Who Will Become a Terrorist? Research Yields Few Clues by Matt Apuzzo, New York Times
… What turns people toward violence — and whether they can be steered away from it — are questions that have bedeviled governments around the world for generations. Those questions have taken on fresh urgency with the rise of the Islamic State and the string of attacks in Europe and the United States. Despite millions of dollars of government-sponsored research, and a much-publicized White House pledge to find answers, there is still nothing close to a consensus on why someone becomes a terrorist.
“After all this funding and this flurry of publications, with each new terrorist incident we realize that we are no closer to answering our original question about what leads people to turn to political violence,” Marc Sageman, a psychologist and a longtime government consultant, wrote in the journal Terrorism and Political Violence in 2014. “The same worn-out questions are raised over and over again, and we still have no compelling answers.”…
Comments
The gist of it is basically that "We know that we don't know what makes someone a terrorist, but it's not for a lack of trying.". That doesn't mean the article is uninteresting; it really shows how terrorists have different backgrounds and how it doesn't seem like there's this one, overarching reason why they did it.
Personally, I believe that people who are most at risk are the disenfranchised and the outsiders, people who don't have a group or a strong identity already and are trying to find one. In my opinion, this is why teenagers and young adults are more at risks than other groups.