The New World Highlights Smidge Project Findings in an Interview with Dr. Wilford

In a 6 December 2025 feature, The New World highlights new findings from the Smidge Project in an in-depth interview with Dr. Sara Wilford, the project’s scientific coordinator. In the piece, Wilford points to a rising yet largely overlooked concern: the radicalisation of middle-aged people.

The New World piece draws attention to people in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, who are increasingly drawn into online extremism. This shift is supported by emerging data, including the 2024 England and Northern Ireland riots, where more than a third of those charged were over 40, a significant increase from previous years.

The article highlights Wilfords's central finding: middle-aged people are becoming radicalised not because they are disengaged or digitally naïve, but because society has made them invisible.

“Sara Wilford explained that at 50, many people feel written off,” the article notes. “They’re seen as too old to train, too expensive to hire, and irrelevant to marketers. These attitudes leave people feeling like they’re on the scrap heap and that sense of invisibility breeds resentment.”

The Smidge Project’s research shows that this resentment often pushes individuals toward online spaces where anger, conspiracy theories, and extremist narratives circulate freely. Although many middle-aged people believe their life experience helps them navigate the online world confidently, they are particularly vulnerable to echo chambers that validate and deepen previously hidden beliefs.

The article also highlights Wilford’s point that middle age is a period marked by personal upheaval, divorce, bereavement, redundancy, making individuals more susceptible to online communities that offer easy answers, validation, and belonging.

Dr. Wilford further notes that while some middle-aged people drift into extremism due to isolation, another group, powerful, influential, and already successful,  is becoming more extreme because of weakened political and social guardrails. The article connects this to broader political trends, showing how certain high-profile middle-aged leaders amplify far-right narratives to enormous audiences.

Despite these risks, Wilford stresses that there are no significant programmes designed specifically to support or safeguard middle-aged people from radicalisation. While young people and the elderly receive targeted media-literacy initiatives, those in mid-life receive none.

The New World article ultimately brings attention to a key conclusion: middle-aged people are not a fringe concern in the story of rising extremism, they are increasingly central to it.