Throughout history, young people have relied on role models to help guide them through the tricky transition to adulthood. But like so many other things, the internet has changed this process and made a difficult rite of passage even more complex and confounding.
While respected adults in families, communities or the culture at large continue to provide important examples, anyone who has children cannot fail to be aware of the indelible effect of the online world on the lives of young people. Yet, where are the healthy, positive role models in these experiences?
Our research shows that they’re sadly lacking, most especially for boys and young men. While concerning in itself, what’s even worse is there are plenty of darker influences (or influencers) waiting to fill the void, often propelled along by invisible and opaque online systems (systems which Big Tech refuse to tame).
In some respects, algorithms can be even more influential than parents and carers, especially if that young person is already grappling with a precarious sense of self. They can ostensibly drag vulnerable young people down rabbit holes of harmful content promoting (among other things) self-harm and suicide, glorified violence and crime, intolerance and hate, sexism and misogyny.
If we want to disrupt the swirling tide of harmful narratives online effectively being forced on young people, we need to do something different, something positive. And that includes giving young men healthy online role models about how to be a man – and lots of them.
Young men’s thwarted search for meaning & belonging online
As part of its commitment to ending violence against women and children in one generation, the Australian Government has called out promoting ‘healthy masculinities’ as key to progressing that goal.
While there’s no panacea to unpicking harmful norms and attitudes, part of the solution lies in giving young men and boys alternative, compelling examples to follow. Specifically, positive role models who exemplify how to live, connect, and push boundaries in ways that extend beyond the outdated and narrow ideals of ‘manhood’.
But this is where we, as a society, are failing them – most especially in the online world.
As the online safety regulator, we regularly conduct general population research into Australians’ online experiences to inform our resources and prevention messaging. Noting the rise and resonance of a small number of harmful online influencers coupled with an emboldened global incel movement, we decided a different approach was needed.
Instead of surveying a general sample of the population and then subsequently analysing the risks and protective factors by gender and age (among other variables), we took an audience-first approach and set out to investigate young men’s unique online experiences, including how they form and express their identities online.
This culminated in two reports. The first, published last year: Being a young man online: Tensions, complexities and possibilities. This report is based on the lived experiences and voices of young men. The second, published today, Supporting Young Men Online: Understanding young men’s needs, the pull of harmful content and the way forward. This draws on the insights of expert practitioners immersed in the everyday and collective experiences of young Australian men and boys.
These two reports powerfully reinforce that there’s a paucity of positive, healthy online examples for young men and boys to follow. Even as they actively seek out validation, connection, and opportunities to explore and take risks, theirs is a world dominated by voices telling them who not to be, rather than who they can aspire to be. In the words of one practitioner: "All society is telling [young men] is this: be better, don’t harm, don’t do this, don’t do that."
This deficit model is allowing a small but potent number of harmful voices to dominate online conversations about masculinity. As observed by another practitioner: "Much of the online content plays to fairly foundational needs around belonging and creating a sense of self. And it just happens that the sense of self that it’s playing off is a sense of self that ostracises others. There’s clear in- and out-groups, and it’s not just men to women; it’s also men to other men."
At its most benign, and in the vast majority of cases, this means young men are left to cobble together their own code of what it means to be a man in 2025 by defining their own personal list of ‘dos’. A daunting and lonely task to take on as a young person.
At its worst and in a small number of cases, young men are finding answers and a refuge in online spaces whose code and philosophy are rooted in problematic and harmful ideas of ‘toughness’, violence – and a rejection of feminism and equal rights.
A desire for simplicity in a confounding, complex world
Navigating adolescence and early adulthood has always been difficult life stage, but this is one of the first generations to grow up in a world straddling the offline and online dimensions. In addition, young men are also coming of age against a backdrop of complicated and contested public discussions about what modern-day masculinity means.
The practitioners we spoke with posited that certain harmful male influencers are particularly alluring for some young men because they provide a mantra that is clear, actionable, and simple. They provide an antidote to a complex, overwhelming world imbued with grey. They cannily craft messages and narratives to overlook the historical and structural dimensions of gendered privilege, which effectively plays up and exploits a young person’s feelings of uncertainty and disenfranchisement. As noted: "… young people are looking for [really clear direction] at a time when things can be really, really confusing ... These social media influencers are giving them really simple solutions to things that are really complex."
Young men’s susceptibility to these narratives can, in part, be related to their still-developing understanding of social dynamics and power. Practitioners explained they haven’t been given the tools to understand how gendered privilege functions in society and how it can co-exist with other forms of discrimination and disadvantage, such as racism and low-socioeconomic status. Moreover, their everyday experiences can feel like a direct rebuttal to any argument of structural male privilege. As one practitioner observed: "When your dad is violent, or you’ve never met your dad or you’re poor or your best mate killed himself or you got jumped on the way home from school, you don’t feel privileged."
The tech is stacked against them in an unfair fight
But as I mentioned at the start, it’s not just the people shaping these dynamics. As rightly pointed out by so many we talked to, the hidden online processes and systems – the algorithms and recommender systems – expose children and young people to harmful and dangerous content that can exacerbate their underlying sense of alienation, fear, and need for certainty. As soberingly pointed out by a practitioner: "Boys are being inculcated into a form of content that they have no control over, and parents have no control over it and teachers have no control over it."
Big Tech may insist that recommender systems purely serve the content interests of the user, but we argue they’re also designed to entrap vulnerable users in an endless content loop that preys on their deepest insecurities.
As Australia’s online safety regulator, it’s my proposition that industry is being willfully blind to the harms of these hidden systems – which extends to disordered eating, harmful levels of exercise and body sculpting, self-harm, and suicide – in its dogged pursuit of profits. Even as eSafety maps out strategies industry can adopt to boost user safety (see our work on Safety by Design), the collective response seems to be a whittling away of safety check and balances, rather than any improvement.
A way forward
While these are complex issues requiring a whole-society approach (which must include the tech sector), I remain hopeful that young people can navigate these online forces with support.
It can be easy to understate or gloss over the capacity of teens to think critically. But in the online world, adults have a lot to learn from them. As summed up by one expert: "Young people are a lot more critical in these spaces than we think they are. They are smarter and more adept at navigating these spaces on the internet than we are, or their parents."
More than that, we cannot lose sight that young men are craving advice and leadership on how to do good in an extremely volatile, polarised world: “I firmly believe that underneath the surface, underneath the mask of the facade that they might be trying to put on [in order] to fit in … there are supportive, nurturing, caring intentions that they want to show.”
Practitioners told us time and time again that these strengths can be fostered to support the development of positive and healthy online experiences related to manhood and masculinities, and there are opportunities for eSafety and others to further act in this space.
For my team, this includes:
- building out our current youth resources to ensure they’re based on the most contemporary evidence and speak to young men – not about them
- supporting initiatives that provide positive and respectful online spaces and role models
- working with educators, parents and young men to distribute co-designed, strengths-based online safety advice (such as the work we do in partnership with the National Online Safety Education Council)
- continuing to leverage our powers to guard against harms, including the crucial work we’re doing to limit the spread of extreme violent pornography and extreme violent material via the industry standards and codes
- working with global regulators and the tech sector to reduce the spread of harmful content, especially content promoted by recommender systems
- expanding our current training on the role of algorithms, recommender systems and AI companions.
Read the full report and recommendations, including a roadmap for action for eSafety: Supporting Young Men Online: Understanding young men’s needs, the pull of harmful content and the way forward.
