Second, effective laws can help. In Singapore, the Online Safety (Miscellaneous Amendments) Act and Online Criminal Harms Act empower the authorities to block access to violent extremist sites online. However, it is technically impossible to block all extremist content online, as new sites and accounts can readily be created.
In addition, while it is easier to remove extremist content from public-facing platforms such as Facebook, X or Instagram, it is much harder to track and remove from private, end-to-end encrypted messaging apps such as Telegram, Signal and WhatsApp.
Third, the real challenge therefore is to develop the emotional and intellectual resilience of youths against violent extremist ideology. In Singapore, ISD and its partners, like the Ministry of Education and the Religious Rehabilitation Group – comprising independent moderate Islamic scholars – reach out regularly to schools and institutions of higher learning to train youths to better detect harmful social media content and to “be more discerning of information they get from different sources, including online”.
Moreover, through co-curricular and various school-level experiences, youths from diverse backgrounds are given opportunities to interact with one another, in the process fostering “social bonds” that can help “counter the impact of exclusivist or extremist ideologies”. Greater digital literacy and strong social bonds amongst our youths are certainly needed in the wake of the Oct 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel that has energised violent and divisive extremist propaganda online.
It may take a village to not merely raise a child, but to also protect them from the dangers of violent radicalisation in this digital age.
Kumar Ramakrishna is Professor of National Security Studies, Provost’s Chair in National Security Studies and Dean of the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore.
