"She started filming, and I realized they were going to beat me"

The virtual arena has created a new platform where teenagers and criminals compete for the same currency - the most blatant video that will break the internet. The violence does not stop on the road or in line at the supermarket, it flows straight into schools. Educational institutions have become filmed arenas, as students surround, beat, and document from every possible angle to gain thousands more views. On the streets, the sense of lawlessness only deepens. Criminal acts are no longer carried out in closed rooms; on the contrary, the teenagers broadcast the acts live, with great pride. They attack boys and girls and film it for TikTok. It is a nightmare that many families are still going through today.

"I realized they were going to beat me"

Behind the parade of likes and viral videos hide the victims. One of them is Emily, 14, from Ashdod. What started as a seemingly innocent meeting to which she was invited turned out to be a planned, violent, and well-documented trap.

"That day they called me and told me to leave the house," says Emily. "That girl was waiting for me there. Her friend started filming and I realized they were going to beat me. I was standing right there, and she started to approach. When she didn't like my answers, she punched me. I fell and she started pulling my hair to make me get up, while cursing at me. When I got up, she just kept slapping me in the face and tried to push my face into her knee."

Emily saw that the event was being documented, but did not imagine the scale of the distribution. "I didn't think they would distribute it. And then it reached my friends and from there it reached me. When I saw the video, I just choked and started crying. I was at work with a lot of customers, I just lay on the floor and started shaking. Everyone tried to calm me down, I can't even describe how I felt."

Emily's mother has a hard time digesting the sights. "It's a nightmare to see my princess getting such horrific beatings," she says with pain. "My daughter even says to her 'Do you want me to apologize? I will apologize', and she says to her 'What, did you fall? Get up', and lifts her by the hair. I thought there was nowhere left to deteriorate. It's a nightmare we are still going through today."

The injury to Emily did not end at that moment at the beach. Since the incident, she tells of a deep change in her self-confidence and in the way she perceives the world. "I became much more stressed," she shares. "I am constantly looking for my mother, checking where she is. It is much harder for me to talk to new people, because I am immediately afraid that they saw the video." Her mother reinforces her words: "I saw that she closed herself off. This is not my Emily."

What infuriates the family most is the knowledge that the attack was not just an event of physical violence, but a planned production. "I knew she was going to film," says Emily. "It's not the first time she's done it. There are many videos of her beating children, because they always film. Some sit, some film - for them it's a reason to be proud, you have to document it."

Adrenaline is very strong

When the camera is on, it seems that the brakes disappear. Every shred of empathy or moral boundary is erased in favor of documentation. Experts explain that conditions for a perfect storm have been created here: an algorithm that shapes behaviors and prioritizes difficult content, children who at a very young age spend time with friends and a smartphone much more than with their parents, and a general feeling of social disintegration and weakening of the rule of law.

Michael (a pseudonym), who was once part of that same world of juvenile delinquency, tries to explain the mindset of the attacking teenager. "It was always around me," he says. "It was cool for me to do something 'big'. What was I thinking in those moments? Not much goes through the head. Just a feeling of very strong adrenaline."

He recalls an incident where his friend was stabbed in the leg and hospitalized in serious condition. "I saw him unconscious, and then the heart hurts. You think to yourself why it was even necessary to do this, that it could have been avoided. But it only happens after, because when you are a child, you just do things without thinking." According to Michael, TikTok changed the rules of the game and made crime commercial. "Today TikTok is a tool to get that respect that you think you deserve. It seems like teenagers are competing for who will have a stronger video, who will do something more extreme."

Scooter gangs and hashtag UD

It is not only individual teenagers who are looking for likes through crime. In disturbing footage, young people are seen openly and proudly declaring loyalty to heads of criminal organizations. In other videos, direct threats are transmitted between competing gangs. Those who have perfected the method are the small and young gangs, such as the SSK youth gang that started in south Tel Aviv and has since been harassing other neighborhoods in the city.

The phenomenon is spreading to many cities across the country. In Holon, for example, acts of vandalism or provocations against police officers get branding on the net with the hashtag UD. From the perspective of these teenagers, if the act was not filmed and distributed - it simply did not happen.

Shirley, a resident of Holon, experiences this fear up close. Under her house, a group of teenagers operates without fear. "This feeling intensified after I experienced the violence myself," she says. "One Friday evening, when she was on her way to her parents with her son, an egg was thrown at their car. We were in shock. After a few months, I realized from the networks that this is a known phenomenon. My eldest son was also attacked with pepper spray when he tried to separate teenagers from helpless people they were harassing. These are always the same groups, usually on scooters. They attack and film for TikTok, and I am definitely afraid."

They are only 13 years old

In the police youth departments, they identify the sharp rise in delinquency fueled by social networks. "Teenagers use these platforms as a stage for publishing the crimes they commit," explains a police officer from the youth department. "We recently handled a case of 13-year-olds who invited another minor to a meeting, attacked him, and documented everything to upload to the net."

The most amazing figure that emerges from the investigations is the gap between the act and the understanding of its consequences. "Most of them are normative teenagers," says the officer. "Only after we explain the consequences to them and show them the documentation they created themselves as evidence in the police file, do they start to regret it. At the moment of execution, they just didn't think ahead."

Valeria also did not imagine that a routine school break would turn into a violent ambush. She was attacked by girls from the eighth grade who called their friends. "They came and started beating us," recalls Valeria. "Both me and my friends had clumps of hair pulled out. None of the students who were standing there intervened. Almost everyone just filmed it, as if it were a show."

Valeria's father, Dima, was shocked by the video and decided not to be silent. He took the case as a national project and reached the Knesset with it. "No girl in the State of Israel should experience what my daughter went through," he says determinedly. He calls on parents to use social networks to spread awareness and attract the attention of the relevant authorities.

Chasing the future

In the cases of Emily and Valeria, complaints were filed and the police collected evidence. Now the families are waiting for a decision on whether to file indictments. But beyond the legal aspect, the social question remains: how to stop this snowball?

Experts emphasize the importance of the connection between parents and children. "Children need to spend much more time with their parents, even when they resist," say educators. "You need to limit night wandering hours and increase parental presence in entertainment venues. We need to create control."

Michael, who managed to leave the world of crime thanks to close people who helped him, summarizes his insight today: "In the end, it dawns on you that crime does not pay. It always ends in two ways - either you are in the cemetery, or you are behind bars. When you grow up, you understand that this is nonsense and that it is not worth the health and the damage. When you are a child, you just don't understand it."

To change the picture, a connection between parents, the education system, and law enforcement is required, but mainly a discourse on the basic message: harming others is a red line. Filming from the side is not cool, and reporting violence is not snitching but saving lives. "Our children do not deserve to live like this," concludes Emily's mother. "I also pity the attacking teenagers. What future awaits them? Will they grow up to be criminals behind bars? They are just children, and they are not supposed to grow up like this."