What parents need to know about the manosphere

Until recently, I hadn’t heard of the term ‘manosphere’. There’s always something new emerging online, right? While ignorance is said to be bliss, it's not that helpful if you're a parent hoping to guide your kids through the complex and sometimes volatile digital spaces they live in.

At Parenting Place, we hold to the theory that knowledge is power. We’re parents too; we feel the challenges, and we’ve seen how valuable it is to stay connected to our kids and in touch with the world they live in. While we won’t ever presume to have all the answers or claim any kind of authority status, we do aim to empower parents with helpful information, useful resources and relevant parenting strategies.

So here are a few insights that will hopefully shed light on ‘manosphere’ as a concept – what it is, why our young people might know more about it than we do, and how we can help them navigate this particularly tricky patch of online terrain.

Basically, the manosphere is a network of communities that create and distribute content promoting masculinity and opposing feminism. Think social media influencers, websites, blogs and online forums; different voices united in the belief that feminism has influenced society to be biased towards women.

While the topics floating around on the manosphere might include health and fitness, finance and sport, much of the content shared under the guise of ‘self-help’ is unhealthy and harmful. Manosphere content regularly trivialises hateful ideas and perpetuates toxic masculinity and misogyny. Misinformation and pseudoscience are common threads. The manosphere also has its own language and uses insider jargon to fuel rivalry between men and hatred towards women.

As negative as that all sounds for females, harm also abounds for males, especially young men and boys whose insecurity is preyed upon. Manosphere influencers promote unrealistic and unattainable ‘ideals’ for men, thus contributing to poor self-esteem and mental health concerns for our vulnerable young people.

Even if our boys aren’t actively seeking this content, social media algorithms can guide them toward it without them even realising. A simple curiosity about a fitness trend or sports influencer can unintentionally lead to increasingly problematic or extreme content.

Because of its subtle yet persistent influence, the manosphere has the potential to quietly shape our boys’ views on masculinity. Its ideas often slip unnoticed into pop culture and conversations at school. This makes it especially important for parents to stay engaged, ask thoughtful questions, and help their boys develop critical thinking skills about what they encounter online.

As parents, we have a crucial role in helping our children and teens to develop critical thinking about what they are consuming via all media platforms. Young people do not want to hear lectures; it is far more powerful to be asking good questions, listening to our kids and helping them to think through implications.

So, what can we do?

Our influence as parents is only as strong as our relationship with our kids, especially during the teen years. So, keep spending time with your teenagers, keep having fun with them and keep talking to them.

Honesty and vulnerability are powerful as we foster connection with our teens. Because let’s face it, we parents aren’t immune either! Social media can influence us too, so sharing our own experiences with our kids can create great opportunities for connection and learning together. We don’t want to shame our teens for being intrigued by the online world – it’s designed to draw us in. Instead, we want to acknowledge that unhealthy online habits and harmful content can affect all of us, not just them.

It’s vitally important to stay involved when our children and teens are online.

Establish and maintain your family’s boundaries for tech use and stick with them – even when your kids have friends over and it’s tempting to be the ‘cool’ parent (actually, especially then!). For example:

• Balance device time with screen-free hangouts when friends are over, so everyone gets the best of both worlds

• Screens stay public - no devices in bedrooms or bathrooms

• Making sure life is balanced with space for time outdoors/doing something physical

• Challenge yourselves as a family to have windows of ‘no device time’, between 3 and 5pm each day, for example.

• And if your teen shares a funny meme with you, consider yourself connected! And don’t forget to send them something cringy and probably “soooo old” in reply.

When confronted with something, well, confronting, it’s tempting to jump straight to accusations and follow-up with lectures. We might also be tempted to shut things down and avoid certain topics altogether. Instead, we need to be curious and open. We need to make gentle inquiries (not interrogate!), and we need to listen.

Expressing to your teen your concerns for their safety, well-being and mental health is more effective than arguing that something is right or wrong. Teens are interested in protecting their own well-being too but less interested in long explanations of our values.

Talking about everything, not just the big issues, builds trust in relationships. And a topic like the manosphere isn’t one big talk — it’s about lots of small, consistent conversations.

Here are some conversation starters and important things to chat about:

• ALGORITHMS: Algorithms are powerful. It’s important we’re all aware of how they work, and how we can curate our own feed to make sure that we are seeing stuff that is uplifting and helpful for our mental health.
  You could make the comment to your teen: “Wow, the algorithm on Instagram is so powerful – I just slowed once over a picture of Fiji and now they are showing me ads for tropical islands every ten seconds! Have you noticed this happening on your feeds?”

• INFLUENCERS: Ask your young people who they are engaging with and who they are following on social media platforms. We really want our tone to be curious, not accusatory. This might sound like: “What content do you enjoy on socials? Are there any influencers you love following? What do you like about them? Who do your friends follow? Why do you think Andrew Tate is so well-known? Conversations like this help young people develop their own filter for what’s healthy and what’s harmful. Ideally, we want to give our boys the skills to think critically, to follow a variety of content in their feed and lean to more positive male role models.

• UNFOLLOWING: Influencers change and it's okay to let go of things that no longer feel right to you. Encourage the unfollow! Remind your kids that if things are getting them down, it’s more than okay to unfollow accounts and block content. We’d do well to model this in our own social media activity; do a ‘spring clean’ from time to time and reduce the clutter and noise in our own scrolling.

It’s a scary world out there, for sure, but fear-based action will only get us so far – and can actually just defer the problem. We should absolutely be proactive in protecting our kids and helping them navigate an increasingly complex online world. But at the same time, we can also shine a spotlight on things that are good in the world.

Let’s introduce our kids to positive role models IRL (in real life) and online, show them what healthy relationships look like, and highlight selflessness whenever we see it. Let’s show our sons and daughters that respect, kindness and strength go hand in hand.

Despite the spelling, the manosphere is not a male issue. It’s a human issue. We can all take action here. There’s a dehumanising element to any online behaviour – behind a screen we can forget how to treat people. As parents, we have the privileged (and hefty!) task of teaching our children how to conduct themselves well – online and offline. Let’s show them what is good about humanity and celebrate the beauty of looking after each other.

And let’s celebrate our boys! They’re smart, they’re thoughtful, they’re awesome – especially when they have significant adults in their lives committed to seeing them flourish.