Reflect

Recently, I came across a campaign plastered across billboards in public spaces, claiming unequivocal causal links between children’s phone use and specific mental health conditions. The authority behind the campaign is impressive: an organisation many parents trust, led by someone with impeccable credentials; a real ‘influencer'. Yet every study cited in the campaign is misrepresented or taken out of context.

Elsewhere, a popular podcast doctor secured a double-page spread in a national newspaper, stoking a familiar panic about all ed-tech in schools, screens and social media bans in children’s lives. The result, predictably, is that anxious parents will feel obliged to buy his new book. No doubt it will become a bestseller and later be cited in lobbying campaigns.

It was therefore refreshing to read a review of his work by a leading paediatrician, who wrote: “I mean, you are completely wrong. There is no evidence to support your claims, nor any evidence that the kind of restrictions you propose actually work or are justified. But I suppose you have a brand to promote”.

The truth is that whilst populist and often panicked ideas about just about everything sells, nuanced positions are far less fashionable. One validating moment last week came after a talk where I had scrutinised a well-known commentator’s views on phone bans in schools. A headteacher approached me afterwards to thank me for the ‘challenge’, noting how easy it is for schools to adopt “lazy narratives” about complex topics. Nuance takes time to navigate. The job of researchers who genuinely care about children is to sift through evidence, read widely, triangulate findings and ask difficult questions.

The problem doesn’t stop with public campaigns or newspaper columns. It extends into the digital environments our children and young people are navigating daily, where influencers, self-appointed thought leaders and powerful algorithms funnel content directly to their screens, a portion of which is harmful and even dangerous.

Heck, if grown-ups with credentials, platforms and power can’t reliably sift fact from misinformation, what chance do our young people have of doing any better?

Motivate

Within this landscape, deeply misogynistic content is repackaged by young male influencers as self-improvement advice. As illustrated by the programme, health tips, entrepreneurial ambition and “get rich quick” lifestyle coaching are presented across social media and on platforms such as Telegram, TikTok and YouTube, as genuine guidance for boys. As I watched the programme, at times the content felt almost comical in its bravado. At other moments, it was disturbing enough to leave you with your head firmly in your hands, wondering why the police have not been called. After one live act of criminal assault, filmed for followers, eventually, they were.

Viewed through the lens of parenting and education, the programme felt almost like “rage-bait” (to borrow my teenage son’s phrase) for anyone who believes in kindness, inclusion, gender equity and the inherent goodness of boys and men. What the documentary exposes most compellingly is the logic of the attention economy itself: a digital environment in which the most extreme, provocative and unsettling voices rise fastest.

If many adults are still trying to decode the attention economy, it is hardly surprising that young people can find themselves pulled into it. How are young boys meant to make sense of this content, these amplified voices that can so easily pour into their feeds?

What the programme hints at, but never fully explores, is why some of the misogynistic messages resonate with some young men in the first place. Recent research suggests that a growing proportion of Gen Z men endorse traditional gender hierarchies compared with older cohorts. In a world that often feels uncertain, confusing and competitive, narratives of strength, authority and certainty may gain more appeal.

The ‘manosphere’ taps into many contemporary anxieties. It argues boys and men are overlooked, undervalued and misunderstood. It promotes a version of masculinity rooted in emotional stoicism, material success and physical dominance. Vulnerability is framed entirely as weakness, while women are positioned as both inferior and in need of protection (perhaps from men like themselves!).

In centuries past, snake oil merchants stood on street corners selling miracle cures to desperate crowds. Today, our young people are sold worldviews through digital media that risk harming their sense of self, draining money they do not have and, in some cases, fuelling hostility towards others. These modern digital merchants thrive on loneliness, insecurity, trauma and isolation.

But if this ecosystem tells us anything, it is that young people are searching for belonging, meaning and guidance. Theroux’s programme underlines the urgent need for parents, educators and trusted adults to remember they have a powerful role to play in helping children and young people make sense of the world around them and critically evaluate the veracity of information and the motivation behind those that seek to influence them.

Support

For some boys, the absence of positive male role models, mentors or father figures can leave gaps that others are quick to fill. How else are they meant to learn what manhood entails? A boy may love his mum and sisters deeply, but there are things he might struggle to say to them. He might worry that being surrounded by women makes him look weak in front of peers. He might feel confused about where his father is, or why he does not seem to care.

When a confident and (seemingly stinking rich) young man appears on a digital screen, acknowledging your feelings, giving you a clear framework to become a man of ‘value’, and promising that material success and respect are all within reach, it can be deeply compelling. Suddenly someone seems to get you. Answers appear to exist for complex emotions and complicated lives.

Manosphere influencers are also quick to explain who is to blame for your and the world’s problems (explanations that often dehumanise other people) and they reassure followers that there is safety in numbers.

Last week, a neighbour’s nine year old son stopped by on his way home from a school rugby match. He was muddy and wonderfully cheerful. When I invited him in, he politely declined because he did not want to get my floor dirty. So, we sat on the doorstep eating jellybeans instead. He told me proudly that he now plays both contact and tag rugby and that he is the third fastest in his class. He told me about his cat, his grandad’s new car and a wasp he had seen on a wall. When he left, he instinctively reached for his dad’s hand.

It struck me how normal and healthy his desires were. He wanted to be strong, to play well, run fast, impress his friends and to feel like somebody. Yet he was also completely comfortable holding his dad’s hand as he walked away. You could tell he felt loved, secure and comfortable in himself. The question is how we sustain that. How do we help boys hold onto that balance between ambition and kindness, confidence and connection, as they grow older and begin navigating digital worlds that actively devalue those qualities?

Protective factors matter. Loving our boys well. Talking early about respect and gender equity. Giving them the vocabulary to describe their emotions and safe spaces to express them. Introducing them to healthy versions of masculinity through everyday people or appropriate role models. Helping them develop digital discernment and anchoring them in family values where respect and responsibility are celebrated. These things matter long before adolescence, long before phone acquisition, and long before algorithms begin making content suggestions.

Some of you might be reading this and have older teens. Ask them if they have heard of Theroux’s programme, rather than suggest they watch it. Be mindful that despite its age rating of 15, some of the content is truly vile, (for example one of the young men shows Theroux a video he has made of a woman in a nightclub toilet having sex with him that he has posted online), to which Theroux asks: “Did she consent to that being filmed and posted?”

Be prepared to hold onto your seat, like I did, when you discover your own teens are not only familiar with those featured in the programme but can easily update you on other influencers that are popular in playgrounds and on university campuses. Try to listen with care and curiosity, whilst gently exploring some of the values that characterise the manosphere and actively comparing those to what we espouse within our own families.

When I started talking about my reactions to the programme with my 19-year-old, our conversation wandered in interesting directions. We talked about dating norms (who pays for what and why), where young people learn how to treat partners, and why ideas like “looksmaxxing” even exist and gain popularity. We discussed a terrific blog on the business model of the manosphere and its overlap with extreme political ideologies.

Something my son and I agreed on, is that boys themselves are not ‘the problem’; and that we should applaud curiosity, ambition and the desire to find one’s place in the world. Wanting to succeed, to be strong, to stand out or to achieve something meaningful with our lives are healthy aspirations. However, they should never come at the expense of hurting oneself or others.

It is worth remembering that most boys and young men do not hold the views expressed across the manosphere. Secondly, parents and educators are still the most powerful, early influencers in children’s lives. There is a pressing need to stay interested about the digital worlds young people inhabit. We need to actively encourage our children to question narratives that sound too certain, too simplistic or too good to be true.

All children, right from the get-go, need to be enveloped in love, given opportunities to feel capable and competent and steeped in positive family values and family systems that model gender equity and that celebrate the strengths and capabilities of all.

Current narratives in the media suggest that global bans on phones, social media or even new laws governing tech companies will shield young people from most forms of harm. Perhaps they will help. But history suggests that when one digital door closes, curious minds simply find another to open. Regulation will always struggle to keep pace with a landscape that reinvents itself overnight.

What protects young people far more reliably is something older and less technological: strong relationships, thoughtful conversation and adults who are willing to lean in rather than look away. The grifters will always be there. They always have been. What matters is that our children know where the real guidance lives when they (hopefully) go looking for it.