Young people in Black and racial-minority groups say they are seeing more racist content on social media than ever before, and they place much of the blame on increasingly polarised political rhetoric. The concern emerged from exclusive new research carried out by Sky News together with Goldsmiths University, in a report by Sky's Kamali Melbourne. The findings paint a picture of young users who feel that hostility online has become a routine part of their daily experience.
Those who took part described how the abuse reaches them directly and relentlessly. Some spoke of receiving direct messages containing slurs, including the N-word, and of encountering racist content every single day. They said the material genuinely hurts, even as they try to stay resilient. Their deeper worry, they explained, was less for themselves than for their peers, who they fear are being influenced by the hateful content filling their feeds and having it normalised in real life.
The Sky News project builds on a larger study conducted by Goldsmiths, which was funded by Meta and involved Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp. Because the sample size and data analysis differ, the two cannot be directly compared, but the researchers said the new work offered significant updates on how young people are experiencing life online. It provided a fresh snapshot of attitudes at a moment when the digital environment is changing quickly.
One figure highlighted in the research was that, in 2025, 58% of those asked said they felt less safe offline because of what they had seen online. That sense of spilling over from the screen into everyday life ran through the accounts participants gave. For many, the content they encountered did not stay contained within their phones but shaped how safe they felt moving through the real world.
A large part of the concern centred on artificial intelligence. Young people described dealing with AI-generated deepfakes, some of which depict people of colour committing crimes. One participant characterised such material as propaganda designed to create more negative stereotypes. They spoke of hyperreal AI-generated content, examples of which were verified by Sky News, and warned that anyone unable to tell the difference between real footage and AI could believe it was actually happening, creating fear.
The researchers identified two major changes that young people had perceived. The first was the explosion of AI-generated content. The second was a shift in political rhetoric, which for some had begun to affect their real-life relationships and friendships outside their own ethnic group. Participants said political language, particularly around migrants, had emboldened people to post more racist content, make racist comments and send abusive direct messages, with one saying that real people were now being targeted and scapegoated.
To gather their views, the researchers brought a group of young people together at the Odd Library in West Norwood to talk about living online, where several described how people say things on social media that they would be too scared to say in person. Sky News asked social media platforms to respond, and those that did said they had robust systems in place, with Meta stating that it removes language that incites. The report also noted that the government has promised a ban on social media for under-16s, though the young people involved felt that, for them, the damage had already been done.