The public inquiry into the Southport murders has entered its second phase, examining how children as young as under-15 are being radicalised online towards nihilistic, ideology-free violence rather than traditional extremist causes. Psychologists and counter-terrorism officials told the hearing in central London that young people are being drawn in through "gateway" online communities centred on self-harm, eating disorders and violent "gore" content, before becoming embedded in groups that glorify mass casualty attacks. Chairman Sir Adrian Fulford said the aim was to understand what drove killer Axel Rudakubana, and others like him, to such extreme violence, and to identify measures that could prevent a repeat.

Richard Taylor of the Counter Terrorism Clinical Consultancy Service said almost one in ten of 1,534 people referred to the service between April 2024 and January 2025 had a fixation on extremist violence and mass casualty attacks, with a third of those under 15 — a figure he called "striking". By comparison, 34 per cent of referrals involved extreme right-wing ideology and 16 per cent Islamist extremism. Professor Laura Smith of the University of Bath, whose team analysed around 500,000 messages from 1,500 users in one online group, said such communities often reward members with status in exchange for evidence of self-harm or violence, and that algorithms keep feeding users more extreme content once they engage with it. Rudakubana, jailed for life with a minimum 52-year term, murdered Bebe King, six, Elsie Stancombe, seven, and Alice Aguiar, nine, in a knife attack in July 2024; three teenagers have since been prosecuted for planning copycat attacks.