Parents, do you know what your kids are doing online?
If not, the answer may terrify you.
Last month, the FBI issued a warning about the growing threat of violent online networks targeting minors.
Lurking on gaming platforms, social media or self-help forums, members of these networks lavish attention on their targets.
After the grooming comes the demands: that victims carve occult symbols or the names of their abusers onto their bodies (a practice known as “fansigning”).
That they share sexually explicit videos or mutilate their pets on camera.
That they livestream their own suicides.
When victims disengage, they’re doxed and swatted, threatened with violence, blackmailed or extorted.
Most victims are teens.
Some are younger.
It’s the stuff of nightmares, and dismantling these virulent networks is now a top national security priority across the United States and Europe.
But most parents have no idea they exist.
Many of these networks, with names like 764, the Com, No Lives Matter and True Crime Community, belong to a loosely connected subculture called nihilistic violent extremism.
This is influencer culture at its darkest, where status comes from creating the worst-possible content. Videos of beheadings, dismemberings, torture and child pornography freely circulate.
Consuming ultra-violent content online fuels real-world creation.
Take 17-year-old Solomon Henderson, who shot and killed a student at his school in Antioch, Tenn., in January, wounding two others before taking his own life.
He left behind a manifesto, now standard procedure for online extremists.
No surprise his manifesto and social-media footprint are rife with tragedy, self-loathing and rage — along with horrific imagery and references to nihilistic extremism and neo-Nazism
It glorified school shooters he idolized — including Natalie Rupnow, who killed two of her classmates and wounded six more in December 2024 in Madison, Wis., before taking her own life.
She frequented school-shooter-obsessed forums of the True Crime Community and admired prior attacks.
That Henderson was a black self-identified white supremacist and that Rupnow was a rare female school shooter underline the strange, shape-shifting nature of nihilistic violent extremism.
Crackdown underway
Last week, two alleged leaders of 764 were arrested — one in North Carolina and one in Greece, after an investigation by the FBI, NYPD and partners.
They’re accused of directing minors worldwide to cut symbols into their bodies, produce explicit videos and engage in self-harm.
These arrests are a breakthrough, but the threat remains.
A 764 member in Kentucky recently pleaded guilty to plotting to kill a minor who refused to continue making coerced sexual videos.
An Arizona man associated with 764 allegedly forced a 13-year-old girl to carve his alias, satanic symbols and swastikas into “every possible place” on her body, threatening to leak sexually explicit images of her if she didn’t comply.
And in California, minors were blackmailed into filming themselves performing torture rituals.
Worse still, today’s victims can become tomorrow’s abusers.
A 15-year-old Eastern European girl who convinced a Minnesota man to livestream his self-immolation had been terrorized by 764 before she became one of their recruiters.
These aren’t isolated examples.
Since we began investigating this threat three years ago, we’ve identified over 500 cases — and those are just the ones we know about.
In addition to arrests, the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force has been working to alert law enforcement worldwide to the dangers of these networks.
NYPD detectives and FBI agents have briefed school officials and community partners worldwide, flagging indicators: cutting and fansigning, isolation, doxing, swatting and retributive bomb threats seen in schools since the pandemic.
This work is urgent, vital and growing.
Be on the lookout
But while law enforcement is working aggressively to identify and dismantle these networks, early intervention starts with the people closest to the kids, not after a case is opened.
The truth is arrests aren’t enough.
We need awareness.
We need parents to understand what’s out there.
We need teachers to recognize the signs.
We need tech companies to take responsibility for what’s happening on their platforms.
And we need survivors to know they’re not alone — that there’s a way back.
The good news is, recovery is possible.
We’ve worked with families who’ve pulled their kids out of these networks and helped them start over — safe and supported.
When that happens, we don’t just save one life.
We protect future victims and prevent others from becoming victimizers.
It takes vigilance. It takes early intervention.
And it takes adults who are paying attention.
If you’re a parent, ask your kids what they’re doing online.
Don’t just monitor — engage.
If you’re a teacher, don’t ignore the strange symbols or sudden withdrawal.
Ask questions.
If you’re a friend, speak up.
This is a new kind of extremism — grounded in the belief that nothing matters and that causing harm is the only way to feel anything at all.
We can stop it.
But only if we know it’s there.
Jessica Tisch is commissioner of the New York City Police Department, where Rebecca Weiner is deputy commissioner for intel and counterterrorism.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
