Helping Teenage Boys Navigate the Manosphere BUILDING HEALTHY MEN:
WRITTEN BY MARTIN COUL
Teenage boys are growing up amid contradictory messages about what it means to be a man. They are encouraged to express their emotions, yet may still discover that vulnerability carries a social cost. At the same time, online voices offer rigid rules about strength, status, relationships and success. For boys in international-school communities, relocation, changing friendship groups and differing cultural expectations may add another layer of uncertainty. Online communities can provide continuity and belonging when much else feels unsettled. For parents and educators, warning boys about harmful influencers is only part of the answer. We also need to understand what they are searching for and offer them something healthier in its place. What is drawing boys in? Louis Theroux’s Netflix documentary, Inside the Manosphere , examines the ultra-
masculine influencers shaping ideas about masculinity, including among teenage boys. Some of their content is provocative, misogynistic or deliberately extreme. But focusing only on the personalities risks overlooking why their messages find an audience.
boys that they will become worthy only after transforming themselves.
THE EARLIER THE DOORWAY OPENS
Research from the University of Milano-Bicocca involving more than 5,000 pupils in northern
The manosphere offers apparent certainty. It provides rules about
Italy found that children who opened social-media accounts during their early lower-secondary years performed less well in later standardised tests than those who waited until around 14 or 15. By age 16, when many international- school students are completing the Middle Years Programme or preparing for the IB Diploma Programme, the difference in mathematics and Italian was equivalent to approximately six months of schooling. The study found an association rather than proving that social media directly caused the difference. Even so, habitual checking during lessons, homework and
confidence, relationships, money, respect and avoiding weakness. For a boy struggling with rejection, appearance, status or belonging, those answers can feel reassuring even when they are harmful. This was explored in A Good Man , the opening episode of Season 2 of my podcast, The Hushed . George spoke about the feeling of not being good enough as a core wound carried by many boys and men. The manosphere can appear to offer a cure: become stronger, richer, tougher, more desirable and more powerful. Yet it may deepen the original wound by teaching
INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL PARENT AUTUMN 2026 | 28
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