For college students of color who encounter online racism, the effect of racialized aggressions and assaults reaches far beyond any single social media feed and can lead to real and significant mental health impacts – even more significant than in-person experiences of racial discrimination, according to a recently published study from researchers at UConn and Boston College.

“When I taught middle school students about finding trustworthy sources online a decade ago, internet connections and processors were still so slow that the hunt for multiple sources to confirm a finding took so much effort that analysis and interpretation was a much smaller part of the equation,” says Rachael Gabriel.