COVID-19 pandemic nudged young people in the UK toward extremism, according to recent data

As the UK entered COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020, security services and counterterrorism officials warned of a new threat forming in young people’s bedrooms. Superintendent Matthew Davison, head of Prevent North-East, cautioned that extremists were deliberately targeting isolated young people online, while Detective Superintendent Jim Hall in Wales warned of rising exposure to radicalizing material on social media. The narrative was compelling: a generation of bored and frustrated young people across the United Kingdom cut off from schools, colleges and universities, isolated from friends and routines, spending unprecedented hours of screen time online, rendering them susceptible to recruitment by far-right and Islamist propagandists.

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