WHY PEER VIOLENCE?
A. Demonstration of Power and Group Dominance
In teenage groups, showing that you can humiliate someone without consequences advances your status. The victim becomes a means of demonstrating power and dominance. The victim is not chosen randomly. They are often someone who is different, someone who does not have enough support from the group they are part of, or someone who has already been labeled as "weak."
B. Excitement and Satisfaction from Another Person's Humiliation
Violence creates strong emotions: fear, tension, laughter, shock, and adrenaline. "This is funny." "This is crazy." People are naturally attracted to emotionally charged events. Another person's suffering also triggers a feeling of voyeuristic enjoyment, that is, curiosity and entertainment, and often satisfaction, from another person's suffering. The laughter of those present, the comments, and the shares create an atmosphere in which the victim's suffering becomes a form of entertainment.
C. Belonging to a Group
Humiliating someone and participating in it becomes a ritual of belonging to the group that is dominant, cool, and one that others should fear, but also want to be part of because there you can do things without being punished. Young people experience deindividuation, a state in which an individual loses their sense of personal responsibility and fear of consequences because they are part of a group.
D. Desensitization
Within the group, people often do things they would never do on their own. One person records, another laughs, a third cheers, and a fourth shares the video. Responsibility is dispersed among all participants. When a teenager is alone, they may feel empathy. When they are part of a crowd or a group, responsibility is distributed among everyone. Instead of thinking, "I am hurting someone," they think, "We're just having fun."
E. Establishing a Hierarchy Within the Group
The humiliation itself becomes a public ritual through which the bullies send a message to everyone else: we are the ones who decide who belongs in the group and who does not, how people should behave, who decides what should be done, and so on.
WHY RECORDING AND SHARING?
On social media, another person's suffering is transformed into content for sharing. Many young people no longer experience events only as witnesses, but also as an opportunity to become accomplices. Recording gives them a stronger sense of participation. A fight, humiliation, prank, or act of violence is immediately viewed through the question: "Should I record this?"
The biggest problem is not only the existence of violence. Violence certainly existed before the internet. The bigger problem today is that violence becomes a media spectacle. The camera no longer serves to document the event. It becomes part of the event itself. Without an online audience, many of these incidents would not have the same appeal for the perpetrators.
A. Everyone Has to See This!
When such an act is recorded and published, violence acquires a new function. It is no longer just an attack on someone, but a public display of dominance intended for a much larger audience. The effect of group dominance and the demonstration of power is amplified. Greater visibility, greater power. Videos of peer violence are often associated with the satisfaction of being part of the powerful group while observing the humiliation of someone who has been excluded from it.
B. Attracting Online Attention
"If people watch this, I am important."
Through the use of social media, young people are taught that whatever attracts attention is important and has greater value. The greater the humiliation, the greater the chance that the video will attract attention. On social media, shocking content always has the advantage. Algorithms do not distinguish between empathy, curiosity, or satisfaction. They register numbers and clicks and reward what generates strong reactions.
C. Viralized Voyeuristic Enjoyment
The feeling of entertainment and voyeuristic enjoyment is amplified. What only a few people used to see on the street is now seen by thousands or millions of users. Every like, share, or comment is an additional participation in the spectacle. The victim is not humiliated only in front of their peers, but in front of a massive digital audience.
D. Prolongation of the Excitement, but Also of the Trauma for the Victims
By sharing violence online, it does not end when the physical attack ends. The video continues to live on, reproducing the humiliation over and over again.
Viral videos of peer violence are not only the result of aggressive impulses of individuals. They are the result of a broader culture in which the demonstration of power, the enjoyment of another person's humiliation, viralized voyeuristic enjoyment, and the sense of belonging to a group come together in a dangerous phenomenon. The more such videos become popular, the more the impression is created that humiliating another person is a normal part of digital culture.
The best way to prevent them is to understand the described mechanisms that cause them and to interrupt them when they begin to manifest. For example, if such incidents have serious consequences for the perpetrators and their guardians, if the lack of sensitivity toward victims is broken, if the videos are not spread massively, and so on, they will gradually lose part of their appeal both as a means of committing violence and as a means of its mass dissemination.
Dr. Sead Džigal