Image Credit: PEXELS

Following a brutal swarm attack on a young girl in Kelowna, a local researcher helps explain how social work can help combat mob mentality.

A young girl was violently attacked near Gyro Beach around 8:30 p.m. on Sept. 27 by a small group among roughly 30 teens. The attackers beat her unconscious, threw dirt on her, and spat on her. Kelowna RCMP identified five "aggressors" and has arrested all of them. The five suspects have been released with conditions and are being monitored by police. 

Out of roughly 25 witnesses, only two intervened and called police.

Sarah Dow-Fleisner is an associate professor at the University of British Columbia Okanagan in the Faculty of Health and Social Development. Her research focuses on what factors shape the health and wellbeing of children and young people.

“It's important for us to consider what's going on for adolescents,” she said. “They're at a stage where they can think abstractly, they can think in cause and effect, but that capacity is hindered when in a high-emotion experience.”

She said people’s brains function differently when they’re in a classroom hearing a seminar on bullying or substance use versus when they’re riled up in a group.

“We aren't necessarily then connecting that to what happens when they're in one of these... circumstances where you have this situation where there's high emotion, high levels of cortisol, high levels of adrenaline, and those brain functions, so that prefrontal cortex, the ability to make decisions is now being overrun by this sort of pleasure subcortical regions that are saying, ‘hey, this is exciting what's going on,’” she said.

Dow-Fleisner said this mob mentality is not unique to teenagers.

“At sporting events, and peaceful protests we are seeing adults, grown men and women who are sucker punching and getting in fights and people are watching and recording it. And part of that, again, we can come back to the brain,” she said.

Recording violent incidents like the one at Gyro Beach in the hopes of going viral is a new factor to understand about youth violence and mob mentality.

READ MORE: Last two suspects in violent swarming attack arrested: Kelowna RCMP

“Some studies have shown that retweeting or reposting, likes, shares, views, all of those actually trigger the brain very similar to drugs like cocaine or alcohol,” she said. “(Technology) is moving so rapidly that I find research tends to move a bit slower, unfortunately, and has difficulty in kind of keeping up with some of the changes of what we're seeing.”  

She said the most effective way to get kids to do the right thing in this type of violent incident requires various approaches from different directions; in school, at home, and throughout the city itself.

“These programs are often developed by adults like me. I grew up where social media was not part of my developmental landscape,” she said. “We need to talk with youth and figure out what's happening. And on top of that, we need both community-based and school-based where we are providing youth with opportunities to do other things in their community."

There are numerous programs already in place in B.C. like the Be More Than a Bystander program, Violence is Preventable, and more. Schools also have built-in supports.

“We have mental health support, we have mental health workers in schools, we have counsellors if someone's troubled or traumatized by the event, what they witnessed, or if they have regret about what they participated in,” Central Okanagan School District’s superintendent Kevin Kaardal said.

It’s one thing to talk about violence in an abstract way, or deal with the aftermath, but it’s another thing to imagine yourself in a dangerous scenario and think ahead about what you would do in the heat of the moment. Dow-Fleisner said it’s more effective to point to the right thing to do rather than simply lecture kids about the wrong thing to do.

“Our programs really should be thinking about, let's have some role play,” she said. “They're going to hate it because it's awkward and weird. And that's fine because in the long run, even if they just watch two people; here's what you could say, and this is what it might look like. That would go a long way to support youth being able to say, ‘I don't want to be part of this, stop doing this.’” 

Programs that directly address violence, bullying, substance use, and the other social mires facing teenagers are part of the solution, but there have to be things for kids to do to stay out of trouble.

“What programs are there in a city like Kelowna that attract and are available for youth to go and have positive interaction, social interactions where there aren't opportunities to engage in violent behaviour like this,” she said. “Where is the funding for those programs? What’s available to them?”

She said being occupied is an effective way to avoid ending up in a bad situation.

“When youth have other things to do, when there are events for them, safe spaces for them, they're less likely to engage in these types of horrific attacks,” she said.

It’s important to praise kids for doing the right thing, instead of paying all the attention to the sensationalized violence.

“Those two individuals who stepped up are incredibly, incredibly brave because they were at risk of being harmed as well,” she said. “As adults within a society is to think about how we can re-instil safety and a sense of safety for teens who are both involved in this event, but also for those who were not involved.”

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