Extremist and terrorist actors increasingly target adolescent communities for recruitment. Still, Prevention and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) programs fall short of accurately addressing the needs of this audience, and high schools across the United States are unequipped to contend with the escalating challenge.

With funding provided through the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) FY21 Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention (TVTP) Grant program, iThrive Games and the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism (CTEC) at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies are designing and developing a new game-based curriculum that will educate and empower adolescents to become more aware and resistant to radicalization, build their resilience within their local networks, and build capacity at the high school and district level for P/CVE program administration.

Through iThrive Games' co-design approach which empowers teens as subject matter experts and supports their voice, design thinking, and agency, this P/CVE program will be produced with its target audience, adolescents in high schools, and end with a role-playing simulation game hosted on the iThrive Sim platform and an accompanying curricular experience. The game-based experience is slated to launch in late 2023 and will help adolescents:

• Recognize the signs of potential grooming and exploitation by extremist actors;
• Understand the harms to civil society by extremist and terrorist radicalization;
• Comprehend the impact of offensive, racially charged, violent, and hateful comedy and satire;
• Build awareness of the indicators of extremist recruitment in communities; and
• Resist extremist influence in online and physical communities