Research Report: What We’ve Learned About the Online Lives of Boys Who Are Embracing Positive Masculinity
In the aftermath of the pandemic, it was clear that the young people in Next Gen Men’s community had just gone through one of the most consequential events in their lives.
As part of our ongoing mission to support boys’ well-being, my colleagues and I decided to take on a research project designed to better understand their feelings, stresses and needs. What we uncovered was a surprising distance between their beliefs and attitudes about toxic and positive masculinity, and their lived experiences—particularly online.
The vast majority of the boys in our survey privately challenged traditional pressures of masculinity like toughness, dominance or hypersexuality. Those same boys, however, consistently perpetuated or witnessed those harmful norms in their online lives.
Read more: Find the executive summary and full report, Boys Will Be _: The Online Lives of Boys Who Are Embracing Positive Masculinity, in the NGM Library.
Beyond anything else, boys use the internet for connection.
When we think about boys online, we often think about screen time and video games, or the gravitational pull of Andrew Tate and chatGPT. We think about YouTube and TikTok, toxic group chats and pornography.
These things matter. What’s missing, however, is the centrality of friendship in boys’ online lives.
For the boys in our survey, time spent connecting with others by chatting (75%) or video gaming (68%) was comparable to time spent solely on entertainment (80%). Perhaps most critically, when we asked them about the most positive way the internet had impacted their lives, the most common answer was social connection (36%).
“Well, basically every relationship is built on communication. If you don’t talk to someone, you’re not…you’re never gonna be their friend, you’re never gonna know anything about them. So like, communication is the foundation for, well, pretty much everything.”
We know peer groups play a pivotal role in either normalizing or challenging gender-based violence. That’s why organizations like Next Gen Men work with sports teams and locker rooms, for example, or in classrooms and after-school programs.
If boys’ friendships are being shaped online, we need to be there too.
Boys agree that they should ask for help. They just don’t do it.
One of the most enduring messages of what it means to be a man is that boys don’t cry—that they need to be tough, independent and able to handle personal problems on their own.
When we put this question to the boys in our survey, 66% of them disagreed.
The boys we heard from knew firsthand what it felt like to struggle with mental health. Almost all of them (93%) said they had felt overwhelmed, stressed out, or not themselves in the past month. The most common sources of stress they identified were school (56%), high expectations and pressure (28%), and social interactions (26%).
More than half of them (52%) had also experienced thoughts of suicide at least once. Seven different boys who responded to our survey said they were thinking about suicide on a daily or weekly basis.
However, despite knowing in their hearts that boys should be able to ask for help—and despite facing personal struggles themselves—only 27% of the boys in our survey said they had looked for support in the past month. What we saw instead was self-reliance—30% of them said they had never once looked for mental health support, and 68% said they mostly relied on themselves.
What this suggests is that simply disagreeing with the Man Box is not enough to safeguard boys’ well-being—and that means that every single one of us needs to consistently show up with curiosity and compassion for the boys in our lives.
It might be what they need most.
“Like, I don’t know. I don’t…I can’t really describe it, but I feel like it’s just like, I don’t know. Like, I knew my, I knew that people would listen to me, but for some reason I just felt like they wouldn’t.”
Boys’ body image is at risk.
Physical strength is another central part of what it traditionally means to be a man. Perhaps the most common type of ad that boys and men see online is for various iterations of a workout routine that promise swollen chest muscles and rippling abs.
When we asked the boys in our survey about this, they were split. 23% of them agreed that being strong was important, while 36% of them disagreed. 22% agreed that it was important for guys to be physically attractive; 45% disagreed.
More than any other question in the survey, however, boys said they were neutral (30% and 32%).
30% of the boys in our survey said their body image had been negatively impacted by social media content. Another 25% were neutral.
“I’ve noticed a duality in that like…girls’ social media will definitely be more like…you’re, you’re the person you want to be. And then guys will be like…get off your ass and do it.”
Despite an immense cultural awareness of the consequences of unrealistic body expectations on girls and women, boys are largely being left to fend for themselves. What comes across most palpably in this research is their uncertainty.
Adolescent boys are being bombarded with CGI-enhanced superheroes, get-ripped-quick workout routines and easy access to anabolic steroids online, and they aren’t sure what to make of it.
We need to talk with boys about body image just as much as we do with girls.
Boys are exposed to homophobia and hypersexuality online.
Likely because of the community norms that define the NGM Alliance Discord server where many of the boys in our survey were from, the vast majority of them (89%) disagreed with traditional masculine norms about not looking gay. The majority (57%) of them also disagreed with the expectation that guys should be able to get girls.
However, many of the boys (36%) said the people they talk to online regularly made homophobic comments.
The largest proportion (41%) said that they had learned most of what they knew about sex online, compared to 37% who disagreed and 23% who were neutral.
Read more: Past Learnings & Unlearning blog, What Should Parents of Boys Know About Porn?.
What this demonstrates is that while they might privately hold onto gender-equitable beliefs and values, boys continue to be immersed in homophobic and hypersexual spaces.
“I feel like a lot of people learn from, like, porn, but then they realize it’s, it’s more of a trial and error thing, I feel like. It’s something you have to figure out yourself. Yeah. No, nobody’s gonna be mad at you if you’re inexperienced, right? Like, everybody’s there at some point.”
Adolescents’ online experiences are inseparable from their everyday lives. Online issues like relational conflict, cyberbullying, anxiety, body image, homophobia and sexual violence should be considered with as much care, sensitivity and diligence as anything else they experience.
Thoughtful and nonjudgmental conversation—in research, in our classrooms, and in our homes—is our best bet for supporting boys through unspoken struggles, and fostering their commitment to advocating for gender justice.
As we have always said, boys will not simply ‘be boys.’ Boys will be whatever we give them the space and support to be.