- Researchers urge treating the online manosphere as a public health issue comparable to the tobacco industry.
- Manosphere promotes misogyny, male victimization, distorted masculinity, harming men's mental health, violence against women, and delegitimizing help-seeking.
- Calls for a coordinated government response with better access to jobs, skills training, and mental health services for boys and men.
- Platforms and profiteers use a tobacco industry playbook: blame individuals, resist regulation, and profit from schemes and unregulated products.
Researchers have warned that the social media “manosphere” should be treated as a public health issue similar to the tobacco industry, in a report published in The Lancet on Friday.
The report looks at the so-called manosphere, which it defines as the collection of online communities united by shared beliefs about “masculinity, misogyny, and male victimisation”.
It details the health impacts of the manosphere — which blames feminism for disadvantaging men and a masculinity crisis — including on men’s mental health and violence against women.
It also says the movement “delegitimises” men and boys seeking help.
“By reframing the manosphere as a public health issue rather than just a regulatory issue, we open up a number of additional policy levers that public health approaches can provide,” author Sarah J Hawkes told BBC Radio 4.
The University College London global public health professor called for a coordinated government response to the crisis, including better access to skills and jobs as well as to mental health services.
She also pointed out that people make “a lot of money” through such messaging, including by encouraging boys and men to invest in financial schemes and buy unregulated supplements and hormones.
Co-author Kent Buse, health policy professor at Monash University Malaysia, said the manosphere thrived on online platforms deploying a similar playbook to the tobacco industry: “blame the individual, and call regulation an attack on freedom.”
“Boys and men are not the problem,” said Buse. “The problem is the conditions that leave them isolated and without a secure future, and the companies that profit from their anger and insecurity.”
