Cults and high-control religious groups don’t just ask people to join. They use a carefully layered set of psychological moves to pull people in — and those moves are specifically effective on young people who are going through hard times or searching for meaning.
The first move is usually what researchers call ‘love bombing.’ When you first come into contact with the group, members shower you with warmth, attention, and validation. It feels amazing — like you’ve finally found your people. Educational resources from UT Permian Basin note that these groups especially target people who are already vulnerable: teenagers, people who’ve lost someone, people struggling with their mental health, or anyone who feels disconnected. The love bombing makes you feel like you’ve found exactly what you were looking for, which makes you more likely to keep coming back.
Once you’re coming around regularly, other tactics kick in. A student research paper from Augustana University identifies a whole toolkit these groups use, including isolation (cutting you off from outside friends and family), deception, false narratives, and something called the ‘halo effect’ — where the leader seems so impressive or holy that you automatically trust everything they say. They also use confirmation bias, meaning they feed you information that makes their worldview look right and everything outside it look wrong. All of this is designed to quietly undermine your ability to think critically for yourself.
This isn’t just a religious problem. Research published in PubMed Central found that radicalized terrorist cells use levels of psychological manipulation that are similar to — or even higher than — those used by cults. And the targets are overwhelmingly young. According to EUROPOL’s 2019 annual report cited in that study, the majority of people arrested for terrorist offenses in the EU were young people between 20 and 28. A separate Spanish study found that 45% of radicals arrested for recruiting to commit political-religious terrorism specifically targeted teenagers under 18.
The most important thing to understand is this: if a group makes you feel like you need THEM to understand truth, feel loved, or be safe — and they discourage you from questioning or talking to people outside the group — that’s a red flag, not a sign you’ve found something special. Real communities don’t need to isolate you to keep you.