Banning Social Media Won’t Solve Teen Misogyny
In this month’s issue of The Evidence newsletter, Josephine Lethbridge discusses the rise of teen misogyny, highlighting the impact of online men’s groups.
Controversial influencer Andrew Tate is commonly regarded the face of the “manosphere,” a loose network of online communities promoting misogynist and anti-feminist views.
Content produced by Tate and similar figures is having a strong effect on younger male viewers. New research has found that female teachers and pupils experience greater levels of discrimination when boys discuss online misogynists at school.
According to a recent survey, 76 percent of secondary school teachers in Britain feel extremely concerned about the influence of online misogyny, with some calling for a smartphone ban for children.
Elsewhere, France and the Netherlands have prohibited smartphone use in schools, while Australia has banned social media for under 16s.
What’s driving teen misogyny?
Netflix’s hit show Adolescence, a four-part drama about a 13-year-old boy accused of murdering a young girl, has intensified debates about children’s exposure to harmful online communities.
Marcus Maloney argues that, although Adolescence invites viewers to think “deeply and systemically” about the “wider sociocultural factors” influencing the rise of teen misogyny, the public response to the show has been “quite bewildering,” with commentators mostly focused on discussing “the evils of social media and Andrew Tate.”
Maloney, an assistant professor at Coventry University’s Research Centre in Postdigital Cultures, believes that “[w]hen it comes to trying to understand the mental wellbeing of youth, there is an enormous overemphasis on social media.”
Discussing his research on men’s advice forums, he reports finding “a lot of lost, broken young men who felt no sense of optimism for the future,” with users “trying to find people to help them make sense” of an uncertain world.
“We are living in a time of deep economic, political, environmental and social flux,” says Maloney, and figures like Andrew Tate offer the comfort of a “concrete and stable” worldview – even if these perspectives are “grim, they are simple and something to anchor to.”
What can we do about it?
For Maloney, tightening restrictions on phone use “can only ever be a sort of ‘whack-a-mole’ end-stage approach to a much deeper and wider issue.”
The key, he argues, is connecting: “We need to take a step back and try to learn more about the young people in our lives. And that’s not as easy as it seems. You have to enter into that honestly and genuinely and as an equal partner.”
Read this month’s full newsletter to learn more about the steps we can take in our communities, in policy, and in our workplaces. An archive of past issues can be accessed through Social Science Space.
