There has been an alarming rise in alpha male culture, with one expert seeing Australian children as young as 11 becoming heavily influenced by misogynistic content on social media.
Psychologist Sahra O’Doherty said that content like that of the influencer accused of rape Andrew Tate played on children’s “insecurity about themselves.”
The ‘alpha male’ is defined by his followers as the most powerful and successful man in any group, who takes charge and is hypermasculine.
A study carried out by the Dublin City University (DCU) showed that social media algorithms are amplifying the notion of male supremacy and misogynistic content.
The researchers created 10 experimental accounts on YouTube and TikTok and found that all male-identified accounts were flooded with anti-feminist, masculinist, and extremist content.
There has been an alarming rise in alpha male culture, with one expert seeing Australian children as young as 11 becoming heavily influenced by misogynistic content on social media (stock)
This happened regardless of whether the content was searched, and accounts received it within the first 23 minutes of the experiment.
If the account showed any interest, the amount of this type of content increased dramatically.
After 400 videos, the study found that the majority of content sent to the accounts belonged to the manosphere genre (alpha male and anti-feminist).
In addition to content promoting female submission, anti-equality, male motivation, mental health and money-making, it was found to target children’s emotional and financial insecurities.
This type of targeting by the algorithm does not surprise Australian Psychologists Association president Sahra O’Doherty, who said such content played on men’s “self-doubt.”
“What we often see as psychologists are young men who feel quite lost, who don’t feel like they belong or that they don’t fit in,” he said.
‘Or they have had negative experiences with groups of friends or with people they want to date, often women, and feel the need to improve.
“The alpha brother marketing that’s being shown to these young people plays into the idea that if you have this particular product, you’re going to excel in the gym and you’re going to excel at dating and you’re going to have all these wonderful things that I’m going to have.” I show it to you in this video.’
Psychologist Sahra O’Doherty (pictured) said content like that of the influencer accused of rape Andrew Tate played on children’s “insecurity about themselves.”
O’Doherty works with young men and teenagers and notes that the largest group he sees impacted by this content is high school-aged boys.
‘I see this a lot in high school students and there is a lot of research on this problem. “It’s often accompanied by misogynistic attitudes or pushing those traditional stereotypical gender roles,” he stated.
‘And it can often result in not engaging in healthy conversations or relationships with young women. And, in extreme cases, it can result in these young people withdrawing from conversations (and) society.’
O’Doherty said he is also seeing the behavior of elementary school-aged children.
‘He’s getting younger and younger. “We’re starting to see this even from late elementary school age,” she said.
Some of these teens look to influencers like Andrew Tate as role models.
Influencer Andrew Tate (pictured) and his brother Tristan have been accused of rape and human trafficking in Romania, something they deny.
Tate and his brother Tristan have been accused of rape and human trafficking in Romania, which they deny.
“It’s this aspirational image of people like Andrew Tate, where you see someone you might perceive as successful, rich or handsome, surrounded by women or nice cars,” Ms O’Doherty said.
‘If you scroll through TikTok or Instagram, there are a lot of people promoting themselves as dating or lifestyle coaches.
“And they really get hung up on this idea of really old-school, hyper-masculine, stereotypical views of masculinity.”
Ms O’Doherty said young children “get sucked into that kind of culture, so it can be really problematic to try to get them out of it and help them work on themselves and their own self-esteem”.
Despite social media platforms shutting down and deleting the accounts of these types of influencers, the DCU found that they did not remove the content itself.
“Our study shows that closing influencers’ accounts does not necessarily delete their content,” said Professor Debbie Ging.
“The overwhelming presence of Andrew Tate content in our data set at a time when he was deplatformed means that social media companies must address harmful content in more sophisticated ways.”
Ms O’Doherty recommends that parents have “really honest and open conversations” with their children and stop judging at the door.
“When we have these conversations, we can talk about the kinds of things they might be exposed to on social media without fear of being judged,” he said.
“We’re not going to judge them for watching or participating in the type of things that they participate in, but we do want to discuss maybe some of the messages that they receive when they watch these TikToks.”
