The dozen or so teenage boys jostled each other across a Southeast Washington stage as a sound system boomed hardcore rap beats through the chilly Sunday afternoon air. Locks of hair bounced in time as the friends danced or posed for selfies, videos and live streams, as one tall young man grabbed a mic to rap along the artist.

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       When the song’s rhythmic intro ended, the rapper dropped his lyrics, spitting lines littered with expletives that rang from the speakers as the teens mumbled and mimicked the rhymes in unison. They knew every word.

       This impromptu karaoke hit was a bit of casual fun for members of the Watkins Hornets Clock Boyz youth football team — a collection of 35 young people from the District and Prince George’s County.

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       But after the song ended, Ron Moten took the mic and spoke to parents and youth. He pointed out the explicit lyrics that their children engaged with absent of adult supervision and underscored that the teens needed to interact with positive media as a balance.

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       “Y’all heard the music they were listening to? It ain’t they fault. We as adults have been programmed that we listen to stuff that’s about shooting, killing, sex, drugs and everything,” Moten said. “When that’s all they start listening to and there’s not a balance to put into this equation, then it starts affecting our children — and us.”

       Theories about the negative influence of media on young people has existed across generations, from jazz to rock-and-roll and into the hip-hop and violent video game eras. And now the omnipresence of social media has created new challenges that Moten and D.C. officials are hoping to help young people navigate through a mentorship program that teaches them to create more positive content. The Social Media Caucus was created as a counterweight to the inundation of media flow that may normalize violence or trigger anger or anxiety from past trauma they have witnessed in their lives, their neighborhood or just encountered on the Internet.

       The team, who were finalists at national football competition in Florida this weekend, took time from practice last month to take part in the pilot session on social media for the city’s Department of Employment Services’ Moving Mountains program. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s administration launched Moving Mountains in 2020 to help people aged 14 to 24 develop coping skills to remove barriers getting and retaining employment, agency officials said. The city contracted Moten’s group Check It Enterprises to run the week-long sessions.

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       The gathering at Go-Go Museum in Anacostia on a recent Sunday capped a week’s worth of mentorship designed to help young people develop social media content — such as branding, writing and building audience — and how to earn cash in the social media marketplace. The group even posed for holograms to create 3-D avatars as they learned the mechanics of video game development.

       “The goal of the program is to break up and diminish the damage from social media; how to avoid content and how to cope and manage it,” said Thennie Freeman, associate director of youth programs for the Department of Employment Services (DOES). “Social media is where our young people are getting their information from. Our young people are going to bed with their phones, they are waking up with their phones.”

       “They are downloading trauma.”

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       But beyond the practical skills offered during a week of in-person and online sessions, organizers feel a critical need to provide opportunities to engage teens to help them understand and cope with negative images that flood social media feeds.

       News cycles of recent years that featured the slayings of rappers like Young Dolph in targeted street attacks, as well as the killings of George Floyd or Breonna Taylor at the hands of police is among the stream of content that can cause harm to those who experience it on social media, said Dr. Sheryl Neverson, a Bowie area clinical social worker and consultant, who spoke to the teens about understanding trauma.

       In an interview, Neverson said the covid-19 pandemic has increased reliance on social media for human connection, and it is important to help youth understand how platforms can help but also how they can be detrimental. Social media news and posts from nationwide protests, images of Black people dying or arrested and videos of professional athletes committing acts of domestic violence, often can trigger past trauma, Neverson said. And for many, just witnessing this content can create secondary trauma.

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       “Young Dolph getting murdered is not normal. It’s not normal to get murdered. But it happens to us so much we normalize it,” Neverson said. “These kids have seen these things in their homes and their communities.”

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       Beyond the anxieties centered around violence, Neverson said that social media culture that promotes people living their best lives, flush with cash, are images that often create unrealistic expectations that can also harm one’s sense of self-worth.

       “It’s not just about violence and trauma; it’s about self-image, it’s about wealth,” Neverson said. “You look at someone online having a good time … and you look at yourself and say, ‘I have nothing.' "

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       Like many District parents who live in neighborhoods that regularly hear gunfire, Michelle Howe, 47, has trained her children how to react when they hear gunshots. Her son Jamel Howe, an eighth grader at Johnson Middle School who plays tight end, defensive end and tackle, knows to expect a call from his mother if she hears shots and nights with his friends can be cut short whenever she worries about his safety outside of their Parkland home.

       She was pleased the training featured a focus on trauma as children, like hers, and adults become so used to the violence that they become desensitized to develop defense mechanisms to cope.

       “What would be trauma to some people is normal to others; we are used to gunshots; it becomes normalcy,” Howe said in an interview alongside Jamel. “I was impressed that DOES thought of that specific kind of trauma dealing with trauma.”

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       Her 13-year-old son understands that some content can be traumatic for some, but not him, he said. Jamel only hops on Instagram or TikTok whenever he is bored and searches comedy clips to make him laugh or clothing companies to see new fits.

       Still, he added that he found the training useful and believes it was helpful for many.

       “Stuff that happens on social media doesn’t affect me,” Jamel said. “I think it’s beneficial because not a lot of people talk about this with young Black children.”

       Members of the Social Media Caucus have plans to expand this work, including the creation of a video game akin to the widely popular, and violent, Grand Theft Auto series. But instead, players are rewarded for squashing beefs in neighborhoods rather than going on virtual felony crime sprees.

       “These youth, they have a story to tell. They want to be heard,” Neverson said. “We just need to teach people how to use it for their benefit and the good and bad about it.”