The future really is here. According to a study by the National University of Singapore (NUS), social media is increasingly becoming the tool of choice for gang members to recruit new blood. The research showed that youths who socialise with peers who are friends with, or who are themselves, gang members are highly susceptible to being drawn into the gang. 36 juvenile delinquents of ages 15 through 18 were reportedly involved in the study.
“Seepage between networks of friends can occur […] which is essentially what social networking is about, except that now it can have negative ramifications for youths who are potentially vulnerable,” explains associate professor Lim Sun Sun, who is also the assistant dean of the department of communications and new media in NUS. “It’s less intimidating, and it feels like it flows on naturally from your friendly interactions.”
One respondent describes, in Singlish, how he was gradually recruited into a gang through a mix of face-to-face and online interaction:
“Sometimes you will have an outside friend [not from school], then when we see that we have mutual Facebook friend then, like sometimes when we go out with them right, then they will see their gang friends, then they talk. Then like that we [respondent and gang member] get to know each other. Then through that it’s either he [gang member] add me on Facebook or I add him. After that, the more frequently we talk, then as you talk you get closer, then you get recruited into the gang.
It is probably not so surprising that gang members are turning to social media for recruitment purposes, given its widespread use among youths nowadays. Some of them even engage in self-promotion by posting exploits of their illegal activities. The police are supposedly aware of such happenings, but are not taking action just yet, especially since these tech savvy gang members are similarly aware that they are under a watchful eye.
By and large, gangs conduct much of their business on Facebook, according to the study:
Facebook, with its many affordances for social networking, status updates, photo sharing and online chat, was clearly the principal tool for our respondents’ online peer interaction.
One reason why youths end up befriending gang members on Facebook is because many of them are fairly unselective and indiscriminate in accepting friend requests. A respondent rationalizes it by saying that “Facebook is for making a lot of friends”.
Another reason is that many youths perceive being a gang member as ‘cool’:
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