Toxic manosphere is harming girls and boys and should be treated as a public health risk, urge experts.

Rise of online misogyny threatens decades of progress for women and girls — while also profiting at the expense of boys’ health.

Three of the world’s leading authorities on gender justice and global health have warned that the manosphere has become so toxic and unsafe that it poses a public health risk to both boys and girls, with harmful impacts ranging from violence and abuse to body dysmorphia and other severe harms to mental health, including depression and anxiety.

The rise of online misogyny, facilitated through social media and artificial intelligence, is intensifying existing gender inequality crises, says Laura Bates, founder of the Everyday Sexism Project and bestselling author of The New Age of Sexism. “What we’re seeing is a pandemic and it’s flying under the radar. We are only now realising the scale of harm after a generation of boys has been shaped by these systems.”

Feminist sociologist and masculinities expert Raewyn Connell, Professor Emerita at the University of Sydney, says the manosphere is a platform for exploiting vulnerable young women and men to make money. “The manosphere isn’t just an online subculture, it’s a business built on outrage, sexism, misogyny and false promises of belonging and prosperity — and the harms are growing. It’s a business whose market is boys and young men who are facing difficulties finding a path in life.”

Both women were guest speakers at In Dialogue: Gender justice in the age of the manosphere, the first in a series of public lectures and discussions hosted by independent thinktank Global 50/50, in Cambridge.

“If extreme online misogyny were to be categorised as a public health risk, we could move away from a focus on punishment to address prevention through regulation and interventions across our health and education systems and workplaces,” said Global 50/50 co-founder Professor Sarah Hawkes, who moderated the discussion.

“We’re seeing the creation of an incredibly toxic environment for girls and women who go online, and for boys and young men who are being exposed to risks such as body dysmorphia and other mental health harms,” said Professor Hawkes, who is also co-chair of the Lancet Commission on Gender and Global Health.

Hawkes identified “a broad church of influencers, incels, pick‑up artists and looks‑maxxers” who “represent a wide spectrum of outlooks on misogyny, selling young men enticing narratives while positioning women as the primary enemy and driving a loss of trust in positive human relationships”.

The rate at which children, not just young people, are exposed to extreme content online — which is algorithmically promoted and commercially rewarded — is unprecedented. It takes an average of just 23 minutes from the moment a teenage boy signs up for a TikTok account to the first piece of extreme misogynistic content being promoted into their timeline, explained Bates. “The manosphere is a deliberately facilitated and targeted algorithmic bombardment that is entirely profit-driven and is creating these perfect radicalisation machines, and they are subtle and effective,” she said.

Add AI into this toxic mix and the harm to women and girls increases dramatically, Bates added. “Millions of women are being targeted by AI tools deliberately designed to facilitate abuse on a mass scale, and threaten women out of public spaces, out of the public eye, out of journalism, out of activism, out of politics.”

Not only that, but AI systems used in public services such as healthcare, and across workplaces, are replicating existing sexist and racist patterns because they are trained on biased data — a topic Bates researched at length in her latest book.

Getting to the root of the issue, the panel agreed that anti-gender movements online are not arising by chance but are part of a broader far-right political strategy that is exploiting vulnerable people, including children, while undermining the advancement of equality in health and across public life.

“What’s really frustrating is how effective manosphere ideologies and voices have been in convincing people that gender equality is a zero-sum game; that if we benefit women, we are taking something away from men,” said Bates. “The clearest example lies in male mental health and particularly in the male suicide rate, because often online you will see these problems weaponised by men who have no interest in finding solutions that support men and boys, but every interest in using those statistics to silence the voices of feminists.”

Global 50/50 joined both speakers in calling for tighter regulation of global tech firms and safety by design, as well as better education in schools and at home, as part of an all-of-society response that builds on the work of positive initiatives.

“Treating the manosphere as a public health risk would unlock coordinated action across governments, regulators, schools and tech companies and shift the focus from reaction to prevention,” offered Professor Hawkes.

“I think what’s much more effective than a ban on technology is giving girls and boys the tools and the confidence to recognise what they’re seeing when they see it,” Bates suggested. “And there are so many ways to give your children those little inoculations that people might not think of. If you have a boy under the age of about 14, probably the single most effective thing you can do to protect him from the manosphere has nothing to do with smartphones or algorithms or parental controls. It’s encouraging him from the youngest possible age to have platonic mixed-sex friendships, and not stigmatising or sexualising those friendships.”

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