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Amid mounting evidence to suggest that men and boys are being pushed violent and misogynistic content online – without deliberately searching for or engaging with it – many fear that this unregulated far-right radicalisation is increasingly turning them against women and girls.
On Monday, BBC Panorama released a new documentary.
Titled ‘Can We Live Without Our Phones?’, it investigates what happens when children lose access to their mobile devices for a week.
Coming at a time when widely proposed school smartphone bans are sparking outrage across Europe and MPs are urging one for under-16s in the UK, Marianna Spring spoke to parents, teachers, and social media company insiders to uncover whether the content pushed to their feeds is harming them.
Sadly, but also somewhat unsurprisingly, the findings are deeply troubling.
They suggest that men and boys are being pushed violent and misogynistic content online – without deliberately searching for or engaging with it.
This has raised questions about the role of algorithms in perpetuating the far-right radicalisation of men and boys and has many fearing that if it remains unregulated, more will be turned against women and girls.
‘It stains your brain’: How social media algorithms show violence to boys https://t.co/AvdcsmzOUZ
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) September 2, 2024
‘When we scroll through his Instagram Reels, they include an image making light of domestic violence. It shows two characters side by side, one of whom has bruises, with the caption: “My Love Language”.’
‘Another shows a person being run over by a lorry,’ reports the BBC on Cai, an 18-year-old who’s recently become aware – not to mention concerned – of how frequently disturbing material appears on the various platforms he uses daily.
It isn’t just Cai, however. Upon learning of the situation’s increasing severity, I shared my distress over its potential impacts with my 29-year-old colleague, who quickly proceeded to show me his Twitter homepage which was, you guessed it, almost exactly the same.
From brawls and people being run over to flipped cars and knife attacks, the videos were the embodiment of violence – and that’s not even the worst of what’s out there.
And although I was of course made seriously uncomfortable by the palpable hate seeping out of the screen (I didn’t really manage to look at most of it, honestly), what bothered me more is that it makes no sense that he’s ceaselessly being fed this footage – and this footage alone.
How can this be the case when my social media feeds (along with those of all the women in my life) are about as wholesome as they come?
Young boys are being fed a steady diet of red pill alpha male Andrew rate content on all social media fronts youtube, tiktok, Instagram these young boys are being targeted by the algorithm with misogynistic messaging
— ExTeenageRobot Redux (@girllwithluv) September 1, 2023
It’s what’s prompted me, like the BBC, to ask: how many men and boys, regardless of their age, background, or interests, are being flooded with content of this nature? How many of them are going to get angrier, more resentful, and act more aggressively towards us both on and offline as a result?
The answer is that this is already a huge problem – and it’s spiralling out of control.
As we know, search engines are amplifying misinformation.
This misinformation is what’s driving a stark ideological divide globally among Gen Z (with young men becoming more conservative and young women more progressive); what’s strengthening incel culture; what had the far-right rioting in the UK last month; and what laid the foundations for a move from the country’s new Labour government to begin combatting the exacerbating issue of young men being radicalised by influencers like Andrew Tate and crack down on people promoting harmful, extremist beliefs.
