COLLEGE PARK, Md. — In November 2025, the University of Maryland’s Violence Reduction Center hosted a symposium examining the connection between social media and community violence, bringing together researchers, youth voices, law enforcement officials and community organizations to explore how online dynamics can escalate real-world harm. The event was supported by the Everytown Community Safety Fund and the University of Maryland’s PROGRESS initiative.
According to an article from the University of Maryland, the event had nearly 70 attendees, including from “Baltimore, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Toledo, Ohio; as well as representatives from the Baltimore and New York police departments, community violence prevention organizations like Peace for DC and Chicago CRED, academic institutions, and more.”
“Addressing the Role of Social Media in Catalyzing Community Gun Violence,” a paper presenting the key takeaways from the event, was later published. The paper included the perspectives of 18 speakers, including Gen Z, Gen Alpha, youth, law enforcement officials and researchers.
Thomas Abt, founding director of the Violence Reduction Center and an associate research professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, said, “At the VRC, we believe the best thinking happens when diverse groups come together and challenge one another. That’s what happened at the symposium.”
He further stated, “Ultimately, when you include differing viewpoints from the beginning, it makes any agreements you reach at the end that much more meaningful.”
Youth panelists discussed social media’s direct correlation with violence by emphasizing competition and safety. They pointed out that engagement is often prioritized over safety, and that the desire to “outdo” one another adds to this violence.
Some platforms, such as “E-responders” and “Peace Guards,” already have effective standards for when to intervene online, including the pros and cons of using artificial intelligence to monitor conflict and specific examples of how intervention might occur.
Law enforcement officials also shared ways they have increased awareness, identified potential violence and conducted investigations in an effort to minimize this issue.
Law enforcement officials and researchers at the event suggested that people should be careful when using social media to aid law enforcement. While social media can be a good outlet for expressing oneself, posting specific things about events can call for unnecessary violence. They claimed this could be due to targeting.
Joseph Richardson, co-director of PROGRESS and a professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Department of African American and Africana Studies, discussed the importance of “design justice.”
Richardson uses this strategy in his work with hospital-related violence intervention programs and victims of gun violence, placing people most affected by violence at the center of creating viable solutions.
Richardson specifically stated, “The symposium was one of the first times that a lot of us had the opportunity to sit down with different stakeholders—from law enforcement and community violence intervention practitioners to members of Gen Z—and directly discuss what is going on with social media and community violence, how we can begin to make sense of it, and how we can move toward solving it.” He hopes that this will continue the movement that was already started.
Ultimately, the Violence Reduction Center’s paper recommends multiple actions, including investing in local, community-led digital expertise, establishing ethical, nonpunitive digital early warning systems, developing national best practices and training standards, requiring meaningful accountability from social media platforms and treating social media as a site of care.
The goal, as outlined in the center’s paper, is to minimize social media’s contribution to community violence.
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