Social Media Helps Recruit Children for Colombian Armed Groups

Nelson González Sánchez is one of the authors of “‘I Thought I’d Never See My Mom Again’: Recruitment and Use of Children by Colombian Armed Groups,” a report published in August by Human Rights Watch.

It was past midnight when my phone buzzed with a “friend suggestion” to look at Facebook.

Facebook had shown me this screen hundreds of times before, usually for an old classmate or a distant relative. This time, the suggestion was far more unsettling.

I recognized the name immediately. “Elenos,” a colloquial term for members of the National Liberation Army (ELN), one of the armed groups that have fought in Colombia for decades and a name long associated with violence in my country. The profile displayed the group’s logo, and had photos and videos of armed men conducting military drills in the mountains.

In the months that followed, Facebook and TikTok recommended dozens of profiles and content posted by these profiles tied to armed groups.

For the past year, I have been investigating child recruitment by armed groups in Colombia, a crime that has affected more than 1,500 children in the past five years. I have interviewed hundreds of recruited children, government officials, and others to understand why and how armed groups recruit. Over and over again, I heard the same thing: Armed groups are recruiting children through social media.

I immersed myself in TikTok and Facebook to learn more. Combing through profiles and posts, I found that armed groups use social media to showcase an alluring lifestyle for children and teenagers. Recruitment, in the past associated with coercion in remote rural areas, now often starts in a social media feed, where algorithms amplify and recommend content that glorifies armed groups and steers users, including children, into their grasp.

“We use social media to reach them. That's how I first got in touch with them,” a 17-year-old boy told me. He had been recruited by a dissident group of the demobilized Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in Catatumbo, on Colombia's border with Venezuela.

As I began interacting with this content, Facebook’s and TikTok’s algorithms flooded my feeds with accounts and posts linked to these groups. Facebook kept promoting profiles linked to armed groups and recommending them to me as friends. And after only five minutes of scrolling through TikTok, I stumbled upon several job offers inviting me to join an armed group. For children in Colombia’s most vulnerable regions, these videos can be deeply seductive.

I reviewed dozens of accounts and posts with images flaunting wads of cash, motorcycles, high-end pickup trucks and children wearing armed groups’ armbands and posing with rifles nearly as tall as they were. The videos were often overlaid with narcocorridos—songs that tell stories about cartels, groups’ commanders and drug kingpin lifestyles—and captioned with emojis.

I learned that armed groups rely on emojis as code, in an apparent effort to evade social media companies’ restrictions. A clover emoji refers to coca crops, and combined with cash and cell phone emojis, it can signal a job opportunity in coca cultivation—used to produce cocaine. Because the colors are similar, the Colombian and Armenian flag emojis refer to the FARC; the Angolan one, alongside black and red heart emojis, to the ELN. Nina emojis signal affiliation with armed groups.

Following these emoji signs, I found dozens of posts trying to recruit people. I saw posts that said “There are openings in the ranks“ and “Wanted: people to work for the FARC.” They asked people interested to send a direct message. This explicit recruitment content remained online for months, in some cases accumulating thousands of interactions. Hundreds of accounts commented that they would like to join.

But, as the 17-year-old recruited by FARC dissidents told me, “the reality in the group is very harsh, very different from what they portray on social media.” Children are often transferred to other regions where they are isolated from their family and community, making it difficult to escape. Many are indoctrinated, used in fighting, and abused, sometimes sexually, in the ranks of armed groups.

As part of the investigation, we reported dozens of accounts to Meta (Facebook) and ByteDance (TikTok), and the platforms removed them. Both companies also told us that their community guidelines and standards ban violent organizations or individuals. However, they are clearly struggling with enforcement. I’ve continued to find accounts posting similar content on both social media platforms.

Armed groups in Colombia have long taken advantage of poverty, social exclusion, domestic violence, and barriers to education to draw children into their ranks. Today, digital platforms have become part of the terrain where armed groups shape aspirations, normalize violence, and identify vulnerable children. Some estimates indicate that almost half of child recruitment in Colombia is driven by social media.

If Colombia wants to prevent more children from ending up in the mountains with armed groups, social media platform regulation that protects the full spectrum of children’s rights should be at the center of the debate. Social media companies should implement stronger measures for the detection and moderation of content linked to armed groups, ensuring that such content is not amplified or recommended by platform algorithms.

When a phone buzzes with a friend request, it shouldn't be an armed group targeting a child in rural Colombia.