They Called the Drone a Game. Colombia’s Armed Groups Recruit Children on the Feed.
Human Rights Watch reported on Aug. 24 that armed groups in Colombia have recruited about 1,500 children since 2021, training many to fly explosive-laden drones the fighters described to them as a game. Investigators found that the recommendation algorithms of Facebook and TikTok, in some cases, “appear to have actively promoted” the content used to reach them.
Armed groups across Colombia are recruiting children in rising numbers and increasingly reaching them through social media, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Monday, Aug. 24, with the recommendation systems of Facebook and TikTok in some cases helping to circulate the posts used to draw them in, The Washington Post reported. The report, titled “I Thought I’d Never See My Mom Again,” documents how rebel factions and criminal organizations pull minors into their ranks and put them to work at checkpoints, in combat and, more and more, at the controls of drones rigged with explosives, Human Rights Watch said.
“Armed groups in Colombia are recruiting children with impunity,” said Juanita Goebertus, the Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “Protection systems are failing, and social media platforms have become a more effective recruiting ground,” she said, according to NBC News.
Recruited on the feed
Much of the recruitment now begins on the same platforms children use to socialize. Content posted by armed groups “glorifies life in armed group ranks” and dangles “deceptive job offers,” Human Rights Watch found, in its report. In some cases, the group said, the algorithms of Facebook, owned by Meta, and of TikTok “appear to have actively promoted” such material to young users, NBC News reported. Recruiters exploit poverty, social exclusion and gaps in schooling, luring children with promises of money, weapons and status, according to the organization.
Children sent to fly the drones
Once recruited, children are used for combat, to carry weapons, to gather intelligence and to pilot drones fitted with explosives, NBC News reported. Some who were later released said the fighters had described operating the armed drones “as a game” rather than as taking part in war, according to The Washington Post. The weapons are not a game: Colombia’s human rights ombudsman recorded 121 drone attacks in the first five months of 2026 that killed 21 people and wounded 145, NBC News reported.
Who is being taken
At least 1,500 children have been recruited by armed groups since 2021, with 625 cases recorded in 2024 alone, according to figures from Colombia’s human rights ombudsman cited in the reporting, NBC News reported. Human Rights Watch attributed roughly three-quarters of documented cases between 2021 and 2025 to dissident factions that broke from the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, after its 2016 peace accord, the group said. The recruitment is concentrated in poor, rural regions — the southwestern department of Cauca worst of all — and falls disproportionately on Indigenous communities and on girls, Human Rights Watch found.
The platforms’ answer
Meta and TikTok told Human Rights Watch that they prohibit content promoting violence and that they had removed accounts and posts the group flagged, NBC News reported. Neither company’s response addressed the report’s central finding — that their recommendation algorithms had amplified the recruitment content in the first place, according to NBC News. Human Rights Watch called on the platforms and the Colombian government to do more to keep the material from reaching children, the organization said.
The report joins a broader pattern that human-rights investigators have traced across other conflicts: recommendation systems built to hold attention can widen the reach of the most dangerous content. In Colombia, Human Rights Watch said, that reach now extends to children in some of the country’s poorest and most isolated communities — and, in the worst cases, guides them toward the front lines, the organization said.