Hello Rappler reader,

Filipino teens committing acts of violence in their schools. This is the horrifying reality we are now confronting after the killing of three students at the hands of their own schoolmates in Tacloban City.

As a parent, I read with disbelief and fear about how a 14-year-old and 15-year-old met for an hour in a school lavatory, then emerged with murder on their minds and a cop’s 9mm Glock pistol in their hands.

I watched a shaky video, sourced by one of our stringers, of teachers and students screaming and crying in fear as gunshots rang out, extinguishing the lives of their schoolmates in another room.

This is far from an isolated incident, as our tech reporter Gelo Gonzales writes in this piece. The first recorded incident took place in Marikina last October, then months later in Batangas, then in the same month, police foiled a school shooting being planned by 7 kids in Calabarzon. 

But what struck me most about this pattern is its connection to a horrific extremist movement: nihilistic violent extremism, or NVE.

Gelo writes that NVE is a loose online subculture that celebrates violence as an end in itself, and as a way of gaining acceptance into a community of like-minded people.

NVE groomers target young people experiencing social isolation or mental health struggles.

In short, NVE communities promise social acceptance to vulnerable, lonely kids for committing acts of violence – the more horrendous, the greater their status in the group.

If this is not a perversion of community, I don’t know what is. 

What can we do to stop NVE from twisting our young people? In our Ask Me Anything session last month with the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordination Center and the Council for the Welfare of Children, what I heard was: it takes community.

1. We need to collectively push for safety by design in platforms used by young people. If platforms don’t meet these standards, children need to be kept away from them.
2. Parents, schools, friends, and relatives need to pay attention to kids. We have to look out for red-flag behaviors like being secretive, voicing out extremist beliefs or support for violence, hiding their gadgets or online activities, sudden mood swings, or withdrawing from interactions with family and friends.
3. We need to report behaviors that point to radicalization. This, again, requires trust. Trust that authorities can protect the child and keep them from doing harm to themselves and others.
4. We need to be digitally literate. The grownups around the child need to understand online spaces and the threats within. We need to be involved in their digital lives, not to the extent of watching over their every move, but to be able to protect them.

It takes a village to protect a village. Let’s start now.

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– Rappler.com

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