Europe: How TikTok Has Become a Tool for ISIS to Recruit Teenagers

Amid the rising threat of ISIS in Europe, Austria announced the cancellation of three Taylor Swift concerts that were scheduled to take place in Vienna this week, following the police’s thwarting of a terrorist plot.

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The Austrian intelligence agency confirmed that the 19-year-old man who was arrested in Austria was planning a suicide attack during one of Swift’s concerts in Vienna “to kill a large number of people,” thereby preventing a “bloodbath.” In this context, Jassem Mohammed, head of the European Center for Counterterrorism and Intelligence Studies, revealed that while the Khorasan Province is responsible for ISIS’s external operations, particularly in Europe, a man named “Rustam,” of Tajik origin, has emerged as the recruiter of these teenagers and is currently the head of the external operations unit of the Khorasan Province.

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Jassem Mohammed said that “this is why we notice that most of those being recruited within European countries are of Tajik origin.” He added that recruitment is carried out via indirect contact through social media platforms, especially TikTok, while also pointing out the use of other social media platforms, as well as artificial intelligence, through algorithms and data analysis, to identify potential targets for recruitment.

According to a prominent academic study, nearly two-thirds of the arrests related to ISIS in Europe over the past nine months involved teenagers, leading to growing concern among European security officials about the increasing influence and reach of ISIS and its Khorasan branch in the West. The study revealed that out of 27 ISIS-related attacks or failed plots since October 2023, 38 of the 58 suspects were between the ages of 13 and 19, according to Peter Neumann, a professor of security studies at King’s College London.

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Neumann also noted that the latest Europol data showed that “the number of attacks and planned attacks has increased more than fourfold” since 2022.