This past Monday, I had the opportunity at the annual ASPA conference in California to speak on a panel about teaching mass atrocity prevention to public-service professionals. Much of what I spoke on is based on my recently published book, Disconnection: The Search for Identity in a Digital Age (2026). In particular, I was focusing on the role social-media platforms and, more generally, digital culture are playing as pipelines for radicalization processes that contribute to mass violence and atrocities, including genocide.

One of the most prominent preventative strategies I had to offer was quite simply: We need to get young people offline. We need to start community building and offering alternative socialization opportunities for our youth in in-person, shared spaces. How resonant that the same week of this panel discussion, a jury in California found both Meta and YouTube (owned by Google) liable for a teen’s mental-health distress. Hailed as a landmark case against Big Tech, the implications of this recent ruling will hopefully reverberate across........

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