PRESS RELEASE
Thursday October 29
- As the UK implements the Online Safety Act, experts warn that removing harmful posts alone will not stop the spread of online misogyny
- Governments must instead tackle the underlying reasons why young men are drawn into the manosphere, including educational disengagement, insecure futures and intense loneliness
- The authors call for a coordinated response involving tougher regulation of social media companies, education and public health campaigns
The relentless rise of misogynistic content online will continue unless governments tackle the root causes of why boys and young men are being drawn into the manosphere, leading global health experts have warned.
Writing in The Lancet, Professors Sarah Hawkes and Kent Buse, co-founders of the gender justice think tank Global 50/50, argue that governments should focus on understanding why young men are turning to these communities, rather than simply blaming them, removing harmful content or restricting access.
They point to growing disengagement from education among boys around the world, as well as loneliness, money worries and social exclusion, which can leave young men searching for a sense of belonging.
These problems can make them more vulnerable to online communities that offer simple explanations for their difficulties, often encouraging them to blame women and feminism, they say.
“The manosphere offers boys and young men belonging, identity and an explanation for why life feels hard,” said Professor Hawkes. “Those needs are real. A response that only removes the manosphere, without offering something credible in its place, will fail. We need to offer boys something better, not just tell them what to avoid.”
The authors outline how the manosphere has evolved into a highly lucrative online industry that makes money by promoting “the most extreme expressions of misogyny and aggrieved masculinity”.
However, for boys and young men who are drawn into these communities, the risks include poor mental health, body image problems and reluctance to seek professional help, they say.
For women and girls, the risks are also serious. The researchers warn that the manosphere normalises deeply misogynistic attitudes, contributing to an environment in which violence against women and girls is more readily accepted.
The authors say that the manosphere should be treated as a public health risk, much like smoking, with a coordinated response to tackle its harmful effects, involving governments, schools, health services and community organisations. Like the tobacco and ultra-processed food industries, they say platforms and content creators individualise responsibility and portray regulation as a threat to personal freedom.
“This is a business model, not a fringe,” said Professor Buse. “Outrage and grievance are good for business, so the system rewards the most extreme content. Expect the playbook that served tobacco so well: blame the individual, and call regulation an attack on freedom. Public health has a tested toolkit for commercial harms and we should use it.”
He added: “Boys and men are not the problem. The problem is the conditions that leave them isolated and without a secure future, and the companies that profit from their anger and insecurity.”
The authors call for the manosphere to be treated as a public health issue, which means addressing the root causes of the issue, including tackling the economic and social conditions that leave young people without a secure future.
They also call for improving mental health support for boys and young men, tackling educational disengagement and social isolation, and school programmes that develop emotional skills and healthy relationships, alongside public health campaigns that challenge misogyny and promote positive ideas about masculinity without treating men themselves as the problem.
The paper, titled Reframing the manosphere: a public health response to a commercial ecosystem, is published in The Lancet alongside The Lancet’s first-ever series on men’s health.
Six priorities for a public health response
The Viewpoint proposes six priorities for a comprehensive public health response to the health harms of the manosphere.
- Address the upstream conditions that shape vulnerability and engagement, including educational marginalisation, social exclusion and isolation in boys and young men.
- Strengthen multisectoral collaboration between health systems and other front-line sectors that routinely engage with boys and young men, particularly education.
- Develop communications strategies that avoid framing masculinity as inherently toxic or boys and men as inherently problematic. Narratives and interventions co-designed with diverse populations of boys and men can help, including pre-bunking, which builds resilience to harmful content more effectively than reactive counter-messaging.
- Consider platform regulation as analogous to other public health regulation strategies, addressing the structures and incentives that generate harm rather than the individuals exposed to them. The authors recognise differences: the manosphere is not a single product, its harms are less directly demonstrable, and online engagement has legitimate and beneficial uses.
- Invest in monitoring, research and evaluation to track evolving digital ecosystems, assess the effectiveness and impact of interventions and identify unintended consequences.
- Confront the underlying misogyny and anti-equality prejudices embedded in most societies, including the well funded anti-gender and anti-rights movements that actively contest the evidence base for gender equality. Although the manosphere did not create misogyny, it could be normalising and amplifying it.
Read the paper and join the launch
Read the Viewpoint: Hawkes S, Buse K. Reframing the manosphere: a public health response to a commercial ecosystem. The Lancet 2026; 408: 1912-16. https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0140-6736%2826%2902027-1
Join the launch of The Lancet Series on men’s health on 5 November 2026 at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, in person or online. https://www.tickettailor.com/events/lstm1/2484440
About Global 50/50
Global 50/50 is an independent thinktank whose purpose is to advance action and accountability for social and gender justice. Drawing on over three decades of national and global research, technical support, policy analysis and multilateral strategy development, we generate evidence to challenge inequity and drive institutional change.
Media enquiries and interviews
Lorna Harris, lorna.harris@weareneo.com, +44 7595 295687
