The beginning of ninth grade was already shaping up to be a bumpy transition for then-14-year-old Elliott. His longtime friend group from preschool days had fractured. His parents were separating. And, he was starting high school. With his new smartphone, Elliott increasingly sought community online, in spaces where other users shared his musical interests. And it was there that he eventually fell under the influence of predatory networks that would upend his and his family members' lives.
NPR is not using Elliott's full name because he is still a minor and it remains unclear whether individuals who may have targeted him online continue their activities.
Dana, Elliott's mother, said that when she gave him his iPhone, she took precautions that she thought would be sensible. She set up parental controls to limit how much time he could spend online; he was not allowed on social media platforms; and he was barred from visiting certain websites. Still, between his smartphone and his school-issued Chromebook, she said Elliott seemed to find ways around every restriction.
Over time, she began to observe disturbing changes to her son's personality.
"[He was] feeling like a burden … isolating, withdrawing from things that he found pleasurable in the past, talking a lot about … death," she recalled. "And he also started to talk about very violent, gory things."
It wasn't until Elliott was hospitalized, in early 2024, that Dana formed a more complete picture of how strangers online had brought him to the point of extensive self-harm and repetitive thoughts of suicide. She came to understand that bad actors were lurking in the forums where he was looking for community, whereas they were looking for vulnerable victims whom they could manipulate into harmful behaviors for the purpose of winning clout within toxic online networks. And it was finally then that Dana learned about some of these networks, such as 764 and CVLT (pronounced "cult"), which have been linked to random violent attacks, arson, child sexual abuse material, child sexploitation, bomb threats, plots to murder and at least two deaths in the U.S. and abroad.
"The whole time period that he was into these things online, it was like he was taken hostage and brainwashed," she said.
Now, more than a year after Elliott was hospitalized, Dana finally feels ready to share the story of what her family went through, in the hope that it may help other parents understand some of the dangers that children may encounter online. After months of intensive therapy, she said, Elliott is doing much better. He has relinquished his smartphone in favor of a simple flip phone; he also has returned to hobbies, such as making music, that had previously been an important part of his identity. Still, Dana acknowledges that the content he was led to consume online, including images and videos of violent gore, has changed him.
"It's a form of coercive control. It's that drip, drip, drip. And you don't realize how bad it is until maybe you're out of it," said Dana. "And I think in a lot of ways, he still doesn't realize how bad it was. He has been desensitized in a lot of ways."
A rapid spiral into darkness
Prior to Elliott's dark online odyssey, Dana said, she didn't worry about his digital activities.
"He had always managed his time online, [and his] time playing video games, really well on his own, because he had so many interests that weren't digital," she said. "He plays music, he plays drums, he plays guitar, he sings, he draws, he writes, he reads."
Nonetheless, she set up what she considered to be common-sense safeguards when her son got his iPhone, and she did occasional spot-checks on his activity.
But she said the social and familial shifts in Elliott's life in the fall of 2023 were destabilizing. A fan of black metal music, he started frequenting online forums where others shared his interest. But in those spaces, Dana said, there were also predators looking for vulnerable people. At first, she said, they seemed to be friendly and supportive to her son. But eventually, they began to direct Elliott to dark online content, known as "gore" sites, that reshaped his perception of the world around him.
"They get you to follow these different accounts and view these different websites, and the algorithms just help that process along," Dana said. "And it creates — where you're so flooded with this content — it desensitizes you to violence."
The first signs that something was wrong were instances of self-harm. Dana said it started with small cuts to his arms — something she initially attributed to Elliott's breakup with a girlfriend. Dana brought it up with Elliott's therapist, whom he had been seeing even before this began, and they worked out a safety plan. Dana locked up items that Elliott could use to harm himself.
"So we went through with that," she said. "But it seemed like somehow he kept finding other items to harm himself."
Sometimes, Dana said, he would come to her for help after cutting himself, saying he felt like he was out of control.
At the same time, Dana was increasingly concerned about what she considered to be extreme political opinions that Elliott was starting to express. He parroted the ideology of accelerationist extremists, who frame Western civilization as decadent and corrupt and who promote the idea that total societal collapse is necessary to establish a new fascist order. At times, he would talk about wanting to start "an order." He went on tirades against LGBTQ+ people, which Dana said was shockingly out of character.
"We have, you know, trans, nonbinary, gay, lesbian people in our family. Most of his friend group was LGBTQIA," she said. "So this was like, where is this coming from? [It was] completely out of left field."
She said it was also upsetting to hear Elliott succumb to a kind of nihilistic worldview that he had never previously held.
"He was talking a lot about there was no meaning to anything. It was hopeless. Everything was meaningless. There was no purpose," she said. "And that was, again, very unlike him. He's always been very clear about having meaning and purpose."
Nihilistic violent extremism
In March, the FBI issued a public service announcement warning of "violent online networks," such as 764 and CVLT, that target minors and other vulnerable individuals. It has also shared informational reels on Instagram to educate parents and educators about these groups and share warning signs that young people may be under these networks' influence. The messaging attempts to convey the unusual breadth of activities and motives found within these networks, spanning from sexual gratification to building clout within these online spaces.
The FBI has recently focused on a relatively new motive within this area, for which it has coined the term "nihilistic violent extremism."
"The term Nihilistic Violent Extremism (NVE) refers to what is motivating some of these subjects to commit criminal acts," the FBI wrote in a statement to NPR. "They want to sow chaos and facilitate the destruction of society." The agency shared that it is pursuing at least 250 investigations tied to violent online networks. The FBI did not agree to an interview with NPR.
Since 2021, these networks have been linked to nearly 50 cases around the world, according to data from the Accelerationism Research Consortium, as well as information gathered by NPR. In the U.S., they have been linked to at least 20 crimes, including school shootings and a June arson spree in Wisconsin that allegedly involved a 12-year-old suspect.
An unknown number of suicides are also connected to these online communities. Reporting from The Washington Post has found instances where predators within these networks sought to boost their influence by encouraging victims to livestream their suicides, and by then sharing those videos.
Many criminal cases linked to these networks involve the grooming of minors, child sexual exploitation and the production or distribution of child sexual abuse material. And in some instances, the crimes have crossed into terrorism. Brazilian police claim that they stopped a coordinated plan to set off multiple explosives at a free Lady Gaga concert at Copacabana Beach in May. An adult and a teenager were arrested in connection with the alleged plot. In Canada, also in May, authorities arrested a 15-year-old under suspicion of planning terrorism-related offenses.
"There is a massive mixture of harms that are occurring in this ecosystem," said Matthew Kriner, executive director of the Institute for Countering Digital Extremism and the Accelerationism Research Consortium. "There are individuals who are collaborating with one another across transnational lines, using any and every ideological framework they can to push people into harming others [and] harming themselves."
Kriner has testified as an expert witness in federal cases against people accused of involvement with these networks. He said the digital spaces that participants in these networks use are suffused with neo-Nazi and neo-Nazi satanic symbols and language. But he says that nihilistic terrorism is a unique category.
"They have a very clear, distinct differentiation between those two ecosystems there. They do not communicate," he said. "There might be some connectivity between individuals, but as movement spaces, they are not aligned." Notably, said Kriner, individuals who are inculcated with a sense of nihilism do not commit crimes to achieve an ideological goal. Instead, the violence is simply for the sake of violence.
While the crimes vary widely, Cynthia Miller-Idriss says there is consistency in the manipulative tactics used by bad actors within these networks. Miller-Idriss is a professor at American University and runs its Polarization & Extremism Research & Innovation Lab (PERIL).
"When you think of why would a kid be vulnerable to this … they're already increasingly desensitized to violence," she said. "And then you take kids who are additionally vulnerable, where adults are using successful, manipulative tactics to make them think that they're connected, that they're cared for … and telling them then to cut their name on their skin on camera or do something that demonstrates their loyalty. And then they use those videos to further exploit them."
Perhaps most concerning, say researchers of online extremism, is that minors targeted in these spaces are often encouraged to victimize other children. As a result, said Kriner, the reach of these harms has mushroomed. Despite the welcome attention from law enforcement in recent months, they say that it is unlikely to stem the spread of this activity. Instead, they say local, state and federal governments need to formulate a public health approach to prevent and mitigate the spread of these harms.
A crisis point
By winter of his freshman year, Dana was looking for help for Elliott. She had brought up his spiraling depression and self-harm with his therapist, only to be told that this was "normal" teenage behavior. His anti-LGBTQ+ rants made her suspicious that he had been "red-pilled" online, meaning he had adopted a misogynistic worldview.
"I felt like I needed to escalate outside of her current care team because nobody was listening to me. Nobody was taking this seriously," she said.
Dana started looking for a new therapist for her son. She also contacted an organization that helps guide people out of violent extremist movements. But before those resources came together, Elliott's situation escalated.
"My younger daughter had found that my son was in possession of a large hunting knife. [It] turned out he had ordered this on Etsy," she said. "It was very long and had been customized with the inscription 'Death.' It had a gut hook. And she … presented it to me less than five minutes before I needed to leave to pick him up from school."
Dana said her mind started to race.
"Does he have another weapon on him at school right now? Does he have a weapon at home? Is he going to hurt ... somebody else or himself? What is happening?" she remembered thinking.
Just then, the pediatrician's office called her. It was getting back to her about a recommendation for a new therapist. Dana told the office about the discovery of Elliott's knife. The office advised her to pick up her son and take him immediately to the children's hospital for a mental health evaluation. They also advised her to reach out to the school resource officer and local police department to each have someone present at the pickup, in case Elliott reacted poorly.
Dana said Elliott was surprised to be questioned by police at pickup. They determined that he was not, at that moment, dangerous to himself or others. She said the drive to the hospital was very difficult.
"He was crying," she said. "He was very angry that he had been called out, [saying] that we were all being ridiculous and making too big of a deal of nothing."
But at the hospital, it quickly became apparent that Elliott's condition had gotten very serious. Medical staff informed Dana that his upper body, including his torso and arms, was covered with cuts that he had inflicted upon himself. Some of them, the staff said, were likely to leave permanent scars. Dana said most of the marks had been made within the prior week.
"Upside-down crosses, pentagrams. Certain symbols that were associated with the Order of Nine Angles," she said, referring to a satanic neo-Nazi terrorist group. "I later found out that some of these symbols may possibly have been callout signs to 764. They encourage their victims to carve certain symbols to call out certain members."
Dana said medical staff assessed that Elliott was at moderate/high risk of suicide, but because he didn't intimate a plan for suicide, the staff wanted to send him home after treating his wounds. But Elliott's team at the pediatrician's office was adamant that Dana not return home with him that night, citing concern that he might harm himself or others. Dana managed to get him transferred to another health facility in the county that night.
It wasn't until the next morning that Dana began to learn about the violent online networks that apparently were influencing her son.
"I received a call from the school violence department, a police officer there, who asked me some questions about what had happened," Dana said. "I just knew what he had been talking about and the self-harm that he had. And she said right away, I suspect that your son is being extorted or has been contacted by a group called 764."
The officer told Dana that the FBI would be getting involved to determine whether Elliott had been contacted directly by anyone in the network. The concern was that if he had shared his address or other personal information, the whole family could be at risk. Victims of these networks have, at times, been targets of hoax "swatting" calls, where someone fraudulently reports a crime at a home location in order to draw a large and aggressive law enforcement presence there.
Police also asked Dana to look through Elliott's phone to see whether she found evidence of direct contact.
"I spent approximately two hours going through his phone, and I still have nightmares about it," she said. But having to look through Elliott's detailed activities and messages finally brought into focus a more complete picture of his online activity.
"He was spending about 12 to 14 hours a day … on Reddit, YouTube, TikTok, Discord," she said. But most disturbing, said Dana, were specific websites he was frequenting in the "gore" category. "I just pulled up a few of these websites, and just looking at a few thumbnails on the homepage, I had nightmares. I still have nightmares — it's over a year later — from seeing four or five thumbnails."
Gore websites feature graphic depictions of real-world and AI-generated violence. Violent online networks encourage victims to view this content, to desensitize them to shocking and inhumane behavior. It can be a precursor to persuading them to mutilate themselves or to hurt others.
Also deeply troubling were the photos she found on Elliott's phone, of himself.
"I saw my son had taken hundreds of pictures that were categorized as child self-harm sexual content," she said. "So they started with, here's just a little scratch on my arm. Here's a bigger scratch. Here's some all over my arm. And at the end, it was cuts all over his torso, thighs, arms. And he was fully naked."
Dana said she and law enforcement representatives found evidence that there had very recently been some direct messaging with someone whom they could not identify. But they were unable to conclusively determine the extent to which that occurred. Elliott has not fully disclosed what he was up to, which Dana says may be in part due to shame he feels about the whole episode.
The FBI told Dana that Elliott needed inpatient care for 30 to 60 days, primarily to "detox" from the harmful networks in which he had immersed himself for many months. But Dana said no care facility was familiar with the harms he had experienced or was able to accommodate a prolonged stay. In the end, she says, he spent less than two weeks in inpatient care. After that, he was partially hospitalized, sleeping at home but receiving seven hours of therapy each day.
Still, she is convinced that she got help for her son at a critical moment.
"This is hard to say about your own kid, but he was the target of a good bit of bullying at school, oftentimes with a social media component," she said. "And … I worry that if he would have kept viewing this content, the police officer was very emphatic that we were probably days away from a very horrible outcome. Either, you know, him harming somebody else or himself, and definitely direct contact with an individual from the group."
Elliott's progress since he received intensive help has not been linear, she said. But a year after his hospitalization, Dana said she finally feels like that chapter of Elliott's teenage years is behind them. And she has reached a point where she feels ready to speak more openly about what happened.
"I feel like when I talk about it, I get one of two reactions. One is, 'That can never happen to us because we have parental controls, the screen time [limits], and our kid would never do something like that,'" she said. "Or two, 'I had no idea that something like this could happen. Please tell me more. I want to learn.'"
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