The real reason boys turn to extreme online role models

Who's in the Video Richard Reeves Richard V. Reeves is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he directs the Future of the Middle Class Initiative and co-directs the Center on Children and Families. His[…] Go to Profile Part of the Series The Big Think Interview Explore series

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Become a Member Login The real reason boys turn to extreme online role models “I continue to believe that in the long run, boys, young men will believe their eyes more than their ears.” ▸ 25 min — with Richard Reeves Description Transcript Copy a link to the article entitled http://The%20real%20reason%20boys%20turn%20to%20extreme%20online%20role%20models Share The real reason boys turn to extreme online role models on Facebook Share The real reason boys turn to extreme online role models on Twitter (X) Share The real reason boys turn to extreme online role models on LinkedIn Sign up for Big Think on Substack The most surprising and impactful new stories delivered to your inbox every week, for free. Subscribe

What if the problem for young boys isn’t radical influencers, but the absence that made them persuasive?

Influence doesn’t emerge because someone is loud or offensive; it takes root when there’s no one nearby to push back in good faith or model an alternative worth imitating, says Richard Reeves.

RICHARD REEVES: I think the idea that you can somehow just invent like a progressive version of Andrew Tate or somebody and just throw them online, add water, and here's this new, suddenly globally famous alternative, that's not how online influence works. but the bigger issue for me is that the best antidote to an unserious online male role model, I'm using that term advisedly, is an in real life flesh and blood actual man. By having male teachers, male coaches, fathers, uncles, neighbors, et cetera, just being a living and breathing version of what it means to be a man. I continue to believe that in the long run, boys, young men will believe their eyes more than their ears. If there's a lack of real life men showing what it means to be a man rather than telling you how to be a man, then I think that creates a vacuum, which then gets filled by online figures. I'm Richard Reeves. I'm President of the American Institute for Boys and Men. I'm also the author of the book "Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why That Matters, and What to Do About It."

- The antidote to toxic male influencers

- If we're not careful, these conversations can shut the conversation down with boys and young men, rather than opening it up. And so when we're talking about online influencers, we're talking about some of the kinda more reactionary figures online, sometimes parents sort of react to discovering that their son, for example, is consuming video content from somebody like Andrew Tate, pretty well known misogynist influencer. It's almost like they're watching hardcore porn. They slam the laptop with the same kind of moral fervor as if they caught them looking at some pretty kind of horrible porn. And that's the wrong response. It's a natural response, but it's the wrong response. Instead, you've gotta have curiosity. You've gotta figure out like, "Well, why are you interested in this?" Let's have that argument because one of the things that the most successful reactionary online figures say is, "Nobody will want you to talk about watching my stuff or listening to my stuff. If you even mention to somebody that you're interested in this, watch how they react. Watch how your mom reacts. Watch how your school reacts, and see how they react." They said it as a test, and then so sure enough, if you raise this issue, you say to your mom that you've been consuming some of this content or you're doubting some of what you've been taught, and if the reaction is immediately, like, "How dare you watch that ," you've just proved the point that the reactionary was making. And this is one of those moments where it's hard, but I'm speaking here as a parent as much as a policy wonk, is that you take some deep breaths, you try to be open-minded, you don't in any way compromise your own values, and you have some curiosity, and you try to become an ally and a partner to your son as they navigate this difficult online world and offline world. And I worry sometimes that the uninformed, frankly, reaction that many middle-aged policy makers are having to some of these issues online, A, they look out of touch and they sound out of touch, but it also, it has this really chilling effect on an open conversation about what's really going on. And that then just drives these boys and young men even further into the recesses of what's online. The question is, who's having an honest and good faith conversation about this? And I don't think that forcing boys and girls to kind of watch a fictional drama in schools, which is by definition fictional and, no, not true to life in many ways, is going to open up that conversation. At least it won't open it up for most boys. So I worry that it will actually backfire and be unhelpful. There's a big difference between a show like "Adolescence" becoming a big Netflix hit for people watching it, and governments, as the UK government has, proposing showing that in in every secondary school. Then it's a matter of policy, and therefore I think it becomes an issue that we should pay more attention to. And there's a real danger that you take something that's fictional and assume that it's more true to life than it really is. It can create a moral panic. It can make many parents fear that they're kind of inadvertently raising a monster, which is almost certainly not true. So the good news about something like a show like "Adolescence" is that it draws attention to some of the kind of risks online, some of the more reactionary figures online. It's good. It's good. Parents should be thoughtful about that, but the downside is that it can run into this common problem we have when we're discussing the issues of boys and men, which is that they're just, you know, a couple of clicks away from becoming kind of an incel, violent criminal, and that's just not true. And the presumption that that might be about to happen can actually shut the conversation down. I think the idea that you can somehow just invent like a progressive version of Andrew Tate or somebody and just throw them online, add water, and here's this new, suddenly globally famous alternative, that's not how online influence works. It grows organically. It grows through algorithms. It grows through clicks. And so I think it's just unrealistic to think you can somehow just create these. Things don't get created that way. So first of all, it's very naive, I think, but the bigger issue for me is that the best antidote to an unserious online male role model, I'm using that term advisedly, is an in real life flesh and blood actual man in the lives of boys. The way to beat the online version of it is by having male teachers, male coaches, fathers, uncles, neighbors, et cetera, just being a living and breathing version of what it means to be a man. I continue to believe that in the long run, boys, young men will believe their eyes more than their ears. And so if there isn't enough of a sense of, "What does it mean to be a man in my community, in my home, in my school?" et cetera, if there's a lack of real life men showing what it means to be a man rather than telling you how to be a man, then I think that creates a vacuum, which then gets filled by online figures. I honestly believe that the way to beat the online world is offline, is in real life. That doesn't mean we shouldn't be online. It doesn't mean we shouldn't, of course, support the people who are, and there are lots of people in the so-called manosphere, a term I think is probably now redundant because I dunno who's included in it anymore, but there are lots of guys online, lots doing fitness stuff, doing kind of motivational stuff. I really love, for example, Arnold Schwarzenegger's "Pump Club." I dunno if you've seen any of that, and what's great about that is that, like, and probably I sympathize with this, like somebody will show a video of themselves doing their first pushup, right? And they manage to do like one or two pushups, and then Arnold himself will come on and say, "That's great, go for it," et cetera. It's incredibly warm, and it's like welcoming, and so there's a lot of really great stuff happening around this stuff online. But in the long run, you can beat an Andrew Tate video with a classroom exercise or a hike up a mountain with your scout group any day of the week. If there's a young man, and he kind of watches some stuff online, and it drifts into kind of misogynist stuff or whatever, then first of all, which man is he gonna talk to about that, right? Maybe the father. Certainly, it's something I spoke to my sons about, but like who are they gonna talk to about that? Who are they gonna test those ideas on? Probably a man. So is there a man in their lives they can test that on? But also then, they're gonna look at the guys, and they're gonna say, "Does my teacher or my scout leader or my uncle act like Andrew Tate?" No. Is he a good guy? Yes. Would I rather be more like him? Well, hopefully the answer is yes. Well, there is a big question. "Should we have any single-sex space?" Should we have male-only spaces or female-only spaces? Maybe we should just get rid of them all together. I think as a general point, we don't want them in the workplace as places where power and favors are traded, right? There's a reasonable suspicion of what was called the old boys club and the idea that kind of men were congregating in male spaces, and that power and influence were being shared in those spaces. We've quite rightly tried to turn against that, but that's very different to the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts. It's very different to youth organizations, and I think it's a mistake to move from the correct claim that we shouldn't have an old boys club to saying that we shouldn't have Boy Scouts or we shouldn't have single-sex classes or even single-sex sports for both boys and girls. I'm quite angry at the scouts for giving up Boy Scouts. Boy Scouts of America no longer exists. It's now called Scouting for America, and girls are allowed in. Girl Scouts remains Girl Scouts and single sex. And the reason I'm angry about that is because I've been a scout leader, I was a scout, et cetera, is I think for pretty progressive reasons, which is that single-sex spaces when done well, they don't amplify the more stereotypically male or female characteristics. They help to balance them out. And so in Girl Scouts, for example, there's a huge emphasis on things like leadership and going into STEM, taking more assertive positions, et cetera. So they're kind of working. Girl Scouts don't spend a huge amount of time with the girls talking about the need to be more caring or more nurturing or to open up emotionally to each other or be there for each other. They spend a lot more time on things like being more competitive, being more aggressive, being more assertive, right? And I think as a result of that, Girl Scouts has done a really good job of actually kind of helping girls to kind of balance out some of those perhaps more naturally occurring tendencies with others. In Boy Scouts, this is certainly my experience as a scout leader, you don't have to typically work very hard with boys to make them more competitive. Boys will turn throwing trash into a trash can into a competition. You don't generally have to go this idea of more being more aggressive 'cause that's a little bit more on average baked in. But what you do instead is you work on teamwork. You work on how to care for the other people in your patrol. You learn how to love each other and to serve each other. And so you balance out so that hopefully as a result of those single-sex spaces, you actually end up with both men and women who are somewhat more fully filled out. There's like a stereotype of like, boys' spaces will make boys more boyish. But actually I think the opposite's true. I think that boys' spaces, whether it's teams or scouts, actually help boys learn to love, learn to care, learn to be of service, think about other people. And the same with like girl spaces done well, they don't make girls girlier. They actually help them to kind of develop other skills, and so done properly and in the right balance, I actually think that single-sex spaces make a lot of sense. I certainly don't think we want to end up with a world where we think that it is necessary or good to have single-sex spaces only for girls, and we get rid of all of the ones that existed for boys. It's pretty clear to most people that when boys are around girls, the presence of the girls affects how the boys behave, including towards each other and vice versa. It's one of the strong arguments that's been made, for example, for kind of single-sex girls' schools, is to get girls away from some of the kind of presence of boys and what that means. In practice in an all-boys space, what it allows you to do is work more on skills around emotion, sharing, caring, et cetera. You may not use that language, particularly if it's like a team sport or something. It'll be more around, maybe use more masculine language, right, the other fellow first or the team first or whatever. But what you are really learning about is love and care and nurturing. I just think some of that's easier to do if you're not feeling the gaze of your female peers and vice versa too. And so if you're trying to kind of incubate spaces where you can really kind of develop full human beings, there is something to be said for at least some spaces where you're doing that in a single-sex environment. The share of boys playing sports is going down, and that's for all kinds of reasons. But a big problem there is the loss of team sports. I think team sports for boys is a place and a space within which they kind of learn to think about each other, to be part of a bigger whole. They learn to love each other. There's a real solidarity and camaraderie in team sports that I think is very good for girls and boys but looks especially good for boys, that that's a safe space within which they learn a lot of the skills, including those social skills, those teamwork skills, those caring skills that they're gonna need to be good fathers, to be good husbands, and to be good workers. I also think that coaches are mental health professionals in disguise. They're sitting shoulder to shoulder on a bench or in a group. They're working with boys or with young men, and they're very often noticing that they're struggling. And they can, in a very, very safe way, in a non-threatening way, they can open up a conversation with them. And there's a reason I think why so many men will say that a coach played an hugely important part in their role, especially if they didn't have a strong relationship with their father. It's a trope at this point to say that coaches are father figures, but it's also a truth that for many boys they absolutely do play that role for men. I've seen this. I have this image in my mind of a coach sitting next to a young man, a boy or a young man, and they're just sitting like this shoulder to shoulder, and the coach is saying, "How are you? You seem a little bit off today. Everything okay? How's stuff at home? How are things with your mom? Did you sort that thing out," right? And they're probably watching the game a bit too, and what's really interesting about that is it's beautiful, but it's also they're shoulder to shoulder. And one of the things we know is that men communicate more comfortably with each other shoulder to shoulder as opposed to face to face. When men are face to face with each other, that's quite a threatening position. Now if I tell you this, you won't be able to unsee it. Where every time you go to a social event, look at the way that the men are standing in relation to each other. They're always slightly cattycorner with each other. They're always at an angle because being face to face is a threat posture. And it also means that if you want to communicate with young men, go fishing, go for a drive, go for a hike. A lot of psychologists now will do the walk and talk therapy. Do not sit them down and stare them in the face. That is not a very comfortable way for most men to communicate with each other. They are gonna communicate much more comfortably with each other when they're doing something else, when they are shoulder to shoulder. And so there's something also about those activities, whatever the activity is, whether it's sports or hiking or building something or hammering something or fishing for something, or... It's the only explanation for golf that I've been able to come up with is this sense of like you're doing something together shoulder to shoulder, but what you're actually doing then is communicating. And I think that's fine. You could roll your eyes at it and say, "Oh, well, why can't men just sit in a coffee shop and stare at each other? Why do they have to go and do something? Why do they have to pretend to be doing something else or be doing something else when they're communicating?" I don't roll my eyes at it. It's just true, and if it's true, then we should create more and more spaces where men feel able to be shoulder to shoulder with each other, communicating each other in a way that is just a little bit more friendly towards men. And if that means Boy Scouts and it means boys' sports teams, then good. I mean there are these groups now, the men's sheds movement, which is basically just a bunch of guys that kind of get together. It started in Australia. They get together and kind of fix stuff together, right? So they're fixing engines, or they're doing something. And the guys are tinkering or whatever, and it just does seem to be true that, on average, men communicate a little bit more easily with each other when they are doing kind of something else, when they are in the shoulder-to-shoulder phase. And that's what a coach will do. That's what these activities will do, is create that space, which is actually incredibly therapeutic space but where there is no therapist to be seen, at least not officially. And so that's also one of the reasons why I'm borderline obsessed with the share of men in mental health professions and in healthcare professions because they kind of know that naturally. I have a friend that volunteers in a school, and he goes into the school, and he says, "Which boy are you having the most trouble with?" They identify the boy, and he just takes him for a walk. He doesn't sit down with him. He doesn't pull up a chair in the classroom. He certainly doesn't sit opposite him. They go for a walk, and he finds that they're much more likely to open up. Say, "Oh, let's just take a walk and then talk." And again, you could roll your eyes at that and just say, "Oh, what's wrong with men?" But we have to be really careful generally not to treat men like defective women or vice versa. It's just that there are some of these differences between us that we don't really think about until it becomes an issue and which should just be part of just a natural difference between us that doesn't in any way trap anybody, right? I'm not saying that some women don't also communicate better shoulder to shoulder, and many men probably are fine face to face, but overall, there is a pretty big difference between those two. And it's one reason why the right kind of male-only space is a good thing and not just a good thing for men but a good thing for women because if men come out of those spaces with better relational skills, better soft skills, et cetera, that's good for the women in their lives as well. And I think I'm seeing a growing sense among kind of women that they want their partners, sons, to have more opportunities to hang out with other men. And the reason for that is not just because they want them out of the house, although that may be part of it. I think it's because they recognize that actually for men to be flourishing as men, it's great for them to have time with other men, just as it is for women. Any spaces that have boys and girls in them, young men and young women in 'em should be safe. And Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, youth organizations generally have really done a very good job of ensuring that they're doing everything in their power to make those spaces as safe as possible. We should continue to do that, but it's a good example of a space where we can't let the very, very small risk, even today, of there something bad happening in those spaces to blind us to the overall positive benefits of those spaces more generally. Look, there have been plenty of scandals in institutions, including Boy Scouts and others, where quite rightly the result has been to really be much more careful about the safety of kids and have the right rules and the right practices. So we have to acknowledge that. But we also, we don't want to react in a way that just closes all those spaces down, any more than we want to say that, because there are tragically always gonna be some examples of kids being abused at schools, we don't send 'em to school or that we don't want any men in our classrooms. I've actually had people say to me, like, "Well, I don't think we want any men in early years education," right? I think there's something a bit fishy about that, and, "Didn't you hear that story of the male from state X where there was some horrific story?" And the danger with the argument is that it has no end. In the end, what we're saying is that even the slightest risk of something horrific happening, such as something like abuse, then we shouldn't have these institutions at all. It would be a tragic mistake to take the correct concerns of every parent, myself included, to want their kids to be safe and to be safe in whichever spaces they're in and to say that the way to do that is to shut all those spaces down or to say that those spaces can only be co-ed. It's always been true that men have been underrepresented in elementary school where it's only one in five. And actually, there's now been a big decline in secondary school where men have now dropped below half, and we see actually men actually make up the minority of teachers in basically every subject now, including career and technical education. I think it's a perfectly reasonable question to ask, "Does it matter?" Would it matter if our entire K12 teaching workforce was female or male? Does it matter? I think it does matter. It matters because it sends a message that this is more of a female enterprise than a male enterprise. It codes education and educational success. Also, I think that the presence of men in schools and in classrooms acts as a way to have some actual role models that are a good alternative to the ones online, perhaps especially for boys who don't have a father figure in their lives or a good relationship with their father. So my own son teaches fifth grade in Baltimore, and he's doing great. He loves it, but also, this is probably something about the fact of him at the front of that fifth grade classroom, which is powerful, sends a strong signal. You don't have to have a curriculum on positive masculinity if you've got positive men at the front of the classroom. There is something very important about boys and girls seeing education as something that both men and women value and do. And I really struggled in English. I was in remedial English for a while. I was the kid who would like never bring the book home, and my mom would march me back to the school to get the book and read it. But the whole words, writing, books thing, it just didn't come naturally to me. And I had a teacher in secondary school, Mr. Wyatt, and he was a Korean War veteran and had been wounded in the Korean War. He was a part-time bus driver. I have no idea how old he was. He seemed like a thousand years old, but he was probably my age as I am now, a curmudgeon, real curmudgeon, like broody and amazing English teacher, and he had us reading poetry. He had us reading metaphysical poetry, Andrew Marvell and people like that. And he had these kind of mostly working class boys just totally engaged in poetry and actually being quite moved by some of it. He brought to life this idea that words and literature was absolutely not a female pursuit. Every English teacher I'd had up until that point had been a woman. I felt like it was very coded female, and who knows, who knows whether it was Mr. Wyatt that did it, but I think about him often, and I know that something happened to me in that class, which made me fall in love with words and writing in a way that I would previously have thought unimaginable. And I'm pretty sure that the fact that he was a guy helped me get through that. Now you could roll your eyes and say, "Well, what's wrong with Reeves, that he couldn't get that from a woman?" like what a trouble that he needed a guy to kind of, to make him think all of that. Fine, I'm just sharing that that was my experience. I don't think it's that unusual an experience. And I do think it was just as important for me to have an amazing female math teacher. And in the end, a good teacher is a good teacher, but there's something very important about making sure that we don't allow education itself or particular kinds of learning to just get coded. It is just as important that we don't allow the love of language to become coded as a female thing as it was to really break down the idea that math or science was a male thing. We're trying to get to a point where we're trying to see them as just things that anyone can do, but that gets harder and harder if you don't have any guides doing it.

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