More and more minors involved in terrorism, radicalization through social media

Investigations show that more and more underage children are involved in terrorist crimes. The reason for this worrying development is the Internet, where children can freely access content calling for violence and attacks, Het Parool reports.

Public prosecutors and child protection authorities have been observing the trend towards more violence among young people for two years. According to the Public Prosecution Service (OM), more and more minors have been named as suspects in dozens of cases of serious violence and terrorism during this period. For Public Prosecutor Dorien Kardol, the number of such cases is alarming.

This phenomenon is not only taking place in the Netherlands, but throughout Europe, according to Europol. The European Union's police authority, based in The Hague in the Netherlands, has recorded a fourfold increase in attacks and planned attacks. In the last six months alone, two-thirds of the 61 terrorism suspects arrested were under the age of 19. One of the youngest terrorism suspects is a 14-year-old, writes Het Parool.

Attacks by minors have also marked this year's summer: At the beginning of August, three Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna were canceled at short notice due to the threat of terrorism. According to Austrian investigations, a 19-year-old is said to have planned to drive into the crowd of Swift fans in front of the stadium with explosives and a car. According to the Austrian authorities, he had pledged allegiance to the terrorist organization Islamic State (IS) online. Last Thursday, an 18-year-old Islamist from Austria planned an attack on the Israeli Consulate General in Munich and fired shots from an old rifle in the area. After an exchange of fire, the German police shot dead the underage attacker.

This surge in terrorism can be traced back to social media, where young people and minors are exposed to countless pro-terrorism videos and are influenced by them. The English terrorism expert Peter Neumann has already dubbed them TikTok terrorists, who receive abbreviated information about terrorism via the Internet.

For a long time, parents or supervisors from schools and other institutions have not realized that young people are becoming radicalized or that they are consuming violent content. This is because most young people continue to appear normal, they go to school and meet up with friends. So it's not always loners who are mistakenly considered to be the most susceptible to such content and crimes, Neumann explains.

According to a child protection officer who spoke to Het Parool, young people fall into a hole of such violent content, which is also made more present by the algorithm. And this is what the terrorist organizations are aiming for, as they know exactly how social media works and take advantage of it. "It often starts with curiosity, then the children are drawn in. Initially, through very violent content, such as explicit images of school shootings, beheadings, and attacks. This is followed by networks in closed chat groups. They get caught up in it by themselves."

According to the child protection authority, there are no general measures for these developments that promise immediate help in such situations. However, parents should educate their children and sit down with them to discuss the dangers of social media and such content. "We teach children at a young age what a child molester is, but we do not point out the trap you can fall into online."