Somewhere in Europe last month, a 13-year-old boy sat in his bedroom playing games after school. His mother thought he was battling aliens. In reality, he was being groomed by someone he’d never met, inside a private chatroom on a platform she didn’t even know existed.

And by the time she realised something had shifted, the vocabulary had changed. The humour was sharper. The tone was angrier. He talked in absolutes, in enemies, in purity.

This is no longer a fringe problem. It is the new baseline.

Across Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas, intelligence agencies are reporting a rise in youth radicalisation happening entirely online. The NCTV’s 2025 update warns that radicalised individuals in Dutch investigations are increasingly “younger and more diverse.” Europol’s 2025 Referral Action Day uncovered thousands of extremist posts aimed directly at minors. The Council of Europe’s analysis on the misuse of technology by terroristsdescribes entire cases where children were groomed into violent ideologies without ever having real-world contact with extremists.

It’s unsettling. And necessary to hear.

Kid being unknowingly radicalised online

I chose to write this blog after reading and analyzing a lot of documentation that has been made public in the recent years. I spent years investigating terrorism groups and networks and online radicalisation myself. I even remember researching this topic almost decade ago in 2016.

And one thing is very clear, kids are being targeted, everywhere.

With some OSINT and resilience we can fight back. We must, for the future generations.

Below are three real-world case stories drawn from documented 2024–2025 patterns. They aren’t hypotheticals. They’re signals of what may already be happening to kids you know.

CASE 1: The Gaming Lobby That Became a Classroom

A boy in the UK, just fourteen, joined a private “squad” in his favourite online game. It felt harmless at first, a group of older players joking, strategizing, coaching.

His mother was relieved he finally seemed to have friends.

But things changed. Subtly at first.

The group introduced jokes about “outsiders,” then videos making fun of immigrants, then rants about defending “our people.” The boy laughed along, because laughing was how you stayed in the group. He felt chosen. Included.

Inside that private lobby, the older players weren’t helping training his aim. They were training his worldview.

His mother sensed something was wrong long before she understood what it was. The way he snapped at his sister. The way he rolled his eyes at basic empathy. The way he suddenly praised concepts he didn’t understand a month earlier.

If she had known to look at the emotional temperature (not the content) she might have caught it sooner. Radicalisation rarely announces itself through ideology. It announces itself through mood.

And the escape wasn’t a parental crackdown. It started with a conversation, gentle and curious, about what he liked about the group. What they gave him. Why he felt important there. Once he understood that the appeal wasn’t the beliefs but the belonging, he was (slowly) willing to reconsider who got to define his identity.

CASE 2: The Algorithm That Built a Worldview

A twelve-year-old girl opened TikTok after school and watched a flashy edit of a protest. Strong music. Strong visuals. Strong emotions. TikTok noticed. So the platform showed her another one. And another. And another.

Within a week, her “For You” page was a constant stream of conflict, outrage, conspiracy rhetoric, and calls to action. She felt empowered. “Awake.” Special.

From the outside, her parents saw nothing but a child spending time on her phone, something she’d always done. But something in her shifted. She grew overwhelmed by injustice she couldn’t articulate, angry at adults who “didn’t get it,” convinced that she was part of a struggle far bigger than her.

It wasn’t ideology pulling her in. It was emotion.

When her parents finally intervened, they didn’t ban the app. They sat next to her and scrolled with her. They asked her how she thought the app decided what to show her.

They asked her why the feed made her feel the way it did. They showed her how different the content became when they interacted with other topics.

Understanding the algorithm broke the spell.

Self-awareness restored autonomy.

Narrative literacy became a shield.

CASE 3: The Discord Server That Wasn’t What It Seemed

A fifteen-year-old Dutch student joined a “historical roleplay” server on Discord. The branding looked harmless. The themes seemed educational. His parents thought: finally, something better than endless scrolling.

But the server had layers.

Public channels were clean. Private channels required “trust.”

And the deeper he went, the more the tone shifted from historical discussion to racial mythology to violent fantasies about defending civilisation.

The child wasn’t being radicalised by ideology. He was being radicalised by the community. By secrecy. By identity.

kid reading manipulative messages that radicalize him

His parents eventually noticed he locked his screen the moment they entered the room, wore headphones constantly, and reacted defensively when asked about “online friends.”

Extracting him wasn’t a confrontation. It was an invitation:

Tell me why you like them.

Tell me what you get there that you don’t get here.

Tell me who you are when you’re with them.

Radicalisation thrives when identity collapses around a single community.

It dissolves when identity expands beyond it.

IT IS ABOUT RESILIENCE, NOT RULES

We all instinctively want to protect our children with rules: less screen time, more supervision, stricter devices, more locked-down apps. But rules aren’t shields, they’re delays. The world always finds a way around them.

And that’s because radicalisation doesn’t begin online.

It begins in emotion.

A child who feels disconnected will look for connection.

A child who feels unimportant will look for importance.

A child who feels misunderstood will look for someone who “gets it.”

A child who feels powerless will look for a cause.

Extremists know this. Algorithms amplify this.

And children rarely see it happening.

Infographic Guide for parents

If we want to protect them, we need to understand the landscape they live inside, a behavioural-engineering system designed to optimize attention, not wellbeing.

The real shield isn’t restriction. It’s resilience.

It’s raising kids who recognise manipulation the way we recognise smoke from a fire. It’s teaching them that information is designed, not discovered. That “truth” online often has a marketing department behind it. That outrage is a product.

And that the moment they feel “chosen,” “special,” “uniquely awake,” or “part of something big,” they should pause, because every manipulator, from conspiracy theorists to extremist recruiters, begins with the promise of significance.

OSINT isn’t just a profession anymore. It’s a form of digital literacy. Parents don’t need to become analysts, but they do need to adopt the analyst mindset. Not suspicious. Not paranoid. Just curious. Just aware.

If we raise kids who question, who examine sources, who understand algorithms, who see emotional manipulation for what it is, who know that belonging doesn’t have to come from strangers behind screens, then they’re not just safer. They’re unplayable.

And that is how you win a war you can’t see.

You may also want to read my previous blog on this topic:

**REFERENCES - FULL SOURCE LIST **

Intelligence & Government Report

AIVD (2025)

“A web of hate: The online hold of extremism and terrorism on minors”

NCTV (2025)

“Rising number of young people radicalised online”

EU Terrorism & Extremism Threat Summary (TE-SAT / 2024–2025 trends)

TE-SAT 2025 (Terrorism Situation and Trend Report)

(Note: TE-SAT is hosted on multiple platforms; this is a working official mirror.)

Europol (2025)

“Europol coordinates operation against terrorist content online targeting minors”

Council of Europe (2025)

“Report on the emerging patterns of misuse of technology by terrorists and extremists”

Investigative Journalism & Research

The Guardian (2025)

Investigation into far-right recruitment via gaming and livestreaming platforms

UNICRI / UNODC (2025)

“Level Up – Gaming and Violent Extremism in Africa”

Vision of Humanity / IEP (2025)

“Lone Wolf and Youth Terrorism: Evolving Patterns” (Youth terrorism analysis)

Academic & Analytical Sources

Extremist Eleven Model (2025)

Cross-ideological extremist-language detection model (arXiv)

Own research

Radical Engagement (2016)

Hypothesising a radical multi-platform journey