By Joanie Harmon
November 12, 2024

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The SMASH Project is an interdisciplinary partnership between the UCLA Departments of Education and Information Studies in collaboration with the Organization for Social Media Safety as part of UCLA’s Initiative to Study Hate. 

Researchers in the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies are collaborating with the Organization for Social Media Safety (OFSMS), a Los Angeles-based nonprofit centered on protecting users of social media—especially K–12 students—to study the impact of online hate speech on adolescents. Ed&IS Wasserman Dean Christina Christie serves as principal investigator, along with Anne Gilliland, UCLA professor of information studies; Mark Hansen, associate adjunct professor and UCLA CRESST researcher; and Arif Amlani, Ed&IS director of new initiatives, who serve as co-principal investigators for the Social Media and the Spread of Hate (SMASH) Project. The national study analyzes data about students’ exposure to online hate speech, as gathered by OFSMS through discussions with teens across the country, via focus group and advisory board sessions. 

Established in 2022 to gain meaningful, human understanding of the experience of hate speech in social media on young people, SMASH has amassed data from over 24,000 individuals and more than 100 schools nationally. Recently, the UCLA Semel Healthy Campus Initiative Center has been added to the partnership, in order for the research team to explore questions of youth psychological well-being. 

The SMASH project is part of the UCLA Initiative to Study Hate, which brings together scholars from across campus along with external partners with the aim of better understanding and ultimately mitigating hate in its multiple forms. The SMASH study was among 23 projects to be funded in the first year of the Initiative, supported by a $3 million gift to UCLA from an anonymous donor. 

“Use of social media amongst children and young adults has increased exponentially in the last two decades,” said Dean Christie. “Yet, we understand so little of its effects and how it is impacting the lives of our new generation. Our partnership with the Organization for Social Media Safety enables us to research these effects through data collected from responses of thousands of students and from school administrators nationwide.” 

“The UCLA Initiative to Study Hate builds on … the expertise we collectively have on a topic that has been recognized as a national priority,” said Professor Gilliland. “It’s a topic that both departments in Ed&IS have been concerned about for a long time.” 

SMASH examines hate speech on social media through data gathered by the OFSMS, which holds assemblies at schools across the nation, and how exposure to hate speech varies among school types (private vs. public), student demographics (race/ethnicity, grade level), and overall use. The initial focus of the project is to understand what youth perceive as hate speech or hateful content, their levels of exposure, and types of hate speech they encounter. 

Using this study as a springboard, SMASH aims to address critical questions such as whether or under what conditions certain groups are at greater risk in encountering hateful content; the impact of school policies on propagation of social media related harms; and the efficacy of various interventions. SMASH also lays a foundation for future studies of how hate speech on social media affects adolescent mental health, learning trajectories, and educational achievement, as well as monitoring trends over time in schools across the United States. 

“This study is a first step to understanding more about what’s happening and how students conceptualize or define hate speech,” said Christine Ong, research scientist at UCLA Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, & Student Testing (CRESST). “It’s important to gather their views.” 

Professor Gilliland, working with a team of undergraduate researchers, conducted several studies examining anti-Asian hate speech on Twitter during the COVID-19 pandemic. She said the SMASH study reveals closer definitions of what hate speech and content mean to different generations. 

“That’s actually the fundamental question we have to answer first, and I would say, the question that all the projects funded through the UCLA Initiative to Study Hate are grappling with: How do people of different ages, in different circumstances, and in different disciplines define hate?” Gilliland says. “If you can’t define what you’re grappling with, it’s really hard to counter it.” 

Recently released data from SMASH revealed that eight in ten young users have seen online hate speech on social media per month; 46 percent report having been cyberbullied; and more than half of the study’s subjects reported seeing hate speech directed [at] someone they know personally. More than a quarter of subjects reported being on social media for seven or more hours a day; nearly 13 percent reported 11-plus hours. The study has also been significantly affected by world events. 

“We’ve been gathering data across time,” said Ong. “Right after October 7, [2023], we saw a significant increase in reports of hate speech around religious beliefs and overall, but not for other types of hate speech, such as hate speech related to gender. I think there’s something there, the ability to understand what things in the larger world might be impacting.” 

One surprising finding, said Ong, was the observation that users often reporting having no reaction to viewing online hate speech. 

“One question was about their emotional reaction, or their reaction to hate speech the last time they saw it,” she said. “[Approximately] a third reported that they really had no reaction, they scrolled by. I think that’s really concerning. This is where qualitative work is important. Why is that happening? Why are they reporting that? Is there truly no emotion? Is it because they’ve seen so much of it that they’re growing desensitized? Is it their way of protecting themselves, a mechanism to lessen the effects of what they’re seeing? This is an area for further investigation.” 

Speaking from her experience as a parent, Ong said that being able to have honest conversations with children and teens about social media is important but not always easy. 

“This is a very broad brush … but young people report that there are benefits in using social media such as being able to connect with family and friends, that’s a positive,” she said. “But there are also potential harms. We’re definitely not saying that social media is all bad, it’s more [about] mindful use.

“What kind of skills are needed to be considered a ‘healthy’ or ‘critical user’ of various types of media? Those are conversations that probably need to begin much earlier than they oftentimes do. I think an important skill to learn is how to engage in conversations with your child about social media so it doesn’t only feel punitive … maybe thinking about your own phone behavior. Being curious and having conversations with young people in your life about what they like about social media, what they don’t like, what concerns they have, might get you a lot further than simply enforcing a policy.”