E-SCAN 39: ON THE FRONTLINE
E-Scan 39: Current youth radicalisation landscape
Five Eyes insights on radicalisation
In the United Kingdom, under-18s accounted for 42 per cent of terror-related arrests in 2024. Nearly two-thirds of Islamic State-linked arrests in Europe in 2024 involved minors. Since 2020, Australian authorities have investigated 37 individuals aged 17 or younger for violent extremism.
It is this environment that has pushed the Five Eyes intelligence alliance – an 80-year-old partnership comprising Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States – to break with tradition. Until recently, the alliance had never publicly released a joint report. That changed just over a year ago with the publication of its first jointly authored paper addressing the rise of youth radicalisation.
The decision to publish such a report reflects a recognition that the scale and acceleration of youth radicalisation is demanding of internal collaboration across the West, as well as a necessity for broader public vigilance.
Pipeline effect
A central dynamic that is currently driving youth radicalisation is the so-called ‘pipeline effect’. Contemporary social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram prioritise engagement, often amplifying emotionally charged and polarising content. In online political discourse, this often results in polarising or extremist-adjacent material being presented to users at a much higher rate than they would seek out on their own accord.
Repeated exposure to such material can normalise fringe viewpoints and shift perceptions of what is acceptable or credible. Research suggests this process is gradual and non-linear, with users often progressing from mainstream to increasingly extreme content over time. Young people, particularly those influenced by offline factors (e.g. social environment, identity, grievances) may be susceptible to this accelerated trajectory. Importantly, while radicalisation is seemingly on the rise, it is not an inventible process. Rather, increasing research interest highlights how, through thoughtful intervention design this progression creates multiple points at which movement toward more extreme content and communities can be identified and potentially disrupted.
Recent legal actions and public scrutiny directed at major technology companies have reinforced concerns that the design of the algorithms of these platforms, whether intentional or unintentional, may play a primary role in facilitating this trajectory.
Social media ban effects
In response to the above, there have been efforts to regulate this growing problem, to varying degrees of scale and success. The most notable of these has been the Australian Federal Government’s move to ban individuals under the age of sixteen from holding a social media account.
While this initiative has been widely praised internationally, concerns remain about unintended consequences. Restricting access to regulated platforms may not reduce young people’s demand for content, but could push them toward unregulated, more polarising, and harmful spaces – bypassing gradual exposure and potentially accelerating radicalisation.
Whilst data emerging as to the effectiveness of the social media ban is preliminary, one potentially positive impact is that it does delay entry into harmful ecosystems. The onus remains upon governments to engage with police and other specialists, to ensure policies seeking to tackle the problem of youth radicalisation are evidence-based and not heavy handed. Interventions must recognise young people’s enduring need to connect, take risks, exercise judgement, learn from mistakes, and take responsibility for their actions and their impact on others.
For policing, this environment reveals a core tension. On one hand, rising rates of youth radicalisation demonstrate how police are increasingly required to respond to risks generated by global digital systems beyond their control. On the other, even without influence over these drivers, they will still absorb the operational consequences of rising youth radicalisation.
This requires a shift in approach. Enforcement alone is insufficient where radicalisation occurs as a gradual progression, often shaped upstream by platform dynamics and social environment. Police must place greater emphasis on earlier identification and disruption of movement toward violence. At the same time, regulatory measures such as social media bans should be understood as redistributing risk rather than removing it, potentially reducing visibility as young people move into less regulated environments.
These dynamics also heighten legitimacy risks. Poorly calibrated interventions may reinforce the grievances and distrust that underpin radicalisation, particularly among younger cohorts.
In this environment, youth radicalisation is less a problem that police can solve outright, and more a condition they must manage under constrained influence, reduced visibility, and increasing demand.
More from E-Scan 39.
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