Young Australian men are actively seeking out online content about self-improvement and male empowerment, according to new research that also found many struggling with shame and a lack of self-control due to continuous, often unwanted exposure to “pervasive” online pornography.
Entitled Being a Young Man Online, the new report – a qualitative evaluation of 117 young men aged 16 to 21 that was conducted last year by the eSafety Commissioner, Deakin University, and Queensland University of Technology – aimed to understand the role that online content plays in shaping young men’s development.
Far from being active consumers of damaging content, however, the report found that many young men are keenly aware of the problematic nature of much of the content they find online – with many describing online communities as “places where abuse and negativity are common and normalised”, and where “bandwagoning” helped to “restrict expression and generate harm online”.
Yet rather than ignoring or avoiding such spaces, many young men said they had used anonymous or pseudonymous identities “to express themselves online without fear of judgement” as they explore both positive and negative online communities in ways they wouldn’t feel free to do offline.
Despite many saying they are aware of the ways that social media algorithms shape the content they see – and amplify exposure to problematic content – many respondents said they actively seek out “inspiring and motivating” influencer content about self-improvement and male empowerment.
And while respondents admitted a range of opinions about widely criticised ‘himfluencers’ like Andrew Tate – whose frequently misogynistic content is often blamed as a driver for toxic masculinity and the behaviour it engenders – the interviews suggested that “engaging with Tate and his ideas is a central way in which some young men are shaping their identity as men online.”
Tate’s content “perpetuates some pretty negative ideologies,” one respondent said. “You don’t start watching Andrew Tate and be like ‘Oh, I want to think this way.’ It’s just something that happens the more content you consume.”
The role of self-reinforcing social media algorithms and the normalisation of toxic culture complicate coming of age in today’s world, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said in releasing the new findings – which she said highlight the problems facing young men forced “to grow up in a world straddling the offline and online dimensions, with the online world becoming an increasingly potent force.”
Young men, she said, are “coming of age against a backdrop of complicated and contested public discussions about what modern-day masculinity means, potentially making the process of figuring out who they are and what they stand for more confusing and fraught.”
Even putatively innocuous social spaces like online gaming communities had become beds of toxicity, where young men attracted by the promise of fun social interaction were caught up in escalating conflicts with other players – with racism, sexism, and aggression leading to harmful behaviours that were amplified across the predominantly male-focused services.
Paying the price for ubiquitous porn
Significantly, the report found that young men are generally critical of online pornography, often encountering such content “without actively seeking it out” – leading many to struggle with feelings of shame or a lack of self-control, and others to readily admit that they know pornography is "generally not a good model of gender equality, consent or respectful relationships.”
That awareness has played out in the worst possible ways in recent years, particularly as the ready availability of generative AI (GenAI) tools for creating deepfake images and videos enables young people to target and bully others with tailor-made toxicity – such as the Melbourne teenager who was recently arrested for using deepfake GenAI tools to create and distribute nude images of up to 50 female classmates.
The issue has become so problematic that the government recently accelerated efforts to make the sharing non-consensual deepfake pornography illegal, with new legislation threatening six years’ imprisonment for sharing such content and a potential term of seven years’ imprisonment threatened for an aggravated offence if the content was also created without consent.
“This insidious behaviour can be a method of degrading, humiliating and dehumanising victims,” Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said in introducing the proposed laws – which come amidst government efforts to increase eSafety funding, bring forward a planned review of the Online Safety Act, and criminalise aggressive acts such as doxxing that are often used to embarrass or shame others.
Many worry that such behaviours are only likely to exacerbate existing problems – such as this year’s lamentable surge in the number of women murdered by intimate partners – as these young men grow up.
