This certainly evokes the anxieties of parenting, where the weight of responsibility seems out of proportion to the modicum of control.

> “All I wanted was for people to take me seriously,” he repeated matter-of-factly. “They treated me like a rational human being, and they never laughed at me.”

This feels very key: If someone is hurting, that's a real hurt even if they're blaming the wrong people or seeking a false solution.

> how expertly extremists have leveraged the web to prey on young people who are depressed

There's a particular episode from a long-form Youtube series on this: "How to radicalize a normie" [0].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P55t6eryY3g