Unchecked xenophobic rhetoric on social media has caused its users to become more comfortable being openly racist.
As a Filipino American, I recall fearing for my parents during the COVID-19 pandemic because of the frequency of hateful and otherwise harmful commentary made towards Asian immigrants online during that time.
In February 2026, @StouffersSeeTheWorld, a user on TikTok, posted a now-deleted video talking about “weird things” they found in a Vietnamese grocery store, but the three products were completely normal products. Of course, the Asian community saw it, and the original video received backlash before being deleted.
There was a surge in anti-Asian hate language between January and March of 2020, according to the University of Utah. There were two significant spikes in the use of racist messages at this time: at the end of January 2020 when COVID-19 made its debut in the US and in mid-March when President Donald Trump posted tweets about the “Wuhan flu” and “Chinese virus.” The number of anti-Asian tweets eventually subsided but remained at a higher level than before the pandemic.
Armed with the confidence lent to them by President Trump’s racist tweets as an example, people feel they are given the green light to post similarly. This, paired with the safety net of anonymity that social media platforms provide, makes for a dangerous online bubble.
According to a PubMed Central study on Cyber-Racism, the anonymity of social media allows people to post and express racist content with the belief that these posts would not be traced back to them. Both cyber-racism and cyberbullying victimization are prominent in youth and can lead to “poor psychological outcomes,” according to the study.
While some hide behind the screen, sure of themselves because of their faith in anonymity, others are simply more direct and confident in their bold declarations. This is prevalent, especially in comment sections of various posts.
VC Defensa, an alliance of local organizations throughout Ventura County, was immensely vocal about what resources were available to people and how they could stay safe. One Instagram post of theirs shows what cars Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents would be spotted in.
One user commented, “I hope y’all get arrested and more ICE agents take y’all away in jail. Have fun getting investigated by the feds,” while another commented, “@icegov get the illegals out!”
This introduces a unique intersection between content posted with the intention of raising awareness and problematic comments that end up perpetuating xenophobia, becoming a breeding ground for negative dialogue.
A similar phenomenon can be seen in posts about ICE. While much content is posted in a manner to raise awareness, it sometimes inadvertently has the opposite effect.
Jenny Quintero, co-president of the Latin American Student Organization, said what she sees online is designed to show her what she wants to see and how she would often see people sharing their stories about interactions with ICE.
“Your ‘For You’ page is tailored to your own interests. So, everything that I was seeing on my own ‘For You’ page were people who were really saddened and angry,” Quintero said. “[On] my TikTok, … a lot of the videos were about people sharing their own stories about their own parents or loved ones getting detained and essentially kidnapped by ICE.”
Director of the Sarah W. Heath Center for Equality and Justice Ashli Anda said getting exposed to racist media online tends to perpetuate its normality, despite there being a want to combat racism.
“Exposure to more racist rhetoric, more direct commentary, can also desensitize us to those things,” Anda said. “When we think about how to shift a certain dynamic in society or community, we think we can counteract the racist speech or the racist attitudes.”
Eden Benezra, president of the Hillel Club, said she has seen her peers engage with antisemitic content online.
“It shows up, like, kind of demonizing Jewish people, and it shows up in a way where they almost don’t think of Jews as human beings,” Benezra said.
Fighting Online Antisemitism, an organization dedicated to “eradicating antisemitism online,” states that they have reported over 150,000 antisemitic posts across 10 social media platforms, with 40% of these posts being removed in 2024.
Anda said there isn’t a difference between posting and consuming racist content, especially in a moral way.
“I don’t think that there is a morally relevant difference between posting or consuming racist content. And so what the line is is going to vary depending on who you ask and whether they’re more concerned with what is legally permissible versus what is morally permissible,” Anda said.
New research highlighted by the Stop AAPI Hate Organization states that anti-Asian hate spiked in December 2024 and January 2025, especially towards South and East Asians.
Anti-South Asian hate sparked up because of “the H-1B visa program against the backdrop of Trump’s relentless xenophobic rhetoric.” For East Asians, there was hate towards China because of events that allegedly involved the Chinese military regarding the H-1B visa program, and “news about Chinese-owned companies including TikTok and DeepSeek AI,” according to the article.
I do fully believe that social media is a tool that should be used as a way to combat racism, but it also provides a way to be comfortable saying such things. Really, it also helps amplify both sides of this conversation.
Anda said she encourages students to speak up about topics as serious as racism, especially on campus.
“I always highly recommend that students try to bring conversations into the public realm.So that could look like tabling, and it could be informational or educational tabling to bring awareness to racism online,” Anda said.
