Summary
Social media influencers are fuelling a rise in misogyny and sexism in the UK’s classrooms, according to teachers.
More than 5,800 teachers were polled… and nearly three in five (59%) said they believe social media use has contributed to a deterioration in pupils’ behaviour.
One teacher said she’d had 10-year-old boys “refuse to speak to [her]…because [she is] a woman”. Another said “the Andrew Tate phenomena had a huge impact on how [pupils] interacted with females and males they did not see as ‘masculine’”.
“There is an urgent need for concerted action… to safeguard all children and young people from the dangerous influence of far-right populists and extremists.”
I read this and thought something didn’t add up. If all Tate ever did was disrespect women and treat them like property, nobody would care about him. Unsurprisingly, the truth is more complicated. See this for example.
The manosphere appeals to its audience because it speaks to the very real lives of young men [. . .] romantic rejection, alienation, economic failure, loneliness, and a dim vision of the future.
The major problem lies in its diagnosis of the cause of male disenfranchisement, which fixates on the impacts of feminism. Here it contrasts the growing challenges faced by men with the increasing social, economic and political success experienced by women. This zero-sum claim posits that female empowerment must necessarily equate to male disempowerment, and is evidenced through simplified and pseudoscientific theories of biology and socioeconomics.
If Tate’s appeal is not addressed, things will get worse.
In my opinion the huge difference between this generation and all previous ones is that content is no longer vetted by anyone. It used to be that to put something in front of kids it had to approved by some sane adult. If a TV station marketed to children something that most parents would not approve they would face protests or maybe even legal action. On social media any asshole can post literally anything and millions of kids will consume it without any supervision.
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Most media is liberal though. Liberalism is a (right-wing) hegemonic ideology. CNN, Fox, NYTimes, NYPost, NPR… All liberal.
Not so much for leftism though. It’s “strange” how the right-wing conflates the two.
Fox news liberal… lmfao
Tankies are permanently stuck in backwards day. Left is right and right is left. They do this because they’re just fascists that don’t like to be associated with other fascists. So they call their fascist group “leftist”, but they hate democracy, liberalism, the jews, etc just as much as any other fascist.
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It used to be that to put something in front of kids it had to approved by some sane adult.
I love how you got a ton of upvotes by vaguely gesturing at the past.
When was this time you speak of?
What has changed is the social fabric of society has been ripped up.
Back when media for kids consisted mainly of broadcast TV shows and books. It’s not some mythical past; it’s my childhood.
Yep, that’s why the only way to be a good parent nowadays is to not give your kids smart phones or computers of their own. There was a time when it was kinda ok for them to have those devices, but that time is permanently in the past.
Closeted queer kids with bigoted parents need online safe spaces.
I mostly disagree with that. Cocooning up into a terminally online person makes one’s life worse, not better.
Straight up abusive parents are another thing of course. But even then those kids need sheltering, not the internet.
I think you underestimate the sheer number of homophobic parents that aren’t necessarily abusive but would be if their kid ever came out. There are a lot of people I’ve talked to that their online escape was the one thing that kept from killing themselves.
I’m not saying that it’s healthy but there are a lot of kids in a situation that they can not escape from because of the way that society treats children. Children are treated as something that is closer to property than an individual when it comes to things like law enforcement and emotional abuse.
Homophobia is abusive. Regardless of the intentions. Ignorance of that fact doesn’t excuse it.
I agree. Try arguing that to a conservative judge in the south and you will simply be sent home with your abusive parent, who is likely enraged about having to defend themselves from the “law”.
I think muad’dib is just projecting and maybe you are, too.
Using the internet to avoid dealing with problems in real life is an unhealthy crutch.
unfortuatly the healthy way to deal with a situation like that is to remove yourself from it which children are not allowed to do.
In 10 years, it seems we not only gave up our own nations’ dreams of equality and union, but lustfully decided to lick the boots of those telling us our dreams aren’t worth having. It doesn’t help that the self-proclaimed “leader of the free world” is a known rapist who cuts deals with the Taliban at the expense of women’s liberties.
Its also just kinda gay. Wanting a man to dominate everything you do is just gay
Research from anti-fascism organisation Hope Not Hate, which polled about 2,000 people across the UK aged 16 to 24, discovered that 41% of young men support Tate versus just 12% of young women.
That is quite a worrying statistic: 41% of young men endorsing a human-trafficking misogynist rapist.
Fine, just fail them. This is a problem for the parents to address. And if the parents refuse, then they can enjoy having a child who lives off of benefits and aspires to be an “influencer”. Lol.
You don’t actually need to talk to the teacher to pass a class in most cases.
I don’t think the kids doing this are doing well in school anyways, but it is possible to never say a word and still get an A from your schoolwork.
I don’t think it is social media. It is much more simple: people can’t spend time with each other. Employers keep reducing the wages, while maintaining or increasing the amount of work their employees have to do. This means that workers can’t invest time into friends or family, which in turn deprives children of healthy role models.
Jackasses like Tate get to influence the children, because there is a void that has been left empty - Tate has enough wealth and time to fill in for society. Work culture is a ravenous beast, forever chasing workers. If you pause, you lose everything. So you might as well sacrifice the time you could spend with family, since you would lose them anyway if you shirk being a breadwinner.
Optimization for the sake of line going up, inevitably destroys everything that surrounds the pillar that society is forced to worship.
I would also include the death of the “third place”. Because even if you work enough to survive, where do you spend your time outside of the home with other people in your community without spending money? Even worse options if you want kids allowed.
One of the only places I know of is the library. But I’d be very surprised by an 8-10 year old boy spending their time at the library.
Jackasses like Tate get to influence the children, because there is a void that has been left empty
I’d like to amend this to say that there is void that support “boys”. There’s a lot of encouragement for the development of girls into STEM, into sports, into everything else but there’s no encouragement for boys. Boys are left to fend for themselves and if they don’t get the right support and encouragement at home, they end up ripe for influencers like Tate.
A lot of them spend their free time in their bedrooms, gaming. Their only friends are online gamers that are in other parts of the world. They have no actual physical interaction.
I’ve even seen posts where young men in their 20s are finally making enough money that they can finally visit online friends that they’ve known for years, often describing them as “best friends.”
It’s interesting my friends kid is 13. A couple of years ago they were able to take a trip across country to visit their online friends that they spend all their time with in games. Those kids are all girls. This life style truly isn’t exclusive to one gender. The father works a 9-5 and the mother is a stay at home mom with some side hustles for extra cash. Their kid seems to be kind but who knows what she is really getting into online. This world is like a caricature of itself.
I’m glad that people can’t hide behind a face anymore. In the old times, and this still happens in some places, people will get away with abuse because they’re good at using their faces to manipulate people. Preachers, community leaders. They used body language to win people’s trust and gain positions of power to abuse people, especially children.
On the internet, people have to be more honest. Video chat is unpopular, so most people are only using words to communicate. Sometimes voice. You’re looking straight at someone’s soul with less distraction from the physical plane. It’s safer.
I wouldn’t trust a guy who I’ve only ever met in the flesh. Ugh, creepy.
On the internet, people have to be more honest.
I… don’t think that’s how it works lol.
So? You get a F, you get a F, you get a F…
“That fucking stupid bitch woman teacher gave me an F because (insert misogynistic mental gymnastics to make it her fault for being female here)”
“That’s what you get when you don’t talk with your teachers and spend your time on social media, dumbass!”
Said with with Red Forman’s voice and facial expressions, it would be perfect
Sometimes I wonder if the Internet should only be allowed for people 21 or 25 years or older.
21 is the new 16… 25 is the new 21.
But… At the same time older adults are extremely dumb too.
But giving a young person access to the Internet is like letting them walk NYC alone at night during the 70s.
Ever since Facebook and 9/11 the Internet has been kind of awful.
We’re in for a very, very stupid future.
Parents need to raise their children and stop letting social media do it.
Some of you need more empathy. These are children whose insecurities are being exploited for profit. Be mad at their parents, and be mad at figures like Andrew Tate. But these are children and they deserve more grace than that.
I know it’ll come across as an unpopular opinion, but some of them just need their ass kicked. Literally went to high school with a kid who was insufferable, a prick to everyone. One day he started bullying one of my buddies who proceeded to beat the shit out of him. He told his football coach he ran into a mailbox on his bike when he had to explain his face looking like it did. After that he was the nicest kid ever - he realized “being tough” wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. I guarantee a few of these kids just need to get punched in the face one time and they’ll start rethinking the “alpha male” ideology.
Beating children into submission might be convenient for you, but its almost certainly not the correct way to handle the situation.
It is extremely effective at making sure people behave the proper way. It’s the same philosophy behind small, weak prey being scared of big, strong predators.
You sound like the alpha male people. We’re not wolves. We are capable of complex conversation, and we can behave properly out of respect for others and not out of fear.
Maybe children would be less receptive to tate-like figures if it didn’t seem like the whole world wanted them dead.
Gotta remember… This is sky news. Probably fake. Especially since the “survey” doesn’t even match the headline.
More than 5,800 teachers were polled… and nearly three in five (59%) said they believe social media use has contributed to a deterioration in pupils’ behaviour.
Wow it seems like everyone here is completely credulous and happy to have their bias confirmed.
I mean, I’ve worked as a teacher for eleven years and I don’t know a single person who doesn’t think that social media contributed to declining behavior standards. When I say, ‘a single person’, I am referring to other teachers or administrators. I am not using hyperbole. Nobody thinks it is good, everyone thinks it’s bad, and every year we tighten the noose.
This is across three school districts and nine grade levels.
I don’t doubt you. Can you give examples of how it’s changing their behaviour?
Hey! Sorry for the delay. I am an infrequent poster at best.
When kids have access to phones, then they want to be on their phones. They rush through their work, don’t pay full attention to their instruction, and have no distance from their friends in which to process their lives.
Rushing through their work and doing a shit job in order to get back on their phone sets up power struggles in the classroom with children who become offended if you tell them that their work is insufficient. Since they were not fully paying attention to the lesson, they have to go back and correct mistakes, which they view as ‘cutting into their time’.
The biggest behavioral impact is that once phones are in the mix, the conversation in the friend group never stops. Arguments continue, jokes continue, complaints continue, and all of this spirals and escalates on itself. Kids get stuck into online arguments with people they then see at lunch. So, you have kids talking mad shit online, creating this culture of anxiety and fear that keeps the students on edge. Grudges continue on for years. Literal years, over stuff that would have been forgotten in a week if it wasn’t constantly recycled in the friend group for content.
Finally, kids who are removed from their phones freak out. That constant conversation that they know is happening is now inaccessible to them, and they know how they talk about each other. Now they have to worry about not knowing who has beef with who, what is being said about them, and not understanding the latest ridiculous meme or joke.
So, in answer to the specific behaviors that cell phones cause, there is no direct answer. Rather, take a school, give bullies access to everyone all the time, amplify every disagreement, argument, or compromising picture or piece of information, add in a constant distraction to the task at hand, which reduces reflection and growth, keep kids in constant contact with their parents and stymying their independent development, and then ask which behaviors are the result of that. Is it the violence? The disrespect? The apathy toward classroom instruction? The anxiety? The reliance on constant reassurance from either looking something up or receiving real time feedback from their parents and friends? It is tough to say.
What is easy to say, based on a lot of experience, is that when you stamp out cellphone culture, everything improves by every metric. Grades go up, discipline goes down, positive interactions with peers and kindness become the norm, and kids are able to just be kids while they are at school.
That’s really, really interesting thanks.
Send them to a Catholic male-only school, which incidentally is also one of the most right-wing places I can imagine. Let’s see how long they remain up to their “masculine” standards.
Abuse isn’t the solution to miseducation.
The world is fucked and always has been. Humanity are horrible evil beings.
No
What these boys need are good role models
I grew up with being bullied, star trek, and karate. All taught me a lot about what it is, means, and implies to be good, be bad, and how to behave like a proper human being.
Today’s kids have weird or no role models at all and most of them are just lost. Even Andrew Tate himself is a victim of this. I sldont see Tate as evil,.i see him as a sad little man that always needs to posture lest someone sees what a real loser he is. Even the raping is just him kicking others down to make others think he’s so strong whereas in reality he is such a pathetic little man. I know the type, unfortunately.
In any case, i think we need much more wholesome YouTube channels where we have real men showing how real should behave, both through strength and thoughtfulness
There’s a distinct lack of firm males in our society.
We’re literally going to have to create the male role models that are needed.
Firm like will beat the crap out of you for your disobedience? Firm like will treat women like shit?
Firm how, exactly? Because in the tranditii sense, it’s never said out loud, but firm always means one of those things
Won’t happen. We have gendered these political issues so much the alt right owns the entire gender. I vote dem, but doesn’t mater because so many people see the entire group as nothing but dangerous fascists. These kids are being told the alt right is their pary and they get from both sides. Now they are are Worthless shits.
The alt right owns men?
Nah
Currently there are a lot of younger men attracted to that because theybahmmhave so many “role models” there.
The solution isn’t that hard, give them positive role models.
They exist. But it’s Tate that always gets talked about making him the default
Every teacher I hear from (US) these days basically says the newest generation coming up is completely screwed. Unreal levels of behavioral issues that are not being addressed at home. Complete lack of engagement with the lesson plan, unfinished assignments all over. They need to curve grades left and right just to get the majority of the class to pass. The parents are more emboldened than ever to make the teachers’ lives hell over things they know nothing about and refuse to take responsibility for.
It’s easy to brush it off as the standard generational nose-thumbing…but this seems different. Something is really breaking down and I think social media is at the center of it.
It’s a shame teachers are pressured to “curve grade” rather than just flunk these people and hold them back a grade.
Even when I went to elementary school over 15 years ago in Canada, kids weren’t allowed to be held back without written permission from their parents. I thought it was really fucking weird because we literally had a kid whose mom did all of his homework (everyone knew; he had horrible writing and she didn’t) and yet refused to put him in a remedial class or have him repeat a year.
Schools now lose funding when kids don’t pass, so admins press teachers to move them along.
All Kids Left Behind
Something is really breaking down and I think social media is at the center of it.
I feel like you could apply this to almost every societal crisis we’re facing. It’s like social media took every little crack in the foundation and turned it into a chasm.
Parents in Facebook echo chambers trying to discover who to blame for their child’s shitty behaviour then getting into arguments when they are told to perhaps get off their phone and speak to their child.
Children in Facebook echo chambers where they make their neurodivergence their entire personality while simultaneously excusing any and all behaviour due to it.
If both groups spoke to each other a lot could be changed.
