Alan Goffinski/AP

James Alex Fields Jr., second from left, holds a black shield in Charlottesville, Va., where a white supremacist rally took place, Aug. 12. Fields was later charged with second-degree murder and other counts after authorities say he plowed a car into a crowd of people protesting the white nationalist rally.

Update: This story was updated after President Trump's remarks Monday.

Everyone from the governor of Virginia to his mom and dad was telling Fintan Horan to stay away from this weekend’s Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va.

He paid them no mind.

“You have people coming here who say they want to incite violence, so as someone who lives in Charlottesville – you know, this is my back yard … how can I not [get involved]?” says Mr. Horan, a computer science student at the University of Virginia, who lives near where a man, in a possible act of domestic terrorism, was arrested for allegedly plowing his car into a crowd of people, killing one woman and injuring 19. “These people are literally invading my hometown and killing my fellow citizens. It’s absurd.”

Horan, who joined a counter-protest Saturday, is far from the only one to have been thrust into the middle of the boldest show of violent white supremacy in the United States in generations.

A coalition of hundreds of the self-described "alt right" – some armed with makeshift armor and weapons and many wearing khakis, Top-siders, and golf shirts – descended on Charlottesville with Confederate battle and Nazi flags to protest the removal of a Confederate statue. It was the biggest rally yet of what has become an increasingly common sight across the US as emboldened white supremacists try to build a movement, in part by goading leftists into street fights in blue enclaves such as Berkeley, Calif.; Portland, Ore.; and, now, Charlottesville, Va., where 70 percent of people voted for Hillary Clinton.

Twenty-four hours of building tension left the US reeling – and Virginia in a state of emergency – as hatred spilled out into the cobbled streets of Thomas Jefferson’s hometown.

The sight of Americans fighting and intimidating one another with tiki torches, chemical sprays, and fists is a fast-moving twist in a long-running ideological battle over equal rights that has grown less civil as America changes demographically and politically.

“A lot of people understand now that this is a precarious time, and they are right,” says Randy Blazak, a professor of sociology at Portland State University in Oregon who studies the world of online white supremacy. “Most Americans are going to look at what is happening in Charlottesville and be appalled…. The image of those guys marching through campus with torches is very powerful. There’s a lot of white people who say, ‘Wait a second, this isn’t what I voted for.’ It’s a historical tipping point where it could go one way or it could go the other.”

For many Americans caught in the middle, no matter their political stripe, the clashes at Charlottesville may be part of a broader racial reckoning, political scientists say, brought to a head by the election of President Trump and intensified by a rightward lurch in US domestic policy.

“As a country, anybody who was trying to stay silent about who they voted for, silent about what’s happening, silent about Black Lives Matter, silent about race in America, [the street fighting is] pushing them out into the open and demanding: ‘Take a stand. Which way do you go?’ ” says Nusrat Qadir Chaudhry, a New York nurse and spokeswoman for Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA, a reformist Muslim movement that dates back to 1920 in the US.

At least 35 people were treated for injuries, including the 19 hurt when a Dodge Challenger smashed into a group of people. An Ohio man has been arrested and charged with second-degree murder. Two police officers were also killed in a helicopter accident. As police broke up the assembly because of violence, the skirmishes spread out through the city, from parks to parking garages.

White supremacy's final gasp or a new day?

Given the raw displays of Nazi and white supremacist regalia, some say this weekend may wind up being a final gasp of an old, discredited ideology, coming out swinging from a tight political corner. But political scientists and hate group researchers say that a sense of reckoning is dawning on many Americans. The alt-right crowd chanting “Jew will not overcome us” and other hate speech at the University of Virginia and Charlotteville’s Emancipation Park, no matter how small an actual minority, are seeing their far-right views increasingly normalized. For their part, they notch each melee, even in retreat, as symbolic victories over multiculturalism.

“Just the fact that they have a presence in mainstream political discourse and talk about the beleaguered struggle of the white man in a multicultural country, that’s a victory,” says Professor Blazak, director of the Hate Crime Research Network. “It’s like being a singer in a hate rock band and giving away 1,000 copies of my tape for free. If I get the kids driving around in grandma’s car chanting ‘White power!’ I’ve won.”

After being criticized for an equivocal response that "many sides" were responsible for the Charlottesville violence – which critics said put white supremacists on equal moral footing with civil rights-focused counter-protesters, one of whom died – Mr. Trump emerged Monday with a far stronger statement. In brief remarks to reporters, he forcefully condemned "the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups" as "criminals and thugs." He added that "anyone who acted criminally in this weekend's racist violence, you will be held accountable." The Department of Justice has opened a civil rights investigation into the car ramming, which is being considered a domestic terror attack.

Marcher Andrew Dodson, a self-described “racial realist,” saw the fighting and Trump’s refusal over the weekend to specifically condemn Nazi flags on US soil as “a phenomenal victory” for the rally, he told Daniel Lombroso of The Atlantic.

Charlottesville resident Darby Wootten, for one, struggles to gauge the depths of how much the president represents to America’s hateful fringes.

“This has been building … since people said our last president wasn’t American, which was started by our current president,” says Mr. Wootten, who runs a putt-putt golf course and was at a candlelight vigil for the victims of the car attack. (In fact, Trump popularized the rumor, rather than invented it.)

'Yesterday made me feel like 9/11 did'

But the moment also comes amid other battles in the long American struggle of reconciling the Constitution’s guarantee of equal rights for all with a deep strain of white supremacy that, at times, curdles the body politic.

The 2015 attack on a church in Charleston, S.C., that left nine African-American parishioners dead at the hands of a white supremacist named Dylann Roof provided a tipping point to push Confederate symbols off public grounds. Charlottesville voted to sell a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee on his horse, the removal of which the Unite the Right rally was ostensibly in town to protest. Some 60 Confederate memorials have been removed from public places since 2015, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, heightening tensions among those claiming them as Southern heritage.

“I got ancestors that fought in that Civil War, and I’m proud of ‘em, of what they done, and they should be honored for it,” says Charles Wells, a business owner in Lyndhurst, Va., who voted for Trump. “I think [the statue] should stay, and people should have the right to do what they want without violence.”

But neither he nor his wife, Frances, condoned Saturday's violence.

“Yesterday made me feel like 9/11 did," says Frances Wells, who says she also voted for Trump. “It’s just unnecessary, I mean people are acting crazy; we need peace in this world instead of violence…. This world has just gotten so hateful. I mean, how can people be so hateful?”

'Democracy is a fragile thing'

The push of white supremacists into the open picked up speed after Trump endorsed a plan to cut legal immigration in half and set up a merit-based system that would require new immigrants to be able to speak English, says Blazak.

“It’s got to be a great time to be a white supremacist: They really now feel like they’ve got a friend in high places, and they’ve got a lot of people in positions to make policy happen,” says Blazak. “This is their moment in the sun,” he adds. “This internet troll phenomenon has taken to the streets to create as much havoc as possible, and people are going to show up. Each event is an advertisement for the next.”

As far as their opponents, “it’s true that a lot of the anti-fascists are whackadoos who have a good heart but no coherent strategy – they just want to knock heads together. But others know … that democracy is a fragile thing,” he says. “All it takes is a charismatic figurehead who can tweak the machine enough to tilt the balance [toward white supremacy] and, that’s all she wrote.”

Indeed, Americans are being forced off the sidelines even in genteel places like Charlottesville – nicknamed “Joy Town” after being voted America’s happiest city three years ago.

For many, like Charlottesville Mayor Michael Signer, the clashes embody a fight over a national narrative on race. He believes it “will have the effect of redoubling our progress,” he told reporters. “To become an honest society, I don’t think we have any choice but to tell the full story.”

Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

People gather for a vigil outside the White House in Washington Sunday in response to the death of a counter-demonstrator at the ‘Unite the Right’ rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Aug. 13.

President Trump’s initially vague critique of the white supremacist march through Charlottesville, Va., is being viewed in Europe as a clear sign of divergence between American and European leadership in the face of new expressions of hate in the West.

Europeans have expressed doubts about Trump's commitment to post-war bodies such as NATO and to the liberal ideals that undergird the transatlantic relationship. But the devastating events of this weekend have delivered a shock – creating a moment that may prompt Europeans to reevaluate where America is heading.

Trump more forcefully denounced white nationalism Monday, telling journalists at the White House that “racism is evil, and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups.” For some observers, however – even across the Atlantic – the delay meant it rang hollow.

Perhaps no one captured the sense of disbelief better than France’s left-wing daily Libération, whose front page features a group of supremacists on the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, campus above the words “The White House” in capital letters.

“It is true that Trump was elected by setting one half of America against the other, supported by certain advisers close to the most extreme right wing and by white supremacists,” reads a Libération editorial. “But one never imagined one day seeing the president of the United States treating anti-racist and neo-Nazi demonstrators equally.”

Florian Hartleb, a German political consultant who specializes in populism and extremism in Europe, says that the continent grapples with its own extremist tendencies, and that Virginia could serve as a wake-up. “We look at such confrontations and ask, 'Can this also happen in Europe? Germany? In France? In the UK?' ”

But the sense of disbelief is particularly about the way the deadly protest was acknowledged, he says: only belatedly, and without ascribing clear culpability. “This is actually about the response; this is not what we are used to from the US.”

The German approach

The divide in understanding is broadest in Germany, where the burden of history weighs at every turn.

The fate, for example, of the dilapidated Nazi Rally Grounds in Nuremberg, where Adolf Hitler assembled German masses to his cause, has long vexed Germany. To preserve them could turn them into a new rallying point for neo-Nazis in present times, especially after the anti-immigrant Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) has gained a foothold in political life. But the prevailing attitude is to let them stand – even if it costs money to preserve them – to continue to obligate Germany to remember what drove the country to the devastation of World War II.

Alexander Schmidt, a historian at the documentation center of the Nazi Party rally grounds, explained it in a Monitor cover story on how to deal with Nazi remnants: “We can’t hide history.”

It is but one example of the solemnity and seriousness with which Germany takes its obligation to history, and it stands in stark contrast to the scenes in Virginia over the weekend. In Germany, schoolchildren must make mandatory visits to concentration camps, memorials are found across the country, and perhaps above all, authorities exhibit zero tolerance. Just a few weeks ago, two Chinese tourists were arrested after making Hitler salutes in front of the Reichstag building that houses the German parliament in Berlin.

At home, when Muslim immigrants angry at Israel turned to anti-Semitic rhetoric in 2014, German Chancellor Angela Merkel addressed it without ambivalence. “The fact that today there are again more than 100,000 Jews living in Germany is nothing short of a miracle,” Ms. Merkel said. “It’s a precious gift which fills me with profound gratitude.... Jewish life belongs in our country. It’s part of our identity and culture.”

She had tough words for protesters in Virginia today. “The scenes at the right-wing extremist march were absolutely repulsive – naked racism, anti-Semitism, and hate in their most evil form were on display,” her spokesman told reporters Monday. “Such images and chants are disgusting wherever they may be and they are diametrically opposed to the political goals of the chancellor and the entire German government.”

Soul-searching beyond America's shores

Europeans are not just pointing fingers across the Atlantic. Indeed, if the events in Charlottesville are viewed as a tipping moment for America, so too could it lead to soul-searching in Europe about why and how it’s come to this.

European electorates have flirted with far-right leaders in national elections from France to the Netherlands who utter the kind of rhetoric long banned from mainstream politics.

Much of their target is Muslim immigration, but Jews are anxious about new expressions of anti-Semitism – sometimes by Muslim immigrants, other times by nationalist public figures. Anti-immigration sentiment has been its most alarming in eastern Europe, where bands of paramilitary thugs from the extreme right have taken to patrolling borders and trains to keep migrants and refugees out.

It is a messy picture across the European Union, with signs of bigotry that have drawn anxious comparison to the 1930s.

When Nigel Farage, the face of the pro-Brexit movement in Britain, took to Twitter and wrote, “Cannot believe we’re seeing Nazi salutes in 21st century America,” he was hounded for his own role in forging divides at home. His main argument for pushing Britain to leave the EU was to rid the country of migration. Ahead of that vote, a poster with a queue of refugees that read “Breaking Point: The EU has failed us” was widely condemned.

In the Netherlands, political maverick Geert Wilders unapologetically espouses anti-Muslim sentiment, having called for the Quran to be banned and having led chants for fewer Moroccans on Dutch soil.

That’s one reason that sitting heads of state have been so clear in their admonishment of white supremacy in the US. British Prime Minister Theresa May immediately tweeted “our thoughts and prayers are with #Charlottesville. The UK stands with the US against racism, hatred and violence.”

Mainstream politicians have not always taken the high ground; plenty have employed their own exclusionary rhetoric to capture votes And the sentiment predates Trump. But many see a moral failure in what is widely viewed as his veering from the norm. A Guardian editorial says Trump has “shamed America.”

“If Donald Trump’s words about the violent white extremist mobilisation in Virginia on Saturday – which an under-pressure White House was desperately trying to clarify on Sunday – are an expression of its soul,” the British paper wrote in an editorial, “America may be on the road to perdition.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Vickie Lee and her children Sydney and Jake check out a website on a computer in their home in Mountain View, Calif.

Jake Lee, a tanned California teenager in baggy shorts and a T-shirt, is lounging on the floor of his parents’ midcentury home. They live in a suburban Silicon Valley enclave of tech workers, cyber-savvy kids, and the occasional Google self-driving car that whirs past along pristine, eucalyptus-lined streets. He flicks through his iPhone, his fingers moving with the speed and dexterity of a jazz pianist, as he answers the sporadic text message.

“I’m on social media every waking moment of my life,” he says, with no particular pride. “I could be, like, Snapchatting and Instagram messaging the same person at the same time.”

Equidistant between the headquarters of Apple and Facebook, two of the world’s biggest tech companies, the Lee household is something of a petri dish for the way technology has altered American family life. Since it debuted the device a decade ago, Apple has sold more than 1.2 billion iPhones. 

Facebook reached the mark of 2 billion users per month in June. Together, both companies have shaped an entire generation of young people tethered to their devices.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

The Lee family – Jake, mom Vickie, Sydney, Maddie, and dad Jody – pose in their living-dining room in Mountain View, Calif.

The three Lee teens – Jake, age 18; Sydney, 16; and Maddi, 13 – all have iPhones. They consume a steady diet of social media. Selfies, hashtags, emojis, YouTube celebrities, and memes fill their days and nights. They’re admitted jocks – water polo and soccer players – so they have only so much time to stare at screens. But it’s still a big part of their lives.

Maddi sticks mostly to Instagram, the photo-sharing app. “Facebook is for old people,” she says. Sydney has 574 Instagram followers but says she’s not as obsessed as many of her friends. She prefers Snapchat, the popular image messaging app, because “that’s just where all my friends are.” In addition to Instagram, Jake had a brief flirtation with the dating app Tinder. This ended when his mom made him delete it. 

Like most kids, they’ve had missteps. Jake sheepishly admits to getting in trouble for saying things he shouldn’t have – usually to girls or while joking with friends. There was the time Sydney posted a photo of herself on Instagram in a sports bra. It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time; after all, she’s a swimmer and lifeguard. But drama ensued. One of Jake’s friends noticed and sent him the photo, saying, “Oh, dude, look at what your sister sent me!” It became a thing. “She was humiliated and cried,” says Vickie Lee, the Lee teens’ mom, who perpetually lectures her kids on the potential hazards of social media.

Earlier this year, she hosted a parents’ class on technology and safety at Maddi’s Los Altos, Calif., charter school. She’s keenly aware that a wrong move – a misguided text, an inappropriate photo, a harmful or angry chat – can have devastating consequences. These days, she says, “technology is part of your sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll talk you have with your kids.”

Her big concern is that there’s no delete button once something goes out on social media. An embarrassing picture can haunt a teen for what might seem like a lifetime. “There are times in your life when you want to redefine yourself,” she says. “And with social media, you can’t redefine yourself. Your past just follows you around.”

Vickie and her husband, Jody, are trying to do what most parents in the United States – and perhaps the world – are trying to do: raise their kids responsibly in the era of Snapchat and Instagram. Can it be done – can kids today be persuaded to actually talk rather than text? Can they be encouraged to let go of the virtual world – occasionally – and engage in the real one? Can they stop posting selfies long enough – please! – to think of someone else? 

The answer is yes. But there are bound to be some anxious moments for parents along the way, and teens have a few things to say about what grown-ups don’t get.

Today, getting a smartphone is a rite of passage for American tweens and teens. It’s arguably more important to them than having a driver’s license or voting (50 percent of eligible Americans between ages 18 and 29 voted in November 2016, while 98 percent of people in the US between 18 and 24 own smartphones).

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Siblings pose for a photo in front of the FaceBook sign at the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. Visitors flock to see the offices of the social media giant.

Signing up for Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, is another milestone. It’s often the beginning of kids’ digital self-expression, and the way they stay connected with friends. Downloading Snapchat, the wildly popular app that lets users exchange messages and images that self-destruct within seconds, is the digital equivalent of the first date – that moment of freedom when kids begin a life without parents listening in.

Those two apps are now the most popular among teens. Seventy-six percent of Americans ages 13 to 17 use Instagram and 75 percent use Snapchat, according to a recent poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. But the ubiquity of social media doesn’t mean kids begin their digital journey knowing how to navigate the complexities of constant connectivity. There’s no guidebook. There are often few limits. Social media doesn’t come with training wheels – for kids or parents. 

As a result, sometimes kids get it right and sometimes wrong. Really wrong.

The news is full of troubling stories about teens and technology. In July, reports surfaced about a mysterious online game called the Blue Whale Challenge in which several apparent participants killed themselves, some broadcasting their suicides online. Across the country, police have busted up groups of middle-schoolers swapping nude photos of underage female classmates. Intense cases of cyberbullying have led to victims taking their own lives. And the web is often especially cruel to young girls, subjecting them to sexism, misogyny, and harassment.

In her book “American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers,” Vanity Fair writer Nancy Jo Sales describes the dark side of the digital world. “The culture of social media churns away, seeming to pay very little attention, so far, to the protestations of feminists or anyone who objects to its troubling aspects. And girls suffer. On a daily, sometimes hourly basis on their phones, they encounter things which are offensive and potentially damaging to their well-being and sense of self-esteem.”

All of that’s deeply disturbing. But even though the troubling parts of digital life garner the most media attention, causing panic among parents, it’s not what’s happening on most kids’ devices. Teens will more likely see smiling or goofy selfies, an endless string of heart emojis, or some funny or banal comment. Even though it’s through a filter of technology, which can seem more like an appendage than an appliance, the connections kids seek are deeply human and normal, say experts. Researchers, for instance, talk about the psychological boost kids get when they receive “likes” on their posts and photos. 

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Sydney Lee and her grandmother, Marion Porter, look at social media sites on their cellphones at the Lee household.

“There’s a culture of wanting to say nice things online,” says Mia Freund Walker, a family therapist in Redwood City, Calif., and the former executive director of My Digital TAT2, a group formed in 2012 that works with teens on developing responsible digital habits.

For most teens, technology has become so omnipresent that there’s no separating digital life from real life. It’s all intertwined. In many ways, Rose Beardmore’s Instagram is typical of a lot of other kids’. It’s full of smiling friends, flowers, clouds, purple night skies, and the beach. The comments on her 29 posts are punctuated with hearts, smiley faces, and compliments.

“THIS IS SO CUTE,” wrote one of her friends. Most are of this variety: “THIS PHOTO IS GREAT .” For Rose, a 14-year-old from Lunenburg, Mass., Instagram is the idealized version of herself. She limits it to “all my photos that look good.”

Like many other teenage girls, she maintains another account just for her closest friends, known as a “fake Instagram” or “finsta.” That’s where “I update people. I post pictures that aren’t that pretty,” she says. It includes sillier or more candid shots. “The real [Instagram account] is a lot more manicured. It’s not the mirror image of the person who owns it; it’s the prettier twin.”

It’s not uncommon for girls to begin cultivating or shaping their identities this way. On social media, they can decide what kind of image they portray to different communities. “You can curate this perfected image of yourself,” says Havi Wolfson Hall, a clinical social worker and therapist in Palo Alto, Calif. “We always want to present our best selves.” Technology just accelerates that basic human desire, she says, making it happen at a rapid speed and on an astonishing scale.

Inside her office at Parents Place, part of Jewish Family and Children’s Services, a poster asks kids: “How are you feeling today?” The choices come in yellow emoji faces – happy, sad, embarrassed, silly. Ms. Hall operates in an upscale part of the city – around the corner from private preschools, a Pilates studio and spa, and a Whole Foods. Many of the families she treats work in the tech sector across Silicon Valley.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Havi Wolfson Hall, a clinical social worker who specializes in internet addiction and families, poses in a conference room at Parents Place, a program of Jewish Family and Children’s Services, in Palo Alto, Calif.

Of course, some of them are building the very devices that get kids and adults hooked on screens to begin with. Yet they are worried about the lasting effects of technology on their children, too. The late Apple chief executive officer Steve Jobs once told a New York Times reporter that his kids hadn’t used an iPad. “We limit how much technology our kids use at home.” But all too often, Hall says, parents who complain that their kids are addicted to social media have trouble controlling their own technology use. “Nine out of 10 times, the kids are learning from their parents,” she says.

The tech industry has become incredibly adept at figuring out how to keep kids using their products. Companies such as Facebook and Snapchat are well aware that young people are naturally wired to share, seeking validation from friends in the form of “likes” and comments.

According to Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that aims to help guide kids and parents through today’s media landscape, the average teen spends nine hours a day consuming media for enjoyment, most of which is on a screen. And tweens (ages
8 to 12) use media almost seven hours a day. 

The power inherent in the industry was on full display recently at VidCon, a glitzy five-day conference in Anaheim, Calif., that brought together many of the world’s biggest tech companies and the most recognizable figures on social media. “Influen­cers,” as they’re known in industry-speak, may only be internet famous but they are a powerful lure to keep kids staring at their screens. VidCon was full of tweens and teens eager to see their favorite internet celebrities.

Amel and Abby, both age 15, from Pasadena and Glendale, Calif., respectively, wanted to see YouTube personalities Joey Graceffa (a longtime video blogger and reality TV star with 7.9 million YouTube subscribers) and Liza Koshy (an actress with 10.3 million subscribers). The video-sharing site has become a powerful cultural force among teens. Ninety-six percent of teenagers use the platform, according to the AP-NORC poll, and 78 percent said they visited YouTube at least once a day.

“I either follow celebrities or YouTube celebrities or friends,” says Abby, pulling out her phone to display her Instagram profile. “I don’t usually follow strangers; I feel like there’s no point and it’s kind of weird.”

Amel follows “idols, celebrities, my friends. I also follow people who inspire body empowerment, who send a message of just ‘love your body, no matter what.’ ” They’re both regularly on YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat.

“Sure, I’ll get mad if someone unfollows me,” says Amel. “Like, what? Why did you unfollow me?” But, she says, she doesn’t start “crying on the floor” if it happens.

The culture of online celebrity has also spawned a growing number of otherwise average – and nonfamous – families who have essentially taken to filming much of their daily lives and posting it to YouTube. These so-called vloggers are vying for celebrity status on the web, and the advertising dollars that can come from amassing millions of subscribers. The 12 top-earning YouTube stars of 2016 collected a total of more than $70 million.

Presley Alexander, age 12, and her dad, Brian, launched their YouTube channel ActOutGames in 2012. Today, they have more than 20,000 subscribers. To date, they’ve posted a video every day for four straight years. On vacation once at the Great Sand Dunes National Park & Preserve in Colorado, Mr. Alexander drove 45 minutes to get a cellphone signal.

Posting your family’s life on the web for the world to see – and comment on – may seem extreme to many people, but Brian says it doesn’t mean he’s a lenient parent. “I’m that dad who’ll read her Skype sometimes,” he says. “I’ll listen to her conversations, and if she’s saying something weird I’ll be like, ‘Hey, what are you talking about?’ 

“We are super involved and pay attention to what’s happening,” he notes. “Just because we’re on there doesn’t mean that we’ve ceded this ground.”

Indeed, experts say there are many different ways to be a good digital parent. The key, says Amanda Lenhart, a senior research scientist for AP-NORC who co-wrote the report on kids and social media, is to remember that it’s not “about the technology. It has to be about the values and baseline levels of respect.” 

Some parents take a stricter approach in reining in their kids. Aaron Turner of Idaho Falls, Idaho, lets his two teenage daughters, Abby and Katy, use Instagram, but he keeps a close eye on their accounts. 

Mr. Turner is a mobile phone security expert. In other words, he knows how to hack smartphones. He uses his knowhow to eavesdrop on whatever his daughters are doing on their phones. If they download an app that’s not allowed – he’s outlawed Snapchat – he’ll know about it.

“My clear message to my daughters that I’m watching their feeds and looking at their private content has served as a protection to them,” says Turner. “When boys start a conversation that may be heading the wrong direction, they just tell them, ‘My dad looks at this,’ and that nips stuff in the bud.”

There was the time, though, that Abby got curious about Snapchat. “I just downloaded it because my friends were using it,” she says. “Everyone has Snapchat.”

It didn’t stay on her phone long. Her dad quickly noticed and deleted it.

Still, Turner is a big believer in the power of social media. He travels a lot for his computer security work and it helps him stay connected with his family. And even he admits you can’t control what kids will do or say – or see – on social media.

“In this new world, there’s no such thing as control. There’s coaching, and there’s monitoring,” he says. “If you’ve raised good kids this is not an issue. Technology does not change your standards and values.”

Other parents place a premium on talking to their kids about social media rather than curtailing their use of devices and apps. The Lees of Silicon Valley, for instance, don’t have rules about having
iPhones at the dinner table. Their approach is to make the kinds of conversations they have on their devices part of their normal family conversations at home, in the car going to swim practice, or while they’re on vacation. They prioritize openness about social media over erecting a virtual fence. 

But there may be limits to how much their kids will share with them. Jake will be starting college this fall at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. He’s already told his mom they won’t be friends on Snapchat. Now that he’s about to become a college freshman, it’s not the place for talking to moms, he told her.

Jake’s declaration of independence points up another truism about social media use: At some point, kids have to decide for themselves where to draw the digital line.

Some are already pulling back from total immersion. In her most recent research, Ms. Lenhart found that at least 58 percent of teens who use social media were curtailing their time online, in part because of parental strictures but also because they simply wanted a break.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Interns with My Digital TAT2, a group that trains kids how to use social media responsibly, listen to a presentation in Palo Alto, Calif.

Those findings reflect what the founders of My Digital TAT2 have seen, too. “They’ll have tech-free zones,” says Gloria Mosko­witz-Sweet, a licensed social worker and one of the cofounders of the group. “We are seeing kids come up with their own rules and regulations.”

Still, when you talk to teens, almost all dispute their parents’ assumptions that social media has become their entire world in the first place. They chafe at the assertion that teens prefer digital connections to personal ones. For instance, Rose, the 14-year-old from Massachusetts, says she’s constantly chatting with her friends about hanging out #IRL (in real life). “We’ll keep saying, ‘I can’t wait to see you. To hug you.’ We like face-to-face communication more,” she says. “[Parents] tend to think that the importance of [social media] in our lives is inherently a bad thing. It’s called social media for a reason.”

After Ms. Sales’s book on girls and social media came out in 2016, alarming parents nationwide, Ms. Moskowitz-Sweet co-wrote a piece in the San Francisco Chronicle that aimed to counter that fear. “Our kids are living out loud in a digital culture,” she wrote. “Social media naturally heightens the challenges associated with adolescence. Teens are telling us they want parents to trust their use of social media and give them freedom to explore, take risks, and make mistakes.”

Dangers do exist online, of course. But experts say the key is not to overreact and place too many restrictions on technology. It’s far better to understand social media and how children are actually using it. As John Palfrey and Urs Gasser put it in their book, “Born Digital: How Children Grow Up in a Digital Age”: 

“[As] a culture of fear emerges around the online environment, we must put these real threats into perspective; our children and future generations have tremendous opportunities in store for them, and not in spite of the digital age, but because of it.” 

Yorgos Karahalis/AP

Supporters of Greece's extreme right Golden Dawn party raise torches during a rally commemorating a 1996 military incident which cost the lives of three Greek navy officers and brought Greece and Turkey to the brink of war, in Athens, in January. Golden Dawn was founded as a neo-Nazi group during the early 1980s and is currently the third-largest party in Greece's Parliament.

It's 2017. Why are there still Nazis?

It's a question many observers are asking after hundreds of white supremacists, many displaying swastikas and Confederate battle flags and shouting racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-communist slogans, took to the streets of Charlottesville, Va., this weekend, provoking violence that claimed the life of one counter-protester and resulted in multiple injuries. 

The continued existence of people who hold openly white supremacist ideologies more than seven decades after the fall of the Third Reich can be explained, in part, through a social theory developed in the early 1990s. Social dominance theory seeks to explain how hierarchy-enhancing ideologies do not just drive social inequality, but are also a result of it. It suggests that a single personality trait, called social dominance orientation (SDO), strongly predicts a person’s political and social views, from foreign policy and criminal justice to civil rights and the environment. What's more, it offers insight into how ideologies such as racism, sexism, and xenophobia tend to arise from the unequal distribution of a society's resources.

“Social dominance theory provides a yardstick for measuring social and political ideologies,” says Felicia Pratto, who developed the theory with fellow psychologist Jim Sidanius. “SDO is one way – not the only one – to try to figure out what those ideologies are ‘about.’”

A person’s SDO can be measured with as few as eight survey items that gauge how strongly a person believes in hierarchical social relations. Respondents are asked to say how much they agree or disagree with statements. At one end of the spectrum are statements suggesting that “An ideal society requires some groups to be on top and others to be on the bottom,” and “It is unjust to try to make groups equal.” Statements at the other end suggest that “Groups at the bottom are just as deserving as groups at the top,” and “No one group should dominate in society.”

In psychology lingo, the SDO scale has both predictive validity, because it strongly correlates with other social attitudes, and discriminant validity, in that it isn’t simply a measure of something else by another name. While people who score highly on the SDO scale do not necessarily subscribe to the same beliefs, they do tend to fall into similar ideological camps as others with high SDO scores.

People with high SDO scores are more likely to believe that women and men are naturally different and should have different workplace roles. They are more likely to accept theories of racial superiority and to believe that their country is inherently better than other countries. They tend to oppose lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights; affirmative action; interracial marriage; and social welfare programs. They tend not to call themselves environmentalists. They tend to support military action overseas and the death penalty at home. They tend to believe in capitalism and that the world is basically just. And they are more likely to choose “hierarchy enhancing” careers such as law enforcement, military, business, and politics.

People with low SDO scores, by contrast, tend to hold social attitudes associated with egalitarianism. They tend to work in “hierarchy attenuating” careers such as social work and counseling, special education, or journalism.

“One thing that I think most people find surprising about the theory is its argument that many phenomena that we think of as different or unique – say, racism, sexism, and homophobia – may have a common root,” says Christopher Federico, a professor in the University of Minnesota’s psychology and political science departments. “That is, all of them may be similarly rooted in a desire for intergroup hierarchy, despite having different targets and being enforced in somewhat different ways.”

Men, on average, tend to have higher SDO scores than women, an observation that has led researchers to suggest that SDO may be partly rooted in biology, although research indicates that SDO is not a genetically heritable trait.

“There is a strong tendency for countries that have more equality for women, such as higher education levels, less unequal pay between men and women, and more women in political office, to have lower SDO scores,” says Professor Pratto, who now teaches psychology at the University of Connecticut. 

Pratto notes in an email interview that SDO is not a binary phenomenon, but a gradient. “Most people are a bit to the low side of the middle in egalitarian countries, and the mean tends to be higher in more hierarchical countries,” she says. 

Social dominance theory starts with the observation that in every society that has moved past the hunter-gatherer stage and produces economic surpluses, social hierarchies emerge. Those at the top of the pecking order develop and promote social beliefs – for example, the idea that poor people remain so because they are lazy – that legitimize the hierarchy.

“We know that people high in SDO are more likely to support conservative social policies,” Professor Federico says in an email to the Monitor. “However, this relationship is more pronounced among those in high-status groups. Among members of low-status groups, individuals low and high in SDO do not differ as much in their political attitudes.”

Federico says that SDO is thought to be a highly stable trait, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible for an individual to change his or her social attitudes.

“There are people who mentally practice being egalitarian, so that what they do habitually when confronted with a stimulus that they know might provoke prejudice is to associate a good feeling with it, or bring to bear their egalitarian values,” says Pratto. “People can do this so much that they eventually become automatic at doing it.”

Standing behind the front desk in her cream cardigan and thick horn-rimmed glasses, Priya Charry looks like everyone's childhood librarian. Except, of course, for her long purple fingernails and gold nose ring.

Ms. Charry, who is in her mid-20s, recently earned her master’s in library science and now works as a part-time librarian for various Boston Public Library (BPL) branches. Charry says “more and more” Millennials are interested in being librarians. And just as we need to rethink the stereotypical librarian, she says, we need to reimagine what libraries can do for young people.

“Before I started working in a library I would hang out in libraries all the time, just as a place where people are willing to have a conversation or make recommendations for me,” says Charry, in between helping patrons at Boston's South End branch. “One of the biggest values of the library, for all ages, is that it's a free place where you can be outside of your home and outside of work.”

In the age of Amazon's two-hour delivery and ubiquitous internet searches, libraries are seemingly obsolete institutions. Adding to their 21st-century woes, public libraries across the country face budget struggles: The US Institute of Museum and Library Services has cut funding in 37 states since 2011.

But according to a recent Pew Research study, 53 percent of Millennials (those ages 18-35) in the United States visited a library at least once in 2016, more than any other generation. Books are expensive, say Millennials. So why not take advantage of the library?

“The books I get at the library are exploratory,” says Olivia Haskell, a rising junior at Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., while perusing the religion section at Boston's Central Library in Copley Square. “I don’t have to commit to buying them.”

Millennials say they also appreciate libraries’ free community spaces and in-person programming – two resources that fill a void in today’s digital age. The ability of libraries to fill this niche, say visitors and employees, will spell their future success.

“The tools and technology have changed, but libraries have always been innovative in responding to the needs of the community,” says Jim Neal, president of the American Library Association (ALA).

Mr. Neal recently visited public libraries across the country and says that libraries from York, Pa., to Santa Fe, N.M., are seeing an influx of Millennial patrons and are adjusting their offerings accordingly. “Libraries are one the few organizations that operate in the public interest. They support people, and they do it in a very neutral, nonjudgmental way.” 

'The university of the people'

On a given Monday, the Boston Public Library’s online events calendar advertises a variety of free programs aimed at young adults, from “Job Search and Resume Help” at Central, “English/Spanish Language Exchange” at the West End branch, a book club discussion on a new bestseller at the Charlestown branch, to a free concert at the East Boston branch. Charry says the South End community, especially young visitors, suggest programs for their branch using a cork board on the back wall. 

To Charry, offering such programming is part of the library's mandate. “It's a responsibility to teach the things that we know already, as much as it is an opportunity to gather people’s opinions, bring them in, and have them grow.”

Millennials are entering the field of library science to answer this call. Kate Benson, director of graduate admission for the Simmons College library science program, says the average applicant age has fallen to 27 in recent years. The younger applicants “want to promote literacy and access to information,” says Ms. Benson. “They want to serve their community in that way.”

Libraries have always been “the university of the people,” says Neal, by supplying more than just books. In the 19th century, for example, immigrants sought out public libraries to learn English. And the Pennsylvania Avenue branch of the Baltimore library was one of the few public buildings to remain open during the violent riots that followed the death of Freddie Gray, a young black man who died at the hands of local police officers in 2015. 

Anne Smart, who has worked as a librarian for BPL for almost three decades, says she has watched local branches become “community gathering places” that neighborhoods  – especially young people – depend on. Recently, for example, a young woman came in to print off bills while a young man came in to work on his resume. 

A new vision of library space

Boston’s Central Library was redesigned last year with these needs in mind, says BPL President David Leonard. The $78 million renovation, which included tearing out walls, adding more charging outlets, and simplifying book organization, has led to a 22 percent uptick in foot traffic, says Mr. Leonard, and many of the new visitors are Millennials. 

Story Hinckley/Staff

Young girls walk through the lobby of Boston Central library's newly renovated Johnson building.

“The library is one of the few remaining spaces in society that everybody feels they have ownership over,” says Leonard. “Everyone feels like they can come here and rub shoulders together or engage in conversation.”

Jihyun Kim, a middle school math teacher in her early 30s, says she visits libraries all the time – but she rarely checks out books.

“I just like the feeling the library gives me. It’s calm, clean, organized,” says Ms. Kim. “I can bring my work here or use it as a meeting place.”

While helping two young patrons with a book request, librarian Charry reflects on the evolution of the institution she works for. “I think more and more people now are realizing [the library] is not only an intellectual place,” she says, “but also a creative place to have fun and relax.”

AP Photo

Mourners listen to speakers in Savannah, Ga., at an Aug. 13 candlelight vigil for the victims in Charlottesville, Va.

Whether through peaceful rallies, prayer vigils, or family discussions, many Americans gave a strong reproof to the claims of racial superiority that were behind the Aug. 12 violence in Charlottesville, Va. Their president may have failed to quickly join the widespread condemnation. Yet the strong reaction to President Trump’s initial silence on the role of white supremacists helps illustrate a deeper national trend: Fewer people than ever accept that skin color is a measure of character or a reason for special treatment.

The popular rebuke of racial hatred after Charlottesville, however, seems hardly enough after so many high-profile cases of racially charged violence in the United States. Actions must speak louder than words. Each of the recent tragedies driven by false views about race requires even more potent examples of racial equality and the common good.

What binds Americans is more important than their joint condemnation of fictitious beliefs about race. First, they must acknowledge the progress already made on race relations to counter the illusions espoused by fringe right-wing groups. “Remember how far we’ve come,” said President Obama in one of his many speeches on race. This collective gratitude would then allow further dialogue on ways to keep racist radicalism in check and solve issues of social and economic inequality.

Such progress would be the best antidote to the mistaken views of the angry few who join white supremacist groups. The US has indeed made great strides related to race, so much so that Mr. Trump felt pressured two days after the Charlottesville tragedy to proclaim that any group that causes violence in the name of racism is “repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.” Now perhaps he, like many others, can work on those commonalities that are “dear.”