PERSPECTIVE: How My Child Was Pulled Into Online Extremism, and How I Fought Back: Part II

Content Warning: This post discusses self-harm, suicide, and political extremism. Take care of yourself while reading. Also, I use the terms Nihilistic Violent Extremism (NVE) and 764 interchangeably. 764 is a group within the NVE umbrella, and the main group my son was entrapped in. 764 is also referred to as CVLT or the COM.

Read Part I before you begin here.

The Boy He Was Before Everything Changed

At the age of 2, my son became obsessed with music. A drum kit, deconstructed and placed on the floor, was the first instrument he played. I distinctly remember his eyes lighting up with recognition and awe. Within weeks, the drum kit moved to his room, where a stage started to take shape. A toy Dyson vacuum cleaner doubled as a microphone stand. He imitated screeching solos on a plastic Elmo guitar. I offered to buy a ukulele or toddler-size guitar. He insisted pretending was better because he could mimic the noises of shredding guitar solos before his skill set caught up (yes, he literally said that).

At age 3, he had his first performance at his Montesorri school’s Fall Festival. Afterwards, several teachers and staff pulled me aside. They asked if I was prepared for him to be a rockstar when he grew up, because it was obvious to everyone that it was his destiny.

At age 5, we learned that my son is autistic. His deeply feeling, tender heart gave him insight into feeling left out, so he took care of anybody who might feel the same way. If one of his classmates looked lonely, my son would introduce himself, try to make them feel more comfortable, and encourage them to join.

My son’s autism, creativity, and intelligence made school challenging. Struggling to mask reactions to sensory overstimulation drained him, often resulting in a full-blown meltdown by the end of the school day. He was frustrated by teachers who told him he couldn’t learn to write in cursive because it was too early or because of his dysgraphia, or that he couldn’t study topics of interest because they were too advanced. One teacher refused to follow his 504 plan and opined that she didn’t believe in most diagnoses since it was most likely a parenting problem. After multiple conversations with her and the administrative staff that led nowhere, I homeschooled him for a few of his elementary years, during which I let him self-direct his history and literature education because he was fascinated by topics I never would’ve thought to bring up at his age. He knocked out nearly the entire middle school (and some of high school) curriculum by fifth grade.

My son was also fascinated by animals. He watched Wild Kratts daily, pausing the show every 5-10 minutes to breathlessly tell me all the facts he’d learned. Between Wild Kratts, trips to the zoo, and studying every book about animals he could get his hands on, he memorized hundreds, possibly thousands, of animal facts. When asked to name his favorite animal, he replied: “I don’t have a favorite because they’re all so amazing, and we have to care for all of them, and make sure we keep the Earth a good place for them to live.”

Eventually, he outgrew Wild Kratts, but never stopped caring for animals or the environment. He remained passionate about music and performing, joining the performance program at our local School of Rock as a drummer and vocalist. He taught himself guitar and keyboard, as well as audio engineering and production, composing and recording songs. He dreamed of forming a garage band with his peers.

At age 14, my son’s deep empathy, sensitivity, and loyalty made him vulnerable to one of the most dangerous online threats in existence. His love of animals and music was weaponized against him in an attempt to coerce him into self-harm, suicide, and possibly violence. I didn’t know until months later, but between his fear of being shot at school, hopelessness from attempts at real world connection ending in pain and humiliation, and exposure to violent content online, he was spiraling into the darkest corners of the internet. Violence turned into gore content and quickly fed into Nihilistic Violent Extremist groups like 764, accounts that glorified self-harm and suicide.

Within a matter of weeks, he was hooked. Within 2 months, I barely recognized him.

Why I Need You to Know Who He Was First

If I haven’t lost you (damn digital age attention spans), you’re probably wondering why I just spent just over 600 words describing my son B.E. (Before Extremism).

Because it can happen to your kid too.

There’s a lot of stigma & misconceptions about how white, young males fall into extremism and mental health collapse. There’s even more stigma attached to autistic boys – they’re already loners, socially inept, unfeeling, and uncaring. There’s a knee-jerk reaction of parents thinking it can’t happen to their kid because they follow expert recommendations for online safety, and they’re liberal/conservative/Jewish/Catholic/Christian/Whatever.

I’m guilty of believing misconceptions of boys falling into extremism. I’m guilty of thinking “not my kid.” I raised him to know and do better. I followed all the expert advice about keeping my kids safe online – everything from parental controls to discussions with my kids.

I didn’t understand how algorithms and coercion and hopeless isolation can render all that moot. I didn’t know about romanticizers vs perpetrators. I didn’t know that my son’s autism made him more vulnerable to coercion by these groups and the content itself, although I knew damn well autism did not make him an unemphatic loner. I didn’t know that YouTube’s algorithm is just as harmful as other social media platforms, even though it’s marketed as an educational entertainment platform and packaged with EdTech devices. I didn’t know that no one needs to DM your child for them to suffer harm online, or that gore content is widely available on mainstream platforms.

I was wrong, and so were many of the professionals who should have recognized the warning signs when I first reported them. They definitely should have by the time I was begging for help, and my son was nearly gone.

I spent 600+ words describing who my son was B.E, and I’m telling our story in detail because neither of us wants another family to go through what we did. I want people to understand how your child can do 180 degree turn, changing into someone you don’t recognize and could lose in the blink of an eye. I want people to understand my son as a child who was in pain, not a caricature of just another white male extremist or extremely online teen.

The first post in this series discusses initial warning signs that his mental health team and I missed or rationalized as normal teenage behavior. All of this worsened, and additional signs were apparent from the beginning of his freshman year through winter, as described below.

Sudden Changes in Behavior and Appearance

As summer gave way to fall, my tender-hearted, mature, optimistic child transformed into someone unrecognizable. He dyed his hair black, went against my rules and wore corpse paint to school daily, along with black metal band t-shirts depicting violent imagery. Metal prongs and animal skulls (sometimes real, sometimes replicas) were affixed to his jacket and pants. A permanent scowl darkened his face. Sullen irritability peppered with angry outbursts replaced laughter and hopefulness. I watched the love and light drain from his eyes, replaced by a glare or appearing hypnotized.

My son rarely showed anger; instead he internalized his emotions in an attempt to be polite and people-please, even if it increased his distress. Now, he was verbally and even sometimes physically aggressive, and talked about loved ones in dehumanizing, derogatory terms. My son was always a rule follower and usually accepted the reasoning and logic behind household and school rules when he questioned them. Now, every rule was fuel to the fire – another shouting match, another consequence for breaking them, particularly when it came to screen use (see below).

This wasn’t normal teenage rebellion. This was a total personality shift.

Increase in Mental Health Symptoms, Especially New or Worsening Self-Harm

My son was too sensitive and cared about people too much to commit an act of violence against anybody else. But he internalized his loneliness and depression, and his self-harm intensified. For the first few months, he was truthful about his self-harm and asked for support. By October, he was rarely forthcoming, but would usually admit to an incident when I asked about unexplained cuts. We both asked for additional treatment and support from his mental health providers during this time, but were dismissed. The only solution offered was an increase in medication, which didn’t help. He grew more hopeless each session.

By December, he had deep slashes all over his thighs, front and back of his torso, and arms. By January, he had carved satanic symbols, anarchy symbols, and other stylistic numerical cut signs into his body. Some have left permanent scars. I later learned ritualistic self-harm in the form of symbols, numbers, or with a promise of healing injustice (such as my son’s concerns about animals & the environment) is promoted by 764, o9A, and NVE websites and accounts on mainstream social media platforms. I didn’t know about the symbols or extent of his self-harm until he was hospitalized because he covered up the worst of it. More on that in Part 3.

Social Isolation and Withdrawal From Family

As he entered his freshman year, my son had lost most of his friend group, but had a dim light of hope left. He signed up for band class and drum line. Certain he would meet like-minded teens in these classes, he was optimistic his dream of forming a band would become a reality. Instead, the social dynamics pushed him over the edge.

The inability of Gen Z to peel their eyes off a screen and connect in real life, combined with his increasingly depressed demeanor and darkening worldview, turned into a vicious cycle of social isolation.

As an autistic, sensitive kid, my son experienced his fair share of bullying, including anti-Semitism, in elementary and middle school. High school bullying was a whole different level of trauma – both in intensity and frequency.

Groups of teens followed him in the halls and at lunch, barking at him and hurling insults. Sometimes they yelled that he should just kill himself. Classmates posted videos of him on Snapchat with captions like “retard” and “next school shooter”. He tried to escape by eating lunch on the field at the end of campus, but the bullying continued during class. Each day, he shared how angry, lonely, depressed, and hopeless he was, and how this mistreatment was compounding these feelings. I offered to stay out of it if he had a handle on it and jump in if he needed support. He insisted he would be targeted even worse if I stepped in. After an incident where students filmed his class presentation and posted it in real time on SnapChat and TikTok with insults in the captions, I told him it was time for me to step in. He agreed.

The teacher arranged a phone call, where she told me she didn’t allow phones in class, so it couldn’t have happened. I insisted it did. She said she didn’t want to negate what he felt like was a real experience, but that couldn’t have happened in her class. I told her there was no “feel like”, it 100% happened. I understood that she has 35+ kids in her class, and kids are pretty skilled at hiding phone use, but the incident was real and wasn’t isolated. She promised to talk to him about it. She pulled him aside the following day, dismissed the incident, and made him feel like he was at fault.

He was furious, hurt, and even more convinced that no one cared. The spiral into increasingly dark corners of the internet became quicksand. If he was going to be an outcast, so be it.

By November, his last two friends drifted away for good. He went from hanging out with peers from the time he walked off campus until it was dark outside to being alone every single day.

Family time was something my son treasured B.E., but he withdrew from us too. The more socially isolated and hopeless he became, the more disconnected and angry he acted towards his sister and me. The feedback loop of online content didn’t help. The Us vs. Them mentality promoted by extremist groups and predators online disconnects victims from outside influence and protective factors, pushing them into total entrapment. More on that below.

I brought up disengagement from peers and family to his mental health team, who chalked it up to normal teenage drift towards friends instead of parents and shifting social alliances. All of that is normal to some degree, but this was entirely different and more severe. He wasn’t spending time with friends over family dinner, or hanging out with a different crowd than before. He was withdrawing from everyone and everything (except screens).

Increased Time Online and Secretiveness About Online Activity

B.E., my son was too busy with real world activities to care much about his phone. Now, fights about screen time and restricted content were happening multiple times per day, and he seemed to spend a lot more time online than what should have been possible with the parental controls I had in place. Rules such as “no phone in the bedroom or at the dinner table” caused constant arguments and angry outbursts. I caught him sneaking his phone into his room in the middle of the night, and two + years later, I still have a panic response if either of my kids comes out of their room at night.

I felt like I was managing an addict, because indeed I was.

I suspected online activity was a factor in his mental health slide, and grew more concerned when he muttered references to violence or politically extreme views under his breath. I already knew “best practices” for keeping kids safe online, and followed the recommendations to “talk to your kids about their online activity” and “remain calm and curious, not accusatory”.

If your child is entrapped in extremism, watching gore content, or coerced by predators, this expert advice is mostly bullshit. Victims of coercion or brainwashing aren’t going to know what’s happening to them or admit to watching forbidden content. Children feel shame, guilt, and fear they’ll be punished, even if you’ve assured them it’s not their fault. Perpetrators instill this fear in their victims using threats, intimidation, and appealing to loyalty, among other tactics. During his recovery, my son told me he felt terrible about the distress and disappointment he caused and who he had become, but felt trapped. This led to a vicious cycle of shame = increased hopelessness and suicidal ideation = further enmeshment in NVE.

During this time, I continued to tweak controls, scan his phone, and block platforms or sites that looked suspicious. I had consequences for breaking rules, including blocking YouTube on his phone entirely and taking his phone away for 1-2 days at a time. I never thought to check his school issued Chromebook. The school handed it out, so it had to be safe, right? Both of my children talked about how strict the monitoring system was, and that anything cool was always blocked.

That is also bullshit.

There was a disconnect between the time he was spending online (especially on YouTube) and the limits I had set for maximum time allowed, but no particular activity raised a red flag.

It wasn’t until 5 months later that his secret online life unraveled, and I learned parental controls are easily bypassed and online activity hidden. More on that in Part 3.

Referring to Online Groups and Friends

Socially isolated, my son tried to keep himself busy by practicing drums, guitar, music lessons, reading, drawing, and CrossFit. But even if you’re an introvert or autistic, the human brain is wired for connection. Fed up with real world attempts at finding new friends ending in pain and humiliation, my son tried to find like minded people online.

He mentioned groups and online personalities frequently, along with disturbing references to violence or extremist ideology. Again, I tried to approach this with calm curiosity, only to be shouted down.

Luckily, my son never had direct messages with members of 764. He signed up for Discord to connect with 764/NVE accounts, but quickly left after he recognized some of his school bullies on the platform. Ironically, the bullying that pushed him towards extremism may have saved his life. Discord is a common platform for direct contact with 764, and it would have been a quicker path to the worst outcome and harder to intervene if he had developed a direct relationship with 764 perpetrators.

That being said, I want to make clear that no one needs to DM your child for them to experience horrific trauma by these groups. As a passive consumer of 764, 09A, and other NVE content, my son was close to ending his life, had permanent scars from extensive self-harm, and rewired his brain from watching 12-14 hours per day of gore content. I knew the dangers of predators DM’ing children and instructed my children about staying safe. I did not know that gore content is widely available on mainstream platforms and is a pipeline to extremism and suicide.

Us vs. Them, In Group vs. Out Group

My son had friends with varying interests and different economic and racial backgrounds his whole life. Suddenly, this interest narrowed, and not in a typical “teens aligning more along similar interests” way.

You were either in or out of his chosen group. Us vs. Them. What made you “in” wasn’t particularly clear, but he knew it when he saw it. Derisive comments towards the “out” people quickly turned into outright hatred. Soon, his own family was out too.

At the worst of it, the “out” people or “them” were expendable. They deserved no more consideration than trash.

The in group? They were the only ones truly persecuted and marginalized. They were oppressed by “them”, and they deserved revenge.

Interest in Extremist Ideology, Violence, Self-Harm, and/or Suicide

I’ve already mentioned my concerns about muttered references to violence and extremist ideology. The pattern of increasing severity is clearly a sign of desensitization:

“Edgy” political references turned into outright extremism.

Violence at an R-rated level became descriptions of gore (& I couldn’t figure out where he was seeing any of it since I had parental controls set to filter this content).

My son still talked about performing, but made references to self-harming on stage. Then, those references turned into vague plans for suicide on stage for the world to see.

This is how the steady drip of coercion by extremist groups and the algorithms themselves work. Children are slowly desensitized over time, otherwise they would certainly be alarmed and alert their parents.

Within 2 months, my son sounded like he was reading from a script, with a dazed look in his eyes. Whenever I questioned any of this or asked him to repeat himself because I couldn’t make out his mutterings or couldn’t believe what I was hearing, my son would claim it was a joke, that I “wouldn’t get it” because I was outside the group, or launch into another angry outburst.

Shifting Religious or Political Beliefs

Much of this will sound similar to the description above, but a few finer points:

NVE is not about left or right-wing ideology – it’s about a nihilistic worldview and generalized hatred. However, both left and right-wing extremist language may be used in NVE social media content, and your child may parrot these phrases.

There is overlap with 764 and O9A, and O9A features a blend of pagan and Satanic religious beliefs. We’re Jewish, and suddenly my son was talking about his conversion to Satanic Paganism. As a sidenote, in the weeks before this conversion, he claimed his Judaism gave him special standing in his new group. Anti-Semitism is a key factor in most all extremism, NVE being no exception, so making him feel special for being Jewish was coercion at its finest.

Drawings and/or Cut Signs of Symbols or Numbers

My son loved to draw nature scenes and animals – now he was fixated on odd symbols and number combinations. Some symbols were recognizable – the anarchy “A” or variations of pentagrams. A week before he was hospitalized, he gathered patches and cut numbers out of graphic t-shirts to sew 764 on his leather jacket.

Hospital admission forms noted extensive cut signs on his body, but the staff was unaware that this was a clear warning sign for NVE involvement. They noted it as “anarchy and Satanic symbols”.

764 is well known for coercing children into cutting numbers and symbols into their skin as a callout for a specific account or perpetrator, then posting or DM’ing photos (often to the level of CSAM).

More on that and the shrines I found in his room in Part 3.

What Should I Do?

When looking at a checklist of warning signs, it can be hard to recognize whether it describes your child. They may be discounted or chalked up to a normal byproduct of the teen years. Like the proverbial frog in a boiling pot of water, you become numb to how much your child has changed.

I will leave you with this – if your parental intuition is telling you that your child is severely depressed, at risk of suicide, or possibly involved in extremism, don’t let anyone dismiss you. I don’t say this to disparage mental health or other youth professionals. Without the right mental health team, my son would not have recovered. Thankfully, there’s more recognition of NVE warning signs than 2-3 years ago, but gaps remain. I’m raising awareness so those on the front lines of mental health can recognize the signs and intervene early.

In future posts, I will talk more about each step I took to save my son and link to it here. In the meantime, do the following right away:

1. Call 911 if you suspect your child is in immediate danger to themselves or others, or take them to the nearest Emergency Department.
2. Stay calm with your child. Do not accuse them of anything – they are a victim in this situation. Keeping the lines of communication open is extremely important. Unfortunately, it may be difficult, as the “us vs them” mentality can make you appear to be the enemy.
3. If you can go through their phone, do it now. Be prepared that you may see some traumatic images. Screenshot everything you can & preserve it, preferably in two different places.
4. Contact your child’s therapist if they have one. Do not take no for an answer.
5. Contact the FBI (https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you) and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (800-843-5678) and tell them you believe your child may be in contact with 764.
6. Contact your local police, again stating your child may be a victim of/in contact with 764.
7. Contact Parents for Peace @ 1-844-497-3223. Note: this is not an emergency service, calls are answered during business hours. They can help your child exit extremism and guide you through what’s to come.