It’s Still the Damn Phones
Tyler Robinson’s assassination of Charlie Kirk on the afternoon of September 10, 2025, was a staggering political moment but not an unfamiliar one. It was just over a year ago, on July 13, 2024, when a young, white, lone shooter, Thomas Crooks, attempted to assassinate Donald Trump in remarkably similar circumstances.
Like Thomas Crooks, Tyler Robinson was in his early 20s, isolated from his peers, not easily politically aligned, and especially interested in firearms. Like Crooks, Robinson found community only in the darker disregarded corners of the internet. Although we don’t know a great deal about Crooks’ internet interests, we can see a young man struggling with his mental health.In the aftermath of Tyler Robinson’s murder of Kirk, many jumped to steer the national conversation. They pointed to Kirk’s views on aid to Israel, defense of free speech, the need for gun control, or the demonization of an invented, violent, radical left. But none of these political aims appears to have been on the mind of Robinson. Instead, he left what seem to most Americans to be peculiar messages and a messy, confusing digital footprint.
Robinson’s internet activity demonstrates a common example of a young man in the US, who, awkward and uncomfortable at making in-person connections, turns instead to online spaces for community.
Right now, Washington has called upon the CEOs of online forums like Discord, Reddit, and Twitch, to testify before a congressional committee and begin discussing “the radicalization of online forum users.” This approach to a complicated problem is too narrow a lens.
Forums and chatrooms were some of the oldest spaces on the internet to offer those who frequented them unmonitored, unmoderated, dark, private places where they could hang out. While attractive, these virtual spaces were never as ensnaring as the algorithms of today. These forums and chatrooms offered users places to visit from their desks at home. Today, such access is always available from one’s phone.
When social media began its rise to dominance in the 2010s, the US made an intentional choice not to regulate it and instead allowed this Internet 2.0 to grow as aggressively and lucratively as possible. To achieve this growth, social media algorithms sacrificed common truth in favor of personalized, echo-chamber dashboards. No longer were a set of facts and a common culture shared by most Americans. The polarized, instant, and public reactions to Twitter’s trending tab had replaced the nightly news and primetime dramas. Niche ideological pockets where users could congregate online to confirm their prior convictions superseded in-person communal spaces.
In the virtual realm, there is no longer the social pressure to look up and connect with those in physical proximity. What could such social engagement offer? They could never reflect as completely as those in the virtual environment, a common interest in one’s favorite media, sense of humor, or political alignment. Algorithmically determined digital connections offer smoother, immediate gratification compared to the awkward, grueling, protracted person-to-person connections that, too often, offer little pleasure. Given this deep ravine of incentive, “third spaces,” those outside of work or home, places where socialization and community are built, have vanished.
To counter this gloomy description of where we have come, there are positive policies in the field gaining traction. A bill signed by Josh Stein in July limits personal device access in schools and requires lessons in social media literacy. Critically, these lessons will include interpersonal skills and character education, which ideally will help cultivate in-person connection and community as internet access is restricted. Still, while limiting young people’s internet access is an important first step, we must be careful not to alienate students who may only have community online.
Adding moderation or speech restriction to online forum spaces will do little to dilute the damage to young people. These spaces are not what do the damage. It’s the damn phones and the ubiquitous access they offer. An internet built without restriction or regulation and designed to grab and keep attention by maximizing emotional response has entrapped an entire generation of youth from birth.
This generation has not invented these sites of alienation from the real world. The profit structures of the world’s most powerful companies have designed these places of isolation and dissociation for them. Inhabiting spaces and engaging with others who share their disconnection can only deepen it.
There have always been groups of people who gathered in secret groups, in secret places, or appearing disguised in public to vent their regressive and divisive beliefs. Ku Klux Klan members, for example, voiced their racism while hidden by their white nationalist robes to avoid the shame that might fall upon them if individual identities were revealed. There are places today on the internet and in games where youth can go to mask their identity, to violate the norms of social interchange, and to voice their resentment and rage, places free from shame. Access is easy. It’s just a click away.
To curb these excesses, concerned citizens sometimes call for more regulation, but our commercial internet, designed not to further civil discourse but to inflame it, resists regulation at every turn. It is simply too vast and too ungovernable. It’s users too anonymous. Rather, young people need more open arms in better places.
Charlie Kirk’s assassination, like the attempted assassination of Donald Trump before it, was a complicated and deeply disturbing storm of youth dissociation and isolation, the unchecked influence of an algorithmic internet, desensitization of gun violence, access to and interest in powerful firearms, political alienation, and cynicism. I regret there isn’t an encompassing policy solution to this pervasive and complex problem. What is clear, however, is that we cannot allow the situation to get worse. Regulate the algorithms, limit data collection, pass gun control, get money out of politics, and run for office or support those who do. We need to do everything we can to make the world around young people more attractive than the world at their fingertips.
