Toxic and harmful online interactions represent a severe and pervasive issue across diverse contemporary social spaces—from social media to online gaming to online dating to online virtual worlds—inflicting harm on the mental, emotional, and physical well-being of users and community members. One reason for the persistence of toxicity is that most interventions rely on detection and sanctioning, while there is often not one group of "toxic'' users that can be sanctioned and excluded. Thus, proactive interventions that reduce the likelihood of problematic behaviour before it happens would be valuable. To enable such interventions, we need to better understand the antecedents of toxic behaviour (when, why, and for whom it develops).
In this workshop, we convene experts spanning various domains of online toxicity to synthesize existing knowledge and initiate the development of a comprehensive theoretical framework that will support the development of proactive interventions.
We invite interested researchers and practitioners to submit 1) a brief bio and position statement outlining their interest in the topic (each up to 200 words) or 2) a position paper (up to 4000 words) describing their work on proactive intervention design or on the antecedents of toxicity by Monday, February 16 2026. Submissions will be accepted via this form. Accepted submissions will be hosted on arXiv. At least one participant from each submission must attend the workshop and register for at least one day of the CHI conference.