Speaker 1you've heard of the manosphere it's that andrew tate isn't it and the television program adolescence it's so extreme it's hard to relate to and so far removed from what you see at home with your son you know it's something you need to be vigilant of and maybe you ought to have conversations about and haven't yet because you're not quite sure what you're supposed to say how best to say it so for now it stayed on the back burner on your future to-do list this episode is not about alarming statistics although there are some we ought to be familiar with nor about worrying the heebie-jeebies out of you instead we will look at the picture as a whole the language which arrives in the playground long before your child has access to a device the attitudes which travel through peers group chats older cousins and then eventually the online world where everything is amplified armed with the landscape and the language i will then get super practical about what you can do at every age and stage to raise both sons and daughters you can recognize all of it push back on it and never join in with it five tips specific guidance from five years old to 18 let's go hello how are you feeling today how's it being one of those days where you're hoping a little bit of mary hann in the ear will be helpful or actually are you feeling like you're acing this whole parenting gig i oscillate between the two and sometimes feel like i'm just brilliant and other times just awful and i need to consult with friends so i hope that you find this helpful and i've really thought long and hard about how to create an episode which really speaks to the context i think that we need as parents whilst also and the real like the reality whilst also being super practical it's one area that i'm being asked to talk about in schools increasingly more and more in recent times so i felt like it was time to do an episode on it so i guess i want to start with what is the manosphere and what does it actually look like and i think when most parents hear the word misogyny they picture something obvious deliberate the kind of thing that they want to hear about the thing a child could surely spot a mile off the reality is it's much quieter and often much more dangerous for that the manosphere is a loose online i guess ecosystem of content creators and communities that are built around the idea that women have too much power that boys and men are under attack and that traditional male dominance is in fact strength now you will have heard of andrew tate he's one of the most visible faces but he is by far from alone and the ecosystem is much wider than any single creator now here is where it starts and this part matters for how we respond it almost never begins with hatred it begins with content which is genuinely appealing to young men financial advice confidence self-improvement how to be the man you want to be boys who feel unseen unsure uncertain or slightly adrift are natural audiences for a voice that says i see you here is how to step into your strength and the algorithm walks them from there stepwise gradually into content which blames women for their struggles frames vulnerability as weakness and offers belonging in exchange for contempt and the attitudes do not stay on screens in my work with schools i have watched them move in corridors the word simp which polices boys who are kind to or defend girls rating girls in group chats comments about what girls should not be able to do or say jokes eye rolls the kind of thing a 10 year old calls banter now i'm going to be caveat that because in some cases banter is still seen in ways that is not necessarily misogynistic but it often has the guise of banter and the kind of thing a girl in the same corridor absorbs as information about her worth now the girl guidings 2025 research found that 32 percent of girls aged 7 to 10 had been made uncomfortable by boys comments 17 percent heard boys regularly comment on their bodies yeah and that is primary age we're talking 7 to 10 so we're talking year two all the way up to year five you know this is long before any algorithm is meaningfully involved this is what they're experiencing at primary school before they've got devices and the wall of words already in our children's lives the question is whether we have equipped them to name it navigate it and refuse to participate it now this is where i want to provide some data which is going to be startling but i think it's a really important thing so a yougov survey found that 60 percent of boys aged 6 to 15 had heard of andrew tate doesn't necessarily seem majorly surprising seeing as we don't have the news and we may even be talking about it the next statistic though i think is interesting because one in six rated him positively yeah sit with that six for a moment one in six rated him positively vodafone and the nspcc research found that 69 percent of boys age 11 to 14 had been exposed to misogynistic influencer content most of it uninvited arriving through innocent searches and content which found them rather than the other way around the 11 to 14 window is peak exposure and it maps almost exactly onto the years most children move into secondary school and they're navigating who they are and how they compare to their peers and you know what are their strengths what does it mean to be male so here is the mechanism which matters in research from dublin city university the nspcc research found that 60 percent of boys aged 6 to 15 had been exposed to misogynistic influencer content most of it registered as teenage boys were set up and simply left to scroll no searches no follows misogynistic content arrived within 23 minutes on every account within two to three hours around three quarters 75 percent of everything the algorithm was recommending was content telling boys that women are inferior and that they are inferior and that they are inferior and that they are that anger is strength and that the world owes them something your child does not have to go looking the content has learned how to find them first and offcom's 2026 figures found that 73 percent of children aged 11 to 17 had encountered potentially harmful content in the past month over a third simply by scrolling and school leaders surveyed by university college london described the tropes moving off screens and into the school playground school building and the corridor and the algorithm are the same pipeline so that's the data that whilst it sounds unpleasant to hear i think is an important part particularly where we may well be sitting on the fence or it's on our future to-do list and that helps us see that actually the way that we begin to have conversation so this is not about panicking you because i'm going to give you some tips for every single one of you who are watching this video and i'm going to give you some tips for every single one of you who are every single age and stage regardless of how old your child is i just think it's really important that we understand the actual data because i having even working in the industry was gobsmacked if i'm being brutally honest about the the data it's a it surprised even me okay and here is the insight which sort of changes everything about how we respond rather than responding from that place of fear is that boys are drawn to this content because it meets a real need not because they are broken not because we have failed them because the content is designed brilliantly and ruthlessly to find the gap between what a boy genuinely needs and what the adults around him are providing so think about what that content offers a clear identity as a man belonging certainty the feeling of being seen by someone in a world that has been telling boys for years that their energy and their boisterousness and their strength so that you know their energy is a problem their strength is a liability and their struggles deserve less airtime than everyone else's when parents come to me and say my son is getting drawn into this content i stop them at how do we stop him watching it because that's the fine lens yep we've got a problem immediately in front of me how do i deal with that problem and fix that problem because tomorrow is only going to serve up the same problem the wide lens instead are different question, what is he searching for? in that content? Or what is the content he's consuming, which could be better met ourselves? So what is the gap in his world right now? The belonging, the mastery, the genuine sense of being seen that something harmful has volunteered to fill. Yeah, so a boy whose bucket is full at home is very difficult to recruit. The anecdote to the manosphere is not censorship, it's competition. So I'm going to share now my five practical top tips and how we can implement these in the different ages and stages. So number one, inoculate, don't just warn. The most protective conversation that we can have with our son is not this content is bad. It is showing him how the machine works before or as he encounters it. So the script that I use with parents is, you can say something along these lines. Some creators online make money by making boys and young men angry at women. Want to see how the trick works? That framing does something very specific. It makes your son the analyst, not the target. It attacks the machinery rather than the content. And teenagers hate being manipulated far more than they hate being wrong. A boy who has been shown the trick feels patronized by the content, not recruited by it. So explain the pipeline. It never starts with hatred, gym content, money tips, confidence. The algorithm slides him towards grievance gradually, step by step. The person at the end gets richer off his anger. And it's worth saying that plainly. So Dublin University, the 23 minute study is one I actively share with children. Teenagers will repeat it to each other. And a statistic a young person tells their mates is worth 10 times more than what comes from us as parents. So what can we do at different ages and stages? Now, remember that I'm giving you broad ages and stages. Really think about where is your child developmentally and what have you already done? So between the ages of about five and nine, there's no need for the word misogyny. Build the immune system through fairness lived daily. In our family, everyone gets a go. Everyone matters the same. When playground language arrives, girls can't, for example, correct it calmly. Anchor it to someone real they know, a woman within your family, and then move on. It's brief, it's warm, it's done. No lecture, no alarm. As we move up, so now we're looking at our nine to 13 year olds, name it directly. I've noticed that word. Do you know what it actually means? Define it matter-of-factly at their level. Calm is the message. Alarm teaches concealment. Introduce the algorithm as a machine designed to make them feel a certain way, and then ask, how does it know what to serve you? So that they can then contemplate how that might happen, and you could have an informed discussion. As we move up and our children are hitting 13 plus, we want to debate rather than lecture. The plant is, who benefits from me believing this? Because that attacks the machinery rather than the content, which triggers analysis rather than defense. Pushback at the dinner table is engagement. A teenager test driving a line in front of you is processing out loud, which is infinitely safer than doing it online with an algorithm. So welcome to the pushback and stay curious. Tip two, little and often not the big talk. Retire the idea of the conversation. We need to have a conversation with Fred about. The one you have been preparing for, bracing yourself probably for, and being slightly trepidatious about. The one where you sit down and cover everything properly. It will not go the way you imagine, and waiting for it means the silence in the meantime is where the damage is being done. What works is 60 seconds in the car. Like 200 times, rather than this one big one. Boys talk sideways, not face-to-face, not at a kitchen table summit, not when they know that the topic is coming. They talk when they are doing something else, when there is no eye contact, when the pressure is off, and car journeys are gold, or a walk, or washing up, or kicking a ball. Anything that is sideways, find that moment and show up in it. Three things that make these conversations work at any age is that you go first, share your own observations. I have noticed that. Something that bothered you, a small story from the day. Children talk when they see that talking about the texture of ordinary life is what adults do. The second is be curious rather than interrogating. Yeah, interesting. Where is that from? Keep a door open. I would just encourage you to do a little bit of reflection and a little bit of personal auditing because quite often when I talk to young people, and I've talked to their parents as well, a parent may perceive that the way that they're having conversations is coming from a place of curiosity. And when I speak to the young person, they find it as interrogation. So just be really mindful. And I guess the adage is less is definitely more. And remember, clunky beats silent. The only conversation which fails entirely is one that never happens rather than a clunky, difficult conversation. Now, by age, let's think about this. So between five to nine-year-olds, we want to notice things out loud together. A television advert, a moment in a film, a story. That seems a bit odd, doesn't it? Low stakes, no right answer required. You are building the habit of noticing things together. As your children get older, so we're now looking at nine to 13, name what is already in their world without making it a tribunal. Genuine curiosity. No lecture preloaded at the end of the sentence. I've seen a few boys doing that thing where they rate girls in a list. What does that feel like from the inside? And then listen to the answer rather than putting forward what you think is happening instead. As they get older, 13 plus, the fridge question becomes a life skill. Who benefits from me believing this? Teach them to be analysts of what they consume. A young person who can do this with misogynistic content can do it with everything. And that is, you know, the reason why I call it a fridge question is it's that question that you have on the fridge that you remember to ask on a regular basis. That's tip two. Tip three, reconnect first, then navigate. Now, here is the uncomfortable truth about every piece of advice in this episode. It only works if your child is actually talking to you. Yeah. If you have a son or teenager who has pulled away and that's part of the whole rubber band is they're like flexing that pulling away from us and coming back. And many of them do because pulling away is part of the job description of adolescence. And part of our role as parents is to help them begin to ping away from us. Then the first move on misogyny is to pull away from us. Misogyny is not actually about misogyny at all. It is turning up at the gaming chair with two drinks and asking who's winning. For example, we need that reconnection first before we begin with any other content because it will land so much better. Two weeks of that reconnection, zero agenda, sit next to him, ask him to show you the game or whatever it is that he spends time with. Watch his program without commentary. Drive him somewhere with no questions. Show up for the snack, the joke, the nothing conversation. Predictable warmth is what reopens closed doors. And I would recommend that if, you know, if for you actually the reconnection has to come first is invest time in that reconnection a little bit longer than you think. You may think, okay, we've got this connection. Just give it a little bit longer. Maybe give it another two or three days or a week. If you reconnect and that reconnection is still quite fragile and then you launch into big conversations or even small conversations, what happens is in lots of ways, which goes back to that whole point of children not wanting to feel manipulated, your team may well feel manipulated. And then you create the wrong foundations on which to then have future conversation. The no ambush rule. Never convert a good moment into a the conversation or a conversation. Once they learn that warmth precedes agenda, they will refuse the warmth in future. Topics come later sideways on their clock and go first. Share your own mistakes, your own struggles, your own moments of asking for help. So self-disclosure is the price of theirs. And a teenager who has watched the parents say, I was wrong about that, or I called a friend today because I was struggling, has the model in their bones before. they need it. How does this look in terms of different ages? Well, for five to nine, connection looks like real jobs in the house, one-to-one time entirely in their world. And the proud question at the end of the day, yeah, remember, if you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you'd have heard this on a bucket emptying episode about the different questions to ask our children after school. What made you proud today? Not how was your day? Because that gets a shrug. How was your day? All right. But what made you proud is a two-minute daily habit, two minutes most days, maybe even starting tonight, you go first, and it builds that connection, but also that reflection. Between nine and 13, we want to strengthen the relationship before the hard conversations start arriving. The repair after a round matters enormously here. 10 seconds. I'm sorry, I handled that badly. That's the fastest bridge rebuilder there is, and it models exactly what you need them to do when they get it wrong. And as we move to our 13 plus, it's the lift that we give them with no questions. Maybe the text that says, thinking of you, taking the night shift gladly. The teenager who appears at 10 o'clock wanting to talk is giving you something rare. Show up for it without an agenda. Tip four, teach the five rungs. Not just call it out. Now, call it out is the advice every child has already been given. Yeah? Call it out when you hear it, you know, in a real corridor or in a real group chat. And that is sometimes exactly right, but it is only one option of the multiple options on a ladder, not the whole ladder. And a child taught only to call it out either performs unsafe heroics or concludes that they're a coward. A child who has decided they are a coward will stop trying altogether. Courage has more than one shape. So here are the five rungs, bottom to top. And the rule is simple. Take the highest rung that is safe in that moment. Some days that rung is four, some days it's one. Every single rung is legitimate. So this is what we're sort of encouraging. These are the tools that we're giving our young people in those moments where they see misogyny in the corridor. On text messages, in conversations. So rung one, don't join in. No laugh, no share, no forward. This one is always safe and never nothing. The joke with no audience dies. For the quiet child who has never spoken up in a crowd, rung one is not a failing, it's a circuit breaker. So at that level, just simply don't participate. Rung two is leave. It's like the unremarkable, exit. Mute the chat. Got to go. Drift away from the group. It's a move, not a retreat. Rung three, support the person that has been targeted. Quietly, afterwards. Yeah, that was not okay. You all right? It changes her whole day and it builds exactly the kind of male alliance which matters more than any public speech. Rung four, say something small. Not a speech, a token. Not fundamentalism. Peer norms research shows that one visible dissenter recalibrates a group's sense of what is normal because most people in that group were already uncomfortable and silent. The dissenter does not change minds, they simply reveal them. And rung five, tell an adult. The senior rung, the one most children have been taught to associate with grassing, rename it plainly. Telling to get someone into trouble is grassing. Telling to get someone out of danger is what adults do. Now, by age, for our younger five to nine-year-olds, we just simply want to help them practice rung one explicitly. If someone says something unfair and you are not sure what to say, you do not have to say anything, but you do not laugh. And if your friend looks upset, you check on them afterwards. That is already doing some good. Now, for our nine to 13-year-olds, we want to build the ladder together using, hypothetical. So not real incidents that put them on the spot. Hypothetical. So someone rates a girl in the group chat out of 10. Walk me through your options. Let them build the rungs. Options that they have themselves authored or practice are options they will use. With our 13 plus, we want to use scenarios, maybe from the news, a show, sport. Fiction here is the flight simulator. There is no spotlight on any one specific that they know. Then the group chat rule. Nothing in a message you could not hear read out in assembly. This protects boys as much as girls. Screenshots have ended school careers. Tip number five, build what they are searching for at home. Now, I said earlier that the antidote to the manosphere is competition. And here is what that competition looks like in practice. Boys and young men are drawn to this content because they are searching for three things. A sense of belonging, a sense of mastery, and a sense of being seen. Our job is to make our home the richest source of all three before anyone else gets there first. Belonging. Curate the village. As boys approach adolescence, they look for role models beyond the family. This is not rejection of you or your partner. The only question is who fills the vacancy. Leave it open and the algorithm is waiting with confident, charismatic men who have a great deal of time for your son and very clear ideas about what he should become. The practical version, name two men you would be proud for your son to become, then engineer more time with them. An uncle, a coach, a scout leader, the neighbor with a workshop, men with stories, values, and time. Men close enough to the lens through which your son sees himself that he genuinely imagines himself in them. Mastery. Make sure there is somewhere in his life where he genuinely feels, I'm good at this. The content of the mastery is totally irrelevant. Cooking, an instrument, chess, a garden, code, whatever it is, real confidence is not being told he is brilliant. It is the lived experience. I could not do this. I worked at it. Now I can. Every complicated situation is evidence in his internal case file that he is someone who can learn things and do difficult things. No influencer can offer that to a boy who has already lived it. And then that final one, BC, being seen, the proud question every day. Teach him to notice. To be the narrator of his own wins. A boy who is his own source of self-worth does not need a stranger on the internet to tell him who he is. Now for our five to nine-year-old, the proud question starts now. Simplify it. What did you do today that felt good? Help him find it at first, then step back and let him own it. Two minutes, most days, the power is entirely in the regularity of asking. The question. Nine to 13-year-olds, we want to strengthen the village. Ask him to teach you something he is getting good at. Be genuinely curious, no agenda. Let him be the expert in your presence and make time with other men visible and easy. It should not feel like an arrangement. And for our 13-year-olds, the young man who walks out of your house with, who benefits from me believing this, genuinely in his bones can apply it, to everything. Misogyny, politics, advertising, the lot. That is the wide lens made permanent. That is the long game. Now, how this looks like broadly in terms of our different ages is, with our younger children, the work that we're doing now is building the immune system, fairness as a lived daily norm, emotional vocabulary with sons and daughters both, name feelings out loud from the time they are small, a calm, brief correction when playground language arrives, anchored to someone real you know, and the proud question starts today. You're laying foundation when the stakes are low and you're still the loudest voice in their room. Primary and lower secondary, so our nine to 13-year-olds, we want to name it. We want to name them, we want to name them, we want to name them, we want to name them, we want to name them, peak exposure window. Do not wait for them to come to you. Conversations in the car, hypotheticals at the dinner table, genuine curiosity about what they watch. Introduce the algorithm as a machine that serves content to make them feel a certain way and ask, how does it know what to serve you? The co-designed screen reset, where devices live, when they go away, decided together, not imposed from above. And with our older teens, 13 plus, that fridge question, the debate welcomed rather than silence. Pushback is received without escalation. A teenager arguing a point at the dinner table is processing with you, not against you. The village of role models deliberately engineered and the repair after rouse because rouse happen more at this age and repairs matter most. The 10 seconds it takes to say, I handled that badly, I'm so sorry, opens more doors than any conversation about the manosphere ever will. Now, a note here, if your child is autistic or ADHD or processing the world in ways which make social navigation harder, the same principles apply and the need is probably greater rather than smaller. Autistic people in particular can be drawn to online communities because they offer belonging without the unpredictability of an in-person social interaction. Content which provides clear rules about identity, even harmful rules, can feel compelling to a young person who finds the social world genuinely ambiguous. The adaptations, be more explicit not less, name the spectrum of misogyny in direct language. The inoculation conversation works especially well because it is logical. Here is the trick, here is the mechanism, here is the way it is designed to manipulate you. Build the five rungs as a pre-prepared script rather than asking them to be able to improvise in the moment. And the proud question, simplified and made into a daily ritual, predictability is protective. Now, here is what I want you to take from today. Your son does not need to be any particular kind of boy with any particular relationship to screens or any particular amount of risk in his life for this to matter. The attitudes are already in the playground. The content is designed to find him online and the things which protect him are not a ban or a filter or a single brave conversation. They are the daily, ordinary, unglamorous work of making sure he belongs at your table. Problems repeat, skills compound. A boy whose real self is seen and valued at home, who has places in his life that are not his own, is a boy whose real self is seen and valued at home, who has places in his life where he is genuinely good at things, who knows that the difficult things are safe to bring to you, that boy is a very difficult recruit. Not because he's naive, because he's already full. If this episode has landed for you, then please think about sharing it with another parent. The most important number we have is the download and there are a lot of families who need this conversation today. I'll see you next week. I'll see you next week.
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