Two-thirds of ISIS-linked arrests in Europe over the past nine months were teenagers, according to an alarming new study — as experts warn of extremists targeting children on social media in the wake of the foiled plot to attack a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna.
Of the 58 European arrests linked to ISIS over the past nine months, 38 were between the ages of 13 and 19, according to a new King’s College study reported by CNN.
Now, with the addition of the Austrian suspects who plotted to drive a car full of explosives into Swift’s Vienna shows — who were 17, 18, and 19 years old — the total comes to at least 41 European teenagers recruited by the Jihadist terror organization in mere months.
The vulnerable teens are often contacted online by ISIS recruiters who radicalize them and goad them into attempting acts of mass violence under their bloody banner, according to the study’s author, Peter Neumann — who also noted that attacks and planned attacks in Europe had quadrupled since 2022.
But Europe isn’t the only place where ISIS is going after teens. Citizens from all Western nations, including the United States, are being targeted on social media.
“There’s no doubt in anybody’s mind that’s the preferred means and mechanisms for recruitment in the west, meaning Europe, but also in the US, Canada, Australia and elsewhere,” director of research at Syracuse University’s Institute for Security Policy and Law, Dr. Corri Zoli, told The Post.
Using platforms like TikTok, Telegram, X, and Facebook, ISIS recruiters will connect with young people — often male — susceptible to extremist views, and play into whatever insecurities or curiosities they may have, Zoli explained.
“Everybody loves to recruit young people, especially young men, because there’s developmental issues,” she said.
“Their brains aren’t fully formed until they’re 25 or so. They can make capricious decisions. And young people in general tend to have a black-and-white view of the world.”
Though platforms like TikTok and Facebook generally police any content directly mentioning terror groups like ISIS, videos or groups about seemingly innocuous topics, such as sharia law or other cultural items can be enough of an in for recruiters to identify targets.
“People also use, wars, conflicts as great recruiting tools. I am absolutely positive that the current Gaza war is proving to be a boon for recruiters,” Zoli said. “It’s these affinity groups, social media groups and pages where folks are expressing political outrage over conflicts or wars or something in the news.
“These become entry points for especially young people who are really upset about what’s occurring in any given conflict scenario. They get drawn into an activist, political community, that then has pretty deep roots and affiliations with actual extremist organizations.”
The problem has become prevalent enough in the US that Congressmen August Plfuger (R-TX) and Jimmy Panetta (D-CA) last week proposed a bi-partisan bill calling on the Department of Homeland Security to conduct annual reviews of platforms like TikTok for terror recruitment dangers.
The teens suspected of the Taylor Swift bombing plot were allegedly recruited online by ISIS, according to Austrian law enforcement, and intended to kill “as many people as possible” by driving an explosive-filled car into a crowd at one of the concerts where they’d recently been hired to work security.
They were arrested Wednesday — just a day before Swift’s first of three concerts in Vienna, expected to draw 195,000 people — prompting the concerts to be canceled.
Chemicals and other technical bombmaking devices were found in the 19-year-old ringleader’s home.
His lawyer later attempted to downplay the threat, saying the teen was merely “playing with ideas.”
A spokesperson for Meta — which owns Facebook — told The Post it has a team of hundreds of specialists monitoring the platform for terrorism-related content, adding that terror and hate groups are categorically barred from the platform and their content is removed as soon it is detected.
Neither TikTok nor Twitter responded to requests for comment.
