Youth Board member Lorena reflects on Inside the Manosphere and the real-life impact content creators can have on boys and young men.
In March 2026, a study found that almost a third of Gen Z men agreed with the idea that a wife should obey her husband, and a third of the same group agreed that a husband should have the final word on important decisions.
On Wednesday 11th March 2026, Louis Theroux released his documentary Inside the Manosphere. For some, the documentary is a first introduction to the extent to which violent misogynistic content is shared and revered in corners of the internet. It also demonstrates exactly how so many Gen Z men have ended up agreeing with statements like this.
The ‘Manosphere’ is defined as ‘a loose network of communities that claim to address men’s struggles… but often promote harmful advice and attitudes’. In these online spaces, there is a push for rigid and often aggressive ideas of what it means to be a ‘real man’. While Theroux captures the extreme depths of the Manosphere, the documentary fails to explain how young boys and men fall into this echo-chamber.
In ‘Recommending Toxicity’, researchers found that YouTube Shorts and TikTok algorithms push ‘Manosphere’ content to new man-identified accounts, which haven’t sought out this content. Additionally, ‘Safer Scrolling’ found that it only takes around five days of TikTok usage before there is a fourfold increase of misogynistic content being presented to users on the ‘For You’ page.
When ‘Manosphere’ content starts appearing for young boys and men, it doesn’t always start with the most extreme videos – it often starts as memes, entertainment or lifestyle content framed through the language of ‘self-help’. Then, this content slowly introduces misogynistic rhetoric about gender, taking advantage of the absence of positive male role models, until the content becomes increasingly extreme, influencing how young boys and men view the world around them and, more specifically, how they view and treat women and girls.
The ‘Manosphere’ isn’t limited to the online world – we are seeing its effects in real life. Through interviews with young people and members of staff, these misogynistic ideologies are becoming commonplace in schools and embedded into the daily lives of young boys and men. At the same time, we are seeing the effects on young women and girls, with 77% of women and girls aged 7 to 21 reporting experiences of online harm. Not only this, we are currently in an ‘epidemic of violence against women and girls’, with VAWG affecting one in twelve women across England and Wales.
While things may seem worse than ever, the release of Inside the Manosphere has forced the conversation of misogyny, online harm and VAWG into the limelight. The documentary demonstrates the undeniable impact that the manosphere’s content creators have on young men and boys – the next step is to create spaces for young people to discuss difficult themes. We need to provide young people with the tools to think critically about the content they view online, whilst also providing an understanding of what healthy relationships should look like and challenge misogynistic understandings of gender.
