There was a warning that radical groups and terrorist organizations are using popular online games such as Minecraft and Roblox to radicalize teenagers. The United Nations and European intelligence authorities say new response strategies to protect youth are urgently needed as the online environment expands.
According to the New York Times (NYT) on the 11th, the rate of minors becoming involved in terrorist incidents has surged in recent years. The United Nations Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) said that children and teenagers account for nearly 42% of ongoing terrorism investigations in Europe and North America, a figure that has nearly tripled since 2021.
Unpublished data from the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT) in The Hague, Netherlands, also showed that 20% to 30% of all counterterrorism work in Europe involves 12- to 13-year-old minors. ICCT Director Thomas Renard called it "an unprecedentedly shocking figure."
Terror incidents involving minors are often subject to restricted public information, making it difficult to identify the pathways into crime. However, in recent years the online space has been cited as a primary conduit for such crimes, as numerous incidents have occurred to support that view over the past few years.
Earlier in 2020 in the United Kingdom, a 15-year-old girl, Rhiannon Rudd, who lived in Texas in the United States, was arrested on terrorism charges, and Rudd was reportedly indoctrinated online and radicalized by white supremacist Chris Cook. Rudd downloaded large quantities of media glorifying Nazism and posted writings about bombing a Jewish synagogue while remaining active online, before dying by suicide in 2022.
In Estonia that same year, a 13-year-old boy who had fallen into neo-Nazism was charged with plotting international terrorism. The boy served as a "commander" of the international neo-Nazi organization Feuerkrieg Division and is said to have carried out anti-Semitic activities mainly through a Telegram channel. Most members of the organization also conducted the bulk of their activities on the internet.
In particular, game spaces are identified as a likely route through which teenagers can be drawn into crime. Within games where users design and build virtual worlds themselves, spaces have been created that reenact terrorist attacks or mass shootings. In fact, before the 2019 Christchurch mosque shooting in New Zealand that left 51 people dead or injured, reports said that mock spaces were created in Minecraft and Roblox.
Researcher Gin Slater, who studies online extremist movements, said, "Terrorist organizations create game spaces themselves and structure them in engaging ways to lure kids," adding, "Many parents think regulators are already controlling such problems, but in reality that may not be the case."
In addition, radical groups are said to be deploying a so-called "funnel strategy," attracting teenagers on mass online platforms such as TikTok and X (formerly Twitter), then steering them to relatively less regulated spaces like Discord or Telegram. The main targets are teenage boys and young men.
Experts say that behind this phenomenon lie not only ideological beliefs but also isolation and a lack of belonging. Some teenagers move between opposing ideologies such as white supremacy and jihadism (Islamist extremism), indicating that factors beyond political beliefs are significantly at play. ICCT Director Renard assessed it as "a result of the traits of the first digital generation raised with smartphones combined with a family culture of relatively permissive parents."
Meanwhile, Roblox and Minecraft say they ban extremist content through artificial intelligence (AI) detection systems and dedicated monitoring. However, the Global Network on Extremism and Technology (GNET), a U.K. research group, noted that "private servers and map-creation features in games are still being used to build spaces for propaganda."