The gang recruits young people in social media • “Parents miss their children’s double life online”
– I was worried about this already in 2019, when the gangster rap wave swept over Sweden. I understood that something like this would happen. But that it would be so much from middle-class environments and stable homes, I could never have counted on that, says Luay “Lolo” Mohageb, former civil investigator at the police.
The government has given two authorities, Brå, the Crime Prevention Council, and FOI, the task of studying why young people are drawn into online crime.
Digital competence is required
Luay “Lolo” Mohageb welcomes all the research – but says parents need to acquire more digital skills now to protect their children.
– The child can be kind and pleasant and take care of the siblings at home, but can have a completely different identity out in the world, which may have been created by a digital double life that the parents missed, says Luay “Lolo” Mohageb.
In the past, you had to physically meet older criminal people in order to be drawn into that world. Today, links to group chats full of what he calls digital pitfalls, criminal missions a click away.
Can be recruited the same day
– You write that you are interested, and then you are recruited for an assignment. It can happen on the same day that you are sitting in a group chat at 12 noon, then you are sitting with a gun in your hand at 10.30 pm, says Luay “Lolo” Mohageb.
He thinks the most important thing is to hunt down the instigators, those who outsource the assignments without any major risk of their own. But he also sees a danger in a new world where many adults also live with their noses in their phones – a world we all seem to have rushed into without much thought.
The children are most strongly affected
– No one has understood it, it is an absolutely huge digital revolution where we have shifted our ways of living our lives and consuming culture. Nine hours of screen time and insocialization in ways of thinking, it also affects adults politically, who become extreme and end up on the fringes of different spectrums. So the whole society is affected.
– It is the children who will be most strongly affected, and exhibit clear social consequences. This is such a social consequence, children seeking gang environments, says Luay “Lolo” Mohageb.