A teenage girl in Nova Scotia and teenage boy in Manitoba were arrested last week for plotting simultaneous, murderous attacks on their high schools.
Despite being separated by thousands of miles, the pair are believed to have collaborated closely online.
After their communications were flagged by Interpol and the FBI, local police conducted searches of the teenagers’ homes. There, they found detailed plans to murder multiple students, clothing with hate symbols, an assault rifle and imitation pipe bomb.
The case is the latest example of a troubling trend: rising extremism among youth, where social and digital media play a key role.
“The online environment has expedited the exposure to violent extremist beliefs … and has likely increased in the last few years,” said Luc M., of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Canada’s intelligence agency, during a Feb. 10 parliamentary committee meeting on anti-feminist ideology.
Recent CSIS data show a rise in youth violent extremism, with children as young as 13 involved in terrorism investigations. Nearly one in 10 terrorism cases now involve at least one person under 18.
Meanwhile, the RCMP reported that between April 2023 and March 2024, six minors were arrested on terrorism‑related offences and charges implicating multiple youth surged nearly 500 per cent.
Jean-Pierre of CSIS’ counter-terrorism unit told the committee this trend is being seen across the Western world.
“[NATO countries] are all dealing with the same situation,” he said.
‘Down the rabbit hole’
Experts say online radicalization does not always begin with explicitly extreme content.
More often, it starts with material that looks benign, such as self-improvement advice, lifestyle content or relationship guidance.
“There’s a lot of self-improvement stuff that’s actually deeply rooted in misogyny, but is coming across as self-help content,” said Yannick Veilleux-Lepage, a political science and economics professor at the Royal Military College of Canada, in an interview with Canadian Affairs.
Extreme content is often widely circulated, because social media platforms’ algorithms reward inflammatory posts.
“The more controversial content is, the more it provokes reactions, views and shares,” Esli Chan, a PhD candidate at McGill University studying gendered extremism, far‑right politics and digital phenomena, told the parliamentary committee.
“This drives profits for platforms, while incentivizing users to generate hateful and misogynistic content.”
Digital spaces such as Reddit forums also enable individuals with fringe beliefs to connect, sometimes from different corners of the globe.
“[Connecting with like-minded people] affirms your beliefs, especially if those beliefs can be seen as very taboo in real life,” Chan said.
In October, a 16-year-old boy in Halifax was charged after police discovered his involvement in 764, a violent online extremist network recently designated as a terrorist entity by Canada.
The group, a subgroup of the larger “Com” network, is known for manipulating minors aged eight to 17 into sharing intimate images or performing acts of self-harm, violence or animal cruelty for notoriety within the network.
Radical online communities can also serve as a “big resource hub,” Chan says, directing individuals to further resources such as weapons.
Incels and trad wives
Veilleux-Lepage, of the Royal Military College of Canada, says the online space is especially catalytic for incel communities, groups of involuntarily celibate men who often share misogynistic beliefs and grievances about women and society.
“A large part of the incel community is online, and then they are able to reinforce and intensify these beliefs, and they make these beliefs feel almost scientific,” he said.
Both Veilleux-Lepage and Chan highlighted the “looksmaxxing” trend, where social media influencers encourage young men to modify their appearance to attract women. This trend draws on language and practices rooted in incel communities, says Veilleux-Lepage.
Veilleux-Lepage says some of this content exploits a broader “crisis of masculinity,” offering alienated young men identity, grievance and belonging in ways that can make them vulnerable to more extreme ideas.
He also notes that influencers frequently popular with high schoolers, such as Andrew Tate, MrBeast and Joe Rogan, can act as vectors for radicalizing content. “Two out of those three are deeply problematic as role models for young men,” he said, referring to Tate and Rogan.
For girls and young women, researchers say the entry points can look different.
Barbara Perry, a professor at Ontario Tech University and director of the university’s Centre on Hate, Bias and Extremism, points to “trad wife” content — polished posts about femininity, motherhood and traditional gender roles — as an example of how extremist-adjacent ideas can be repackaged in visually appealing, aesthetic forms.
“It doesn’t necessarily come to them through very aggressive messaging … it tends to be much more subtle — often it will start with ‘beauty tips to attract your man’,” Perry told Canadian Affairs in an interview.
Chan said those communities can overlap with anti-vaccination, anti-government and broader far-right spaces, meaning a user may enter through lifestyle content and “fall down the rabbit hole.”
Online harms
Canada currently responds to youth radicalization through a mix of criminal law, intelligence, policing and prevention programs.
But experts say these measures are inadequate. These tools were designed for offline threats, and struggle to keep pace with the speed, scale and algorithm-driven nature of online radicalization.
More recently, Ottawa has proposed legislation to address some harmful online content, including through its proposed Combatting Hate Act, which would strengthen hate-related criminal laws.
Critics have warned this bill risks chilling free speech without addressing the underlying causes of online hate.
“Bill C-9 risks criminalizing some forms of protected speech and peaceful protest,” the Canadian Civil Liberties Association advocacy organization said in a press release.
Experts also say legislation alone will not solve youth radicalization.
Chan argues social media platforms and AI tools need stronger safeguards to detect and interrupt harmful content earlier.
“AI chatbots in general will either not flag something as harmful or report it to law enforcement,” she said, citing the Tumbler Ridge school shooting as a case where a chatbot failed to flag violent intent to authorities. She also cited cases of chatbots encouraging users to harm themselves.
“Historically, chatbots did not have the safeguards in place … to contest [users], because affirming whatever [the user says] … keeps them on that platform longer,” she added. The leading AI companies have since released chatbot versions that include some moderation and safety features.
Veilleux-Lepage says strong social ties can act as a protective factor against extremism. But he says prevention must also start earlier, through digital literacy and community support.
He points to digital literacy programs such as those offered by MediaSmarts, a non-profit that provides resources and workshops in schools to help young people spot misinformation, online hate and manipulative content.
This kind of prevention can “inoculate people from hatred or from ideology,” he said.
It’s sad that our species is a warmongering one. It’s been this way for 2 million years, ever since Homo Erectus first battled for resources and breeders. That’s life, all of life, feeding and breeding for 4 billion years here on our little mudball.
But we are rational creatures and can grow beyond the madness, the sooner the better.
The children are very much under educated and under cared for by the parents. It’s been this way since the onset of WW1 and has been ballooning since the 1950s with the rebels with their rock and roll. True. Parenting has lost control due to distraction. Sad to say, we’re headed for societal collapse very soon if we don’t change.