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.
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.
can you blame boys for aspiring to this
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.
Tate should get into a fistfight with a hot femboy and lose, his ego (and by extension those of his followers) would probably won’t be able to take that.
Just proves he attracts the immature mind
Andrew Tate should just put on the Taliban turban and be done with this charade. His entire schtick is Sharia for Americans.
I truly thought that this Tate guy was a complete character like Borat. I’m floored realizing this is a real “person”? How does anyone care about helping this guy. Oh wait.
We’re in for a very, very stupid future.
Let’s not pretend like these children aren’t having this behavior reinforced by their parents.
The internet has made it quite easy for kids to develop an “inner life” that their parents have little to no awareness of, regardless of how attentive they are, though it’s obviously worse if they are not.
Guess what, it’s your job as a parent to keep your kids off the Internet then.
I developed an inner life, it was the only peace I could find from the daily assault that was my outer life. Sure in the past it was more visible habits like reading a book, but letting kids have some autonomy over their lives is important I feel
You’re totally right. Without that inner life we’d just be forced into being exactly like our parents because we wouldn’t grow as individuals.
I think the problem is when, hypothetically, that inner life that finds you first is a profit-driven hate-brewing death cult brought to you by an algorithm. Then these people “totally get you” and gives you a “community.”
I miss when those unsupervised inner life communities were mostly around hobbies or games or whatever to escape life drudgery and make real friends. MySpace wasn’t about viral brainwashing campaigns, YouTube was mostly creation for fun’s sake, and even with online games and such, we all knew there was a separation between “the Internet” and “Real Life™”.
Everybody knew not to take the Internet seriously, because it was a place you went to escape everything else. Nothing really mattered on the internet.
I think now people don’t really see a separation. The Internet is real life, in the worst way.
Now so much of it is a minefield of recruitment and manipulation to enlist in culture wars for clicks. There’s labels and lifestyles that act as “funnels” and “pipelines” to increasingly toxic extreme identities that find “belonging” in being captive mindslaves and profit-cattle to any number of “influencers.”
Completely agree. The people I found online in those early days were just random people without any motive or incentive to sell me on an ideology. There was a trust back then, because opinions weren’t really worth anything and no one could access your wallet.
Finding that some community now is a total minefield for users, young or old. So much of the internet has been gamified for a profit/scam at any cost.
I wish that kids could just connect with other random kids across the world like I did, but I think those days are likely done.
That’s it. From what I hear (in Germany) is that the number of students with problematic behavior has increased, yes. That is something teachers can handle, if the parents cooperate or at the very least not interfere.
Unfortunately the number of problematic parents has sharply risen as well. More seem to be taking a page out of the Trump playbook of never admitting anything and going on the offensive instead. They can become quite aggressive and belligerent when their kid faces consequences for their actions, especially if misogyny was involved.
It’s impossible to help these students, if they act out behavior they see at home or, often enough, from their divorced fathers, and are encouraged for it.
Where did the parents get it? Why did they get it? Why don’t they know better?
I’m not being cheeky. I want to know real answers to that shit.
As a Millennial that had young parents I was always dumbfounded by my peers’ boomer parents. It’s like they just went to work and treated their kids like an afterthought, and they were too stuck in their greedy consumer mindset and didn’t have a clue about what we consider today the most basic of tech.
It’s not hard for me to imagine that my generation went on to raise kids poorly. I don’t have children myself but I’ve seen plenty of people my age raising them.
You paint a picture I’m familiar with, but didn’t experience firsthand. You were my friends and acquaintances I grew up with.
I’m late Gen X/Millennial cusp. The oldest of three siblings, both of whom are squarely Millenials. I got computers, but I also enjoyed formative years without them. My parents are boomers, and were not perfect, but I feel like I got the right stuff from them.
I don’t have kids. In the 90s when I was a teenager, I saw the writing on the wall and decided never to have children.
Since i have a kid with autism i notice how little other people with regular kids invest in them. When the kid starts to walk and talk at the age of two, they basically expect of them to act as adults, and I’m not exaggerating. After that kids get a minimal amount of time that parents address to them. Kids are given a phone too keep them not asking for parents attention, which is formative for their social and emotional skills. You don’t learn that from other kids or Jake Paul. So it’s a combination of shitty parenting and extremely toxic place where people spent hours every day. If you are a developing person it will fuck you up.
Behavioral issues start at home.
Because the kids are digesting the content at home?
Not necessarily, but in my experience with my friends’ kids, the ones that are the most maladjusted are the ones with their faces buried in their phones all the time, and these are the same kids that were raised on iPads and YouTube all day. It’s one thing to have an hour or two of screen time in a day, but the parents that don’t limit it have the kids with the most behavioral problems.
Let’s not pretend that this is real news instead of phony clickbait from Sky effing News.
I think about just how many shitty fathers these kids have, most of them in the maga cult that are lapping up the likes of Carlson and Peterson’s lessons on red pilled bullshit and condoning the behavior of their kids (albeit from a notably absent distance).
Those little shits should be slapped by their mom’s when they get home from school. Suburban trash.
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.
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d24/tables/dt24_318.45.asp
TLDR: men are twice as likely to get a stem degree. Which is down from 30 years ago which was 5x
I have no confidence you’ll read those stats so I’ll just leave them here for anyone else to see just how confused you are. There’s a minor bump due to an increase in girls in STEM funding. An increase that still does not have parity with the cultural inertia of boys in stem.
Why don’t you look at all Bachelor Degrees for White Males (seems to be biggest followers of misogynist influencers)
2012-2021 (excluding COVID years as edge cases) :
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d24/tables/dt24_322.20.asp
6% drop in bachelor degrees for white males vs 1% drop for white women (aligning the races makes it more of an apple to apple comparison)
My point is that stupid, discouraged boys are easily influenced by right-wing misogynists. You want fix this, fix the next generation before it’s too late.
Your point isn’t supported by either graph
Go ahead, you keep enjoying have shitheads running around and keep lamenting how there’s nothing to do.
Look at my post history. There’s plenty for them to do.
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.
I would argue that those factors aren’t a direct cause, but the isolation leaves them vulnerable to things like this. The internet used to be wide open and your semi-random traversal of independent sites would still expose you to a diverse array of people and content.
The pursuit of profit led to massive, accessible, engagement driven social media platforms. Optimization for ad views meant segmenting demographics and serving them distilled content. The hyper specific content led to these demographics living in echo chambers based on their flavor of polarizing content.
The Tate-sphere is built around exploiting that isolation and selling bogus solutions. There’s no specific reason the algorithm funnels into it other than it’s catches a broad user base on a charged topic => $$$. The algorithm could just as easily push young men into fighting for socially beneficial causes, but anger is a strong emotion that gives the most money.
It’s not either or. It could be both. In rhis case, most of these reasons can be traced back to the perversion of capitalism.
The funny thing is that people like Tate would be the first to be eaten when the world ends lol
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.
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.
It is different, because never in human history has it been easier to influence people. We are literally addicted, as in the brain is literally addicted, to our little disinformation device, the output of which is largely controlled by malicious powerful entities. Now add impressionable young brains to the mix.
It is a pretty terrible scenario with no obvious solution.
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.
I knew a kid like that in school, who’s mother did all his homework and projects for him, he couldn’t even spell “phone”. He was a rich kid who would miss half the school year going on family trips, never took the SAT’s, never went to university. He’s now an executive at JP Morgan (wish I was joking.)
I can’t help but wonder what Dad’s take on this situation was.
That assumes there was one (dad, or take from the dad).
Schools now lose funding when kids don’t pass, so admins press teachers to move them along.
All Kids Left Behind
All Kids Shuffled Off To Become Someone Else’s Problem
Republicans really do destroy everything
This is true for nearly every state, from deep red to deep blue. It is not a party issue but a stupid policy that intended for teachers and faculty to work harder to teach students.
The ironic tragedy here is that the new MAGA GOP is going to destroy and dismantle public education, citing the “failure” of public education to meet the needs of our children, even though it was a Republican policy that crippled the system in the first place.
It’s from a federal law passed under the Bush administration, tying funding to standardized testing scores.
But it was bipartisan, so you’re not wrong.
“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law
Or, if you prefer a clip from The Wire, juking the stats.
Murica’
Many if not all school districts in the States have their funding tied to their performance, so there is a negative incentive to make grades look good. My elementary school tried to place me in their Special Ed program because my grades would have brought the average up there.
Plus, holding back 60, 70, 80% of an entire class just isn’t logistically feasible in most cases.
Neither is passing a kid who doesn’t understand the material.
It is when that kid becomes someone else’s problem to deal with.
Its so absurd.
I went to a rural title one highschool. I took general level classes and had honors/high honors at least half of my semesters.
Half way through my senior year, I moved. It sucked balls. My new school, was small, literally the smallest school in my state. Graduation class size was 54 students. It was outside the Capital city, and affluent. Everyone was a “prep” had money, some drove very fancy cars to school ect.
The new school didnt offer Gen level classes, only college and AP. I was upset at that because those classes were known to me to be super difficult at my old rural school. At that time I just wanted to smoke pot with my friends tbh. But … I took the classes.
Y’all. This little rich prep school’s College course classes were easier than my Title one school Gen Ed. I couldn’t believe it. This was 2006, and I know now, they did that to keep the funding going. All the little rich kids had parents who could afford to send them all to college, and they needed to look good for thier hard-to-get-into universities.
It still frustrates me the world is like this.
I believe it. I think the much older push against standardized tests was so that “fancy” schools could pump up their grades. I never understood the newer push against standardized tests, you want them exactly so schools can’t pump up their grades. Standardized tests create an actual level playing field.
The recent push came from Covid when many people could not take the tests, and then it stuck around after since administrators wanted to focus on your “well-roundedness” and not high test scores.
The newer push was years before covid.
Those kids are the next generations parents. What are their kids going to be like?
Wage slaves who pay rent to landlords
Luckily, they probably won’t have any.
Based on who America voted for president I don’t feel very surprised about the issues and behavior of parents.
I would be surprised if this were the case in every state though.
I retired from the job 5 years ago. Your description rings true from my experience then (and was a big part of me retiring), and the colleagues I’ve stayed in touch with say it’s very noticeably worse now. I’m glad I got out when I did.
From your experience, why do you think that is? Mostly social media? If so, what about it? Bad parenting? The whole Covid remote stuff? Is it economically driven? Are the schools doing anything differently that could cause it?
I would love to pin it on one thing, like social media. While I felt, feel, like that was a big variable in the downfall, I can’t underestimate the loss of the “American Dream”. I felt like phones should be banned. But some teachers felt like phones could be integrated into the curriculum. I could see both points, but honestly I just felt like society had passed me by. One of my master teachers, when I had been student teaching 25 years previously, said it was time to go when the students no longer entertained you. I felt like that was about right. I don’t think knowledge at your fingertips is a reason not to actually learn stuff.
Thanks for sharing that. Like any job, when it’s no longer fun, it’s time for a change.
Not just the US. One of our school districts can’t fail anyone and your final grade is determined by the work you hand in.
I’ll broaden it to not just social media, but the totality of endless scrolling social media, plus endless access to narcissist “influencers”, plus addicting video games (inspired by gambling patterns), plus must watch addicting TV shows and movies on demand. A lot of this is endless dopamine machine. Add in both parents working and only children with no siblings is less socialization.
It’s mass narcissism and it’s going to destroy our society.
If I don’t see signs of change soon, I’m getting tf out of here.
This is it. We’re a Narcissistic culture, and it’s getting worse.
The problem is consumerism.
Narcissism is just a symptom of our insecurity.
I am, not great at parenting, I’ve made hella mistakes. I’ve only one son and do my best.
The number of teachers/therapists (my son works a few programs for his needs) that have been floored by my willingness to parent and hold my son accountable for his actions, is far too high.
While I’ll take the compliment being “a breath of fresh air” (an actual compliment from a therapist) it bothers me more parents cant take thier own faults to accountability nor hold their children to any standard of conduct really saddens me. I shouldn’t be a wildflower in a field of dirt, it should be a field of flowers damn. A silly metaphor but you get my point hopefully.
I am, not great at parenting, I’ve made hella mistakes. I’ve only one son and do my best.
It sounds like you are
The problem with you being the rare parent to hold their child accountable is that your kid is just going to see it as you being unfair to them. Their peers are going to laugh at them.
A lot of their peers legitimately don’t need to worry about being a responsible adult. They will inherit enough wealth to never have to work a day in their life.
I don’t know what you’re talking about. “Their peers are going to laugh at them”? “Unfair”?
These are your excuses to not teach accountability? Not only are you wrong in that these are not my child’s viewpoints or reality, you sound pretty young yourself. All of his peers need to worry about being a responsible adults, regardless of future incomes.
I don’t care what the other children are doing, I only care what my child is doing.
Would you jump off a bridge (to your death) if all your friends were? Thats fair right? Lol
Thanks for the laugh
Calm down. I never excused anything.
I just said what would happen to highlight what a difficult task it is.
lol, and here’s me thinking I’ll get to finally loosen these bootstraps one day. Wouldn’t be Millennial difficulty if something nice happened for once, so why should I expect reprieve in retirement age? Probably just be anxious af anyway because not being abused by another generation seems too good to be true.
No joke. We went from getting yelled at by old people for problems they caused, to being called old and getting shoved aside by the generation ahead of us, really freaking fast.
I feel like we’ve already been forgotten after we were robbed of opportunity and respect at every turn.
I try to focus my energy towards the good ones. There’s still good people out there. I’ve met many kids that would put the majority of adults to shame with their level of intelligence, maturity, and respect. The odds are so against them though.
Covid really fucked them in not getting normal socialization at school and put a lot of kids behind by a couple of years accedemically. Right now 4/5th grade and up are really screwed. Plus parents just aren’t engaged.
Covid really fucked them in not getting normal socialization at school
Don’t worry, they will be bullied throughout their life. Missing a couple years of bullying won’t hurt.
I’d at least consider parents aren’t engaged due to time and energy, cause of pressures at work.
Also, when I was at school there were teachers that put extra time and effort in with kids that were top of the class and bottom of the class. Bet it wouldn’t be like that now cause everyone is so rundown.
The curriculum has changed so much and policies require that kids with learning disabilities can have an IEP (Individualized Education Program) and teachers have to come up with alternative learning for multiple kids, leaving them with little time to do anything else. On top of that, experienced teachers have stated that behavior has taken a sharp decline. They no longer separate the problem kids from the rest of the class because studies have shown that their outcomes are better if they remain in normal classes. However, this forces teachers to deal with constant disruptions which causes negative effects on the other students.
policies require that kids with learning disabilities can have an IEP (Individualized Education Program)and teachers have to come up with alternative learning for multiple kids, leaving them with little time to do anything else.
Please don’t throw mud at IEPs. I grew up in the 70s when all the “retarded” kids were lumped in together regardless of issue, and now have a son who can only attend public school due to having an IEP and specialized support.
If more money needs to be spent to help teachers (including getting more of them or more help for those who there are) I’m all for it, but this sounds a little current-POTUS-ish.
Throw into that mix all the parents who think home schooling is best. Sure, for a select few it’s going to be better, but the majority are going to struggle in later life.
What usually happens is a parent gets reported to social services for child abuse. Then they go to facebook ranting about how bad the school is and that they’re being targeted. Then they pull their kids out of school to “homeschool” so they can continue to abuse their kids.
Nooo, kids were like that form the ancient times /s.
Welcome to post-scarcity.
Honestly, I wish I realized it more as a kid. There’s not really a reason to pay attention to shit we don’t care about because there’s some autist out there who is going to enjoy doing it and do it better. We can just apply their solutions and move on with our lives. It’s not like they will even care. They’re too busy doing other things.
Bless the next generation for fighting back against our tunnel vision.
Probably going to get slated for this but surely at some point we need to accept our being all nice and friendly all the time just doesn’t work.
Like if kids are this bad send them off to military school for a month till they shape up. Happens again 6 months, then 12. Government mandated, parents don’t like it, they can look after their kids better.
People are absolute shits and don’t give a fuck about others or their future. No amount of “please pay attention or you won’t understand algebra and won’t get a good job” will do anything, you will just get “Why do i need to learn algebra! I’ll never use that. John just told me to shut up, what am I meant to do? Just let him disrespect me like that. You should be talking to John!”
Fuck them. Make them do press ups in the rain see if they learn to shut up then.
How many Gomer Pyles will that produce?
Maybe less than all the murderers we have now. Being straightened out by the military is a well known phenomenon. We can’t keep doing the same things when trends are showing they aren’t working, then expect them to work better. Something needs to be changed.
I actually agree with you. There used to be real consequences for bad behavior and being lazy, and now you get told that it’s not really your fault. Zero concept of personal responsibility. Now society is an epidemic of mass narcissism and selfishness. It clearly isn’t sustainable. There are going to be severe consequences for our quality of life in the future, and that’s assuming society even survives this epidemic at all.
Seems like teachers and schools aren’t properly equipped for modern kids.
More like modern kids aren’t equipped to deal with reality.
So this teacher had nothing bad to say about the teaching or the education system? It’s just bad kids and their bad parents, right? How convenient for teachers.
In reality these schools are indoctrination camps on the school-to-prison pipeline. We live in a fascist society that’s literally destroying the planet. Schools are a fundamental part of this process.
TBH kids shouldn’t listen to their teachers and schools. That’s what got us here.
Social media is definitely a big thing, even if it’s not the only thing.
I believe it has two parts. The technology can personalize content and optimize for engagement, so it’s more addicting than traditional media could ever be.
And the jackasses making content have no accountability or editorial standards whatsoever. They churn out whatever clicks and they’re willing to lie, incite, and gaslight their way through it.
Combine the low content standards with the high addiction factor and you have a ticking time bomb. Or maybe it already went off and we’re just looking around at the crater left behind.
Those damn machines, impacting the youth!
Those damn newspapers, impacting the youth!
Those damn radios, impacting the youth!
Those damn TVs, impacting the youth!
Those damn internet connected computers, impacting the youth!
Those damn smartphones, impacting the youth!
Those damn AI models, impacting the youth!
its all about who controls that stuff
Our youth now love luxury, they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders, and they love to chatter instead of exercise. Children are now tyrants not servants of their household. They no longer rise when elders enter the room.
I feel like literally every generation for the last 1000+ years probably had a similar sentiment
You’d be off by 1500 years, that was Socrates.
Considering 2500 years ago is more than 1000 years ago, I’ll assume you mean 500 years in the future.
(Also if that’s an actual Socrates quote that’s hilarious)
That was Socrates circa 500-ish BC, 2500 years ago or so.
Thousands of years of this stuff.
I’m probably just another old idiot who can’t see things for what they really are, but social media does scare the hell out of me. It’s hard to imagine it being a good thing when personalities are shaped by algorithms that exist entirely to drive engagement so a company makes a buck.
It isn’t just rich chocolaty ovaltine. The kid isn’t being brainwashed to drink a sugary drink from time to time. The kid is a constant revenue stream.
They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents,
Uh…
We really have reached a whole new level of impression.
