. The danger isn’t just bad advice — it’s the silence of disagreement.
Robins lived between two worlds: a conservative household and progressive online spaces. Instead of finding balance, he sank into a bubble that told him, over and over, that Kirk was hateful and beyond negotiation. Every meme, every message, every chat gave him the same signal: you’re right, keep going. And when no one in your circle says, “Wait, stop, think,” even extreme ideas start to sound reasonable.
4. Status is the hook behind every scam, and every radical choice
Why do kids click on sketchy links for free Roblox? It’s not because they believe in free money. They click because they’re scared of being left behind.
The same force drives adults. In the 1990s, teens begged for Jordans or Abercrombie because that’s what gave them status. Today, it’s skins, badges and digital clout. The product isn’t the item — it’s belonging and status.
Robinson’s choices weren’t about money, either; they were about status. He wasn’t just disagreeing with Kirk. He was proving loyalty to his new community and his online circles. His declaration to his roommate, “some hate can’t be negotiated out,” wasn’t a logical argument. It was a statement of identity, a way of saying, “Here’s who I stand with. Here’s who I am. And I’m brave enough to do something about it.”
Status can push people into scams. It can also push them toward radical and horrendous acts.
5. Visibility beats control
When parents panic, the first instinct is to clamp down: block the apps, lock the phone, restrict everything. But total control doesn’t make kids safer. It makes them sneakier.
Robinson’s family gave him a rifle as a gift. They probably thought they knew him well. But in secret it appears he deleted messages, hid chats and tried to cover his tracks. The problem wasn’t access, it was secrecy.
That’s the real danger. Restriction drives kids underground. They find burner phones, alternate accounts or hidden chats. And once secrecy takes root, ideas — whether scams, self-harm or radicalization — grow unchecked.
The solution isn’t spying or locking everything down. It’s visibility. It’s having enough insight to ask questions, to mentor, to guide. Kids don’t need perfect restriction or perfect answers. They need parents who can see what’s happening before it hardens into something worse.
The bigger pattern
Five years from now, the surface details will change. New games will appear. AI will be smarter. Scams will look different. But the patterns will stay the same: kids and adults chasing belonging, fearing exclusion and hiding what they don’t feel safe to share.
The story of Tyler Robinson and Charlie Kirk is heartbreaking, and it should wake us up. The lesson isn’t that we need to lock kids down or cut them off from the world. It’s that we need to pay attention, to ask better questions, to notice the small cracks before they widen.
Because when you can see what your kids see, you don’t have to live in fear of it. You can step in, guide them and walk alongside them. That’s what safety really looks like. Not control, but connection.
Editor’s note: Derek Q. Jackson is co-founder of Mesa-based Cyber Dive. He is a father of three and former U.S. Army intelligence officer. Please submit comments at yourvalley.net/letters or email them to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines.
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