Dr. Jane Gilmour: Hello and welcome to Mind the Kids. I'm Dr. Jane Gilmour honorary consultant clinical psychologist and child developmental program director at UCL.

Prof Umar Toseeb: I'm Umar Toseeb Professor of Psychology with a focus on child and adolescent mental health and special educational needs.

Dr. Jane Gilmour: In each episode we select topics from the mental health literature and in conversation with invited authors sift through the data, the dilemmas and the debates to leave you with our takeaways. In this episode, we ask, should we be worried about the Manosphere? Umar should we?

Prof Umar Toseeb: Well, I have to admit, I hadn't heard of the Manosphere until maybe two or three months ago, so this, the term is completely new to me. And my understanding of the Manosphere is that it's an online space where men are portrayed as the victims of modern society at the expense of women and it's misogynistic content that's produced and consumed by various people, mostly men and young men specifically. So that's my understanding of the Manosphere. Is that what you understand too, Jane?

Dr. Jane Gilmour: I think, I mean, certainly, you know, I took all my emotional regulation skills on both hands and went into the Manosphere And certainly the content that I was finding, now bear in mind, you know, in the context of other previous experiences in my algorithm will change what I'm finding, was it ran from quite conservative ideas to, you know, gender roles and traditional gender roles. Some might describe that sexism to the extreme misogyny and inciting violence against women. And I do think this is a really interesting concept and I'm so grateful that we've got Harriet to speak about this as we'll hear from her in a moment because bringing the Manosphere and the concepts that it raises is so important to bring it into academia. You know, we know that we're in a world where there's populist ideas, particularly across Europe, which are politically looking for scapegoats of groups and offering simple solutions to those that feel disenfranchised. So this Manosphere idea at its most extreme particularly fits quite well into that. It's a really interesting and valuable topic to bring.

Prof Umar Toseeb: I think the prevalence of consumption is actually really interesting too. So in preparation for this, the background reading that I did, some of Harriet's work as well. So one of the prominent people in this space online is Andrew Tate. And apparently about 80 % of 16 to 17 year old boys have heard of Andrew Tate compared to about 50 % who have heard of the prime minister. So more young boys within that age bracket have heard of this online influencer who is... is prominent in the Manosphere compared to have heard the Prime Minister.

Dr. Jane Gilmour: I was going to say I'm really interested in this. of course, as a very old person, I am shocked that these young people perhaps know the name of somebody who they're seeing every day as compared to the prime minister. I want to know if that's a cohort effect. In 1982, did people know the name of the prime minister as compared to, you know, somebody else who was high in their agenda? Now, you could argue the influence and the potential harm caused by some of the Manosphere providers, let's say is significantly different, but I'm interested, you and I don't know, I couldn't find any data to explore that idea, but it really is a key issue, I think.

Prof Umar Toseeb: Yeah. And I suppose part of that answering that question would be around the online space being novel. So, know, even if in 1982, the proportion of young people who've heard the prime minister compared to whoever was the, in vogue person at the time, I suppose when you're on any sort of social media, there are algorithms which make it easier for you to go down these rabbit holes. Um, and, know, like you mentioned earlier, if you started to search for some Manosphere content on Instagram, you will see more and more and more and more of that. And I wonder whether that kind of online space driven by algorithms polarizes people. So that maybe is the case that more people have heard of it because more people are being driven to it. Whereas that might not have been the case a couple of decades ago when these algorithms didn't exist.

Dr. Jane Gilmour: I think you've hit the nail on the head there and I think this is something that we're going to ask Harriet about in greater detail because the idea of what the content is bound around if you like. So the Manosphere includes so many themes that young boys in particular will be so interested in. You know fast cars, wealth generation. You know, these things are OK, feeling powerful, these things are OK. And indeed, you know, we can completely understand why some young men in particular, young teenage boys would be drawn towards that. But it's wrapped around these misogynist ideas and pulling those apart is really important, particularly when we know during the teenage brain stage of life, learning by association is particularly heightened. think Towner and colleagues, I think it's a Blakemore lab paper looking at how to learn and how to and the sort of patterns of learning during adolescence is particularly heightened. So if I am a 13 year old boy and I go there looking for cars, but I stay because there's some interesting ideas on wealth generation. And then I find the pernicious, misogynistic ideas. What's happening to my learning about success and life goals and my attitudes to women? Prof Umar Toseeb: I think now is a good time to be like, let's bring in the expert. Yeah. So today we're joined by the expert, Professor Harriet Over from the Department of Psychology at the University of York. Harriet is the lead author of the editorial, What Do We Need to Know About the Manosphere and Young People's Mental Health, which is published in the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Journal. Harriet, welcome.

Dr. Jane Gilmour: Let's do it.

Prof Harriet Over: Thank you so much for the invitation. It's lovely to be here.

Prof Umar Toseeb: We're so happy to have you. Let's start with how you got into this line of research.

Prof Harriet Over: Well, I've been studying prejudice for the last 15 years, and I became very interested in this question of the extent to which the concept of objectification explains harm against women. So that's the idea that men perceive women as objects. And as a result, of natural inhibitions against harming them is reduced and they're more likely to be the victims of gender violence. And I read some feminist philosophy that was leading me to kind of question the value of that construct. Because when you hear people like these misogynistic influences like Andrew Tate talk, they're often discussing women's supposed mental state. So women are cunning and they're gold diggers and they're disloyal. All of those things are constructs that don't really make sense when you apply them to objects, but do make sense when you apply them to humans. So I was interested in this quite theoretical question in academic psychology. And as I started to explore that question, I watched more and more of a Manosphere. And I started to try and look for academic research on this topic and particularly academic psychological research and realized firstly, how severe this problem appears to be. And secondly, how little psychological research there was. So then I kind of changed track and I applied for this big grant on the Manosphere, which has this more applied focus.

Dr. Jane Gilmour: That's wonderful. And we are waiting with bated breath to get some data that looks specifically at the Manosphere. So do you think given, the lack of data that you've described, can we extrapolate using data from other extremist experiences and radicalisation to political or religious groups? Do you think that data can be applied or is it going to be a different picture, do you think?

Prof Harriet Over: There is a broader literature on radicalisation trying to answer questions like who is most vulnerable to being drawn into radicalisation? And I think that absolutely is important. And there's also academic literature on the Manosphere itself in other disciplines. So, for example, there's a lot of excellent work in sociology and communications, which has tried to understand what are the themes of a Manosphere? How does it relate to broader cultural forces and sexism in our society? And there's also really interesting work from computer science often trying to automate the detection of hate speech. So trying to understand how can we make online spaces safer? How can we work out the prevalence of this type of content online? So there's definitely really interesting research in these different areas that we can bring to bear on this question of the Manosphere.

Dr. Jane Gilmour: But you mentioned a big grant. So how are you going to address these gaps? So could you perhaps just tell us a little bit about what you plan to do in the context of this grant? news.

Prof Harriet Over: So it's an ERC grant for the next five years. So I'm going to collaborate with computer scientist David Zendle and also with the PSHE Association. So Jonathan Bagley and Josh Stubbs from PSHE Association. And there are three big questions that we're really interested in. So the first is how much of this type of content are children watching? In what quantities, what is the nature of those messages? Why does it appeal to young people? The second is try to piece together causal evidence about how it's influencing young people. So obviously this is a domain in which we can't do experimental research easily because we can't willfully expose teenage boys to content that we believe is likely to be harmful. So we're going to do these longitudinal projects trying to understand to what extent does engaging with this content lead to changes in your sexist attitudes over time, also homophobia and transphobia. Also very interested in how does it predict changes in mental health? So boys own levels of depression and anxiety and loneliness. And then finally, how does it predict changes in attitudes towards democracy? So we see this move away from support for democratic systems across Europe, in America. And it seems like that's particularly driven by changing attitudes of young men. And I'm interested in whether the Manosphere might be playing a causal role in that. And then the third question is how can we intervene to help young people? So we're planning two interventions, one of which is with young adolescents. So just as they enter secondary school, how can we help children to think critically about this type of content that they'll almost inevitably encounter later online? And then the second intervention is to ask, well, for people who've already consumed a lot of this content, are there ways to try and mitigate the extent to which they endorse sexist beliefs?

Prof Umar Toseeb: When I was reading the editorial, I think that what was really helpful was actually I know that you're saying the data isn't really there, but there is some indicative research and you describe some of that in the editorial. Should we talk about that? So what are the impacts of the Manosphere on, for example, gender attitudes and discriminative behaviour?

Prof Harriet Over: In data from our lab, there's a couple of important things that we know. So one is that we surveyed teachers and they believe it to be causing problems in schools. So they're of course on the front line. So we surveyed 200 teachers, 100 from secondary schools, so children aged 11 and up and 100 from primary schools. And we asked them, to what extent do you think this is causing a problem? And 76 % of secondary school teachers and 60 % of primary school teachers say that they're extremely concerned about the influence of online misogyny. And when we ask them why, they're able to give these concrete examples that appear to be caused by online misogyny. So for example, one of the primary school teachers in our sample says, a child reported to them, it's okay to hurt women because Andrew Tate says so. We've also done a somewhat larger correlational study where we asked 400 teachers to what extent do you hear boys in your school talk in a positive way about influences like Andrew Tate, misogynistic influences, and how much have you noticed increases in discrimination against female teachers and also female staff. And at a school level there's a correlation between those two things. So the more boys in a school are talking about misogynistic influences, the more female teachers and female pupils within that school are experiencing discrimination.

Prof Umar Toseeb: How important is intent here? So with younger children, for example, they might not realize that what they are saying or doing is misogynistic and problematic. So does that make a difference to anything?

Prof Harriet Over: Well, I think it might make a difference to the way we talk to children about the issue. So certainly some teachers are saying things which accord , very closely with what you're saying. So boys will say things like, get back to the kitchen and not understand or appear not to understand why that's inappropriate. But some of these misogynistic influences are very explicit about being misogynistic. And I would hypothesize that as boys are drawn more and more into that world, those beliefs are likely to become more intentional and more explicit as they consume the more extreme content within this space.

Dr. Jane Gilmour: And Harriet I think that's one of the concerns we have, I guess, because we've talked about that, you know, misogyny has ever been around. The difference perhaps is in the way it's delivered and the escalation with which somebody might go down and follow some, breadcrumbs, and then they get bigger and bigger. And so the extremity of the idea might be greater. The other thing that as I'm hearing you talk about that with the idea of intent. you know, there might well be a very clear understanding of the provocative nature of it. You know, we're talking about young adolescent boys who may want to provoke because that's part of, the adolescent learning set, if you like, perhaps not understanding the impact and the personal impact it might have. But the danger point is the externalization of it. And I think you raise that very nicely, the concern in terms of thinking about social learning theories that you might internalise that stereotype and that becomes your way of engaging with the world, not a provocative comment to wind up your teacher.

Prof Harriet Over: Yeah, that's right. In our data, it's very hard to tease apart because it's teacher report. It's very hard to tease apart what a kind of glib comments that are trying to provoke and push boundaries and what are deeply internalized norms about how it's appropriate to treat women. And that's one reason why longitudinal research is so important, because we can try then to have these measures that are less susceptible to social desirability concerns to try and understand how is it influencing attitudes themselves.

Dr. Jane Gilmour: I've got a question. Here's my worry is that we not only do we not know a great deal and I'm so delighted that you've got this chance to start to address those issues, but we don't know what we don't know. So a lot of the content is not even in mainstream platforms. How do we get inside that or at least consult with the young people that are exploring that? How do we get into the deepest, darkest places of the Manosphere?

Prof Harriet Over: This is one of the biggest questions that we're struggling with too, which is, first of all, how can we recruit as representative a sample of teenage boys as possible? Because it's likely the people who are most engaged in this world are going to be least willing to participate in research with us. So that's true for lots of extremist communities. And it's particularly, it might be particularly true for the Manosphere because we know that these misogynistic influences of preaching mistrust of traditional sources of authority, the education system, socially liberal values and so on. So that's a really difficult challenge. One of the things that I'm doing in collaboration with David Zendle is asking young people to donate their data to us. So social media histories of everything that they viewed on YouTube, for example, of all of the things they've engaged with on Reddit. And then we can use that to try and understand how much of this type of content are they viewing and what does it predict about their mental health and attitudes and so on. But we're going to be limited by how many people are willing to share their data with us. And I think that really, we're really pushing quantitative methods to the limit of what is possible. And some of answering that question is going to involve more qualitative studies, for example, with people who have been deradicalized from the Manosphere and are willing to talk to us, but also from more sociological approaches where people embed themselves in particular extremist communities and try to understand the themes within those more extreme communities, for example, on Rumble or on 4chan. And so it's really trying to piece together evidence from lots of imperfect methods to get as complete answer as we can.

Dr. Jane Gilmour: I mean, it really does strike me that the idea of those that have exited the Manosphere are the gold dust in some ways because they can both act as role models, but also allow you, into the processes and getting those young men to donate their data will be absolutely fundamental. Is there any sense of what proportion of young men exit the Manosphere in terms of exploration and becoming very adhered to the ideas and then become de-radicalized. Is there any sense of those numbers?

Prof Harriet Over: I have no sense of those numbers, but it's also a very complex space to work in because as you can imagine, some people join these de-radicalized communities. So there are communities on Reddit, for example, like xredpill or incel-exit where people report that they've left the Manosphere and then they no longer engage with those beliefs. It does seem like some people find their way back into those spaces. So it's a complex space to work in. But like you say, being able to talk to those people would give us such an insight where it is possible that I think even small samples are informative.

Prof Umar Toseeb: I have a question about causality. So I imagine you probably get this a lot and as psychology researchers, we have to think about this a lot too. How important is it to establish causality before we take any sort of action here? Because I suppose in my experience of the bullying research, in a lot of the time we think bullying leads to poor mental health and I'm sure in lot of cases it does, but there's also the possibility that people who have poor mental health are more likely to be bullied. So I suppose here, we're working on the assumption that access and engaging with misogynistic content leads to poor outcomes. Could it be that we have disenfranchised young people who are already experiencing poor outcomes, who then turn to online misogynistic content?

Prof Harriet Over: Yeah, I think it's plausible, isn't it, that both of those causal pathways happen. So if you start watching this type of content, social theories of prejudice would suggest that you would internalize those norms more and more over time. But it might also be the case that if you're a young person who already believes some sexist ideas, or if you have poor mental health, you might seek out certain types of content online, and then it's a way to express your views in that space,

rather than a way that changes your beliefs. To answer your other question about intervention, it depends really what type of intervention we're planning. Like don't think we need more evidence that misogyny is a problem and that misogyny is a problem in school. So if we're trying to help children to think critically about misogyny, that's actually a broader question than to what extent are people like Andrew Tate causing that problem. But I guess if we're thinking about

What sort of regulation do we want social media companies to engage in? Then trying to establish that causal evidence becomes politically really important. So it's a mix, I think.

Dr. Jane Gilmour: Yeah. One thing that really struck me, as I said, when I stepped into the Manosphere, one content provider talked about the importance of staying isolated in order to maintain your success. And it really struck me that that was an incredibly useful from their point of view position to take, because of that lack of social connection, of course, makes you more vulnerable to radicalization. And therefore, away from all the other support networks that could lead you down a different path. It does strike me that the connections between the two groups are striking and that it will be, you know, something else to add to the mix, if you like, in terms of that social isolation, know, socioeconomic vulnerability as well. A lot of these Manosphere content providers are talking about how to get rich, and that matters if you're growing up feeling that you are in this place where there's little economic parity and you might feel a sense of injustice and so on and so on. I like the way Harriet, you're talking politically and you know, in terms of legislation as well as the stuff where we're in the school classroom or the sports field or, at home.

Prof Umar Toseeb: We're recording this at a time when there's a show on Netflix called Adolescence and I'm hoping Harriet that you've watched it. Have you watched it? excellent. So that was really interesting because I think that if this wasn't in the mainstream, it's now become the mainstream. So I suppose my question to you is how well does the show Adolescence on Netflix capture what we're talking about today?

Prof Harriet Over: I have. Well, first of all, I thought it was brilliant television. Initially, when I thought, I should watch that for work. And then I became completely gripped by it. I thought it was so beautifully filmed and the acting was fantastic, wasn't it? And it has had this effect of bringing this really important question into the mainstream, because I think so much of it happens on social media and away from mainstream news channels that it has remained hidden to some extent. In terms of capturing the problem, I think one thing that I took away from it is really like a sense of ambiguity about why the little boy did what he did and what the relative contribution of the Manosphere was compared to bullying and these other broader social forces. And I guess that is the case, isn't it? When we think about people like the Plymouth shooter, for example, who'd been... accessing all of his incel content. In any individual case, it's very hard to know what was the causal role played by that content relative to other things in their lives. I thought it conveyed that complexity very well.

Dr. Jane Gilmour: One thing that I took away from it, and Harriet, I thought that some of the responses of the adults were lacking, let's say, even though, so for example, in the, the series, there is a policeman who is also a dad who's got a kid at the same school in which this, crime happens. We won't use any spoilers in case somebody hasn't seen it, but as a policeman, he was investigating what was going on in the school and his kid came to him and said, look, you've got to this wrong dad, you the emojis, you've got to understand what the emojis mean. You're missing the point. And the dad was really dismissive of him in that that instance. And of course, he probably felt a bit disempowered himself. He's supposed to be looking after these young people. But if any young people come forward and break the barrier between the teen world and go to where the old people are and offer us information, our job is to reach out with both hands and invite that young person in because that's the value of that information is extraordinary. So it would be really nice, you know, of course, the drama is one thing, but in terms of education and terms of an adult response, you know, if a young person comes forward and says, this is what it's like, listen, put everything down and listen to that. I also have some notes on how the psychologist managed the emotional tension, but I think we'll have to leave that for another episode.

Prof Harriet Over: I think that's a really interesting point, isn't it? Because often this type of content is so horrifying that it's very tempting to just try and shut down conversations because it's toxic and morally abhorrent to us. But actually being able to open up conversations is really important and allowing children to express what appeals to them about this type of content what does it mean to them because we're outsiders to this world really aren't we so we need people to be able to tell us what the social meaning of these things are and what it means for their social networks and having those conversations is so important.

Dr. Jane Gilmour: And what it means to them is the key question, Harriet, because in my experience, and of course, it's not a systematic sample, young boys in particular will want to see the great cars. And if you ask a young person, why are you looking at the Andrew Tate site, they may say, well, he's got great cars. Now, as a clinician supporting parents, sometimes if you find a young person looking at Andrew Tate, their anxiety will overcome them. It will look like anger, they'll grab the phone and say, that's it, you're banned from social media for the rest of time, because it's so terrifying to think that that might be the experience. But you're so astute by saying, what is the meaning of that? Now we as adults are thinking, yes, you're also being shown some really concerning messages, but for that young person, it may be about the cars. So let's, let's have a conversation about that. Where else can you get the cars? Right. So you don't have to have that other content.

Prof Harriet Over: Yeah. That's really important, isn't it? Like, can we offer children access to content that fulfills some of those goals without the toxic attitudes? And your point also makes me think of another issue, which I think is really crucial for intervention, which is to show young people that these people are scammers. Like, they appear to have a really wealthy lifestyle, but actually it's really easy to fake that online. And they tell you... We've got all of these techniques by which you can become wealthy without having to go to school or without having to work hard. But there's been a lot of investigative journalism by Matt Shea, for example, which suggests that there's an awful lot of scams online and they might be financially scamming their followers and making themselves rich at the expense of other people. And I think showing behind the curtain is another potential route to help young people understand, like don't be a sucker, like look at what these people are doing.

Dr. Jane Gilmour: And we know from the teenage brain literature that that, empowering young people to know what, big tech or, whatever that might be is doing in order to commoditize you can change behavior. You know, if you give the right information, young people, I have faith in young people, they take it and they use it in a really interesting way. So I think that's a really interesting intervention, as you say, behind the curtain.

Prof Harriet Over: Another point comes to mind based on what you said, which is so we've already cited the statistic that 80 % of 16 to 17 year old British boys have watched Andrew Tate content. But we also need to remember that only between 20 and 25 % of them report that they approve of Andrew Tate's views about women. So actually, the majority of boys aren't sucked into this type of content to the extent that they're willing to endorse explicitly sexist beliefs. So I think we should have faith in young people and faith in teenage boys and young men that many of them see through it.

Prof Umar Toseeb: And I suppose that leads me to my next question, which was one of the things that I thought when I was watching. And this comes as a person of color, I was like, I'm glad this is a white kid being depicted here because if it was a black kid or an Asian kid or any other skin color, it would be a problem with that community. It would be a black kid problem. It would be an Asian person problem. Actually, because it's a white kid, it's a, it's seen as an everyone problem. What do we know about the extent to which this might be different in different communities, but also how do you then... communicate this kind of stuff in a way that's sensitive that isn't going to offend someone's way of life or cultural values or those kinds of things.

Prof Harriet Over: Yeah, those are big questions. And it's really difficult to know whether certain communities are more at risk of viewing this type of content than others. And some of the media around it, I think, can be quite stigmatizing. And we know that there's been a lot of right-wing rhetoric around adolescence too and sort of claims that it's like anti-white propaganda. So obviously, because of these connections with the far right, a lot of the conversation is racist. I would say if we look within the Manosphere, it's clear that certain misogynistic influences are trying to appeal to different communities of teenage boys and young men. So Andrew Tate, for example, was claiming to be a Muslim for a while. And presumably that was a cynical attempt to appeal to a particular demographic. And there's some work by sociologists in the States suggesting that some misogynistic influences are co-opting the language of social justice movements, which have legitimately called for racial equality in order to try and make the claim that men are the victims of contemporary society and that we need the equivalence of the civil rights movement to deal with sort of a grieved entitlement that men have. So I think that we just don't have the data yet to know who this content appeals to most. And obviously that question has to be dealt with so sensitively. I think in terms of intervention, there's also this question of how do we appeal to communities who might have all sorts of different views about what optimal gender relations might be in order to make sure that we can, like, discourage people from misogyny while accepting cultural diversity. And part of that, I think, is developing interventions that can be tailored by members of that community to what works for them. So one of the things that I'm really interested in is developing interventions with pre-existing social media content. And part of the reason I'm interested in that is that, well, academics are not experts in being interesting, but influencers are experts in being interesting. And they already know how to appeal to an audience of people n a way that academics don't. So if we can create these interventions with pre-existing content on a platform that teenagers trust on social media itself, then they might be more willing to engage with it. And I think the other element of using pre-existing social media content is that we can start to get the recommender algorithm working for us, working for social change. So we present some kids with some feminist content online or some anti-misogynistic content online. And then the recommender algorithm will start to recommend more stuff like that to them. And that creates the possibility for a virtuous cycle of social change. But it also creates the possibility of saying, how can we tailor interventions to different communities? So what sort of influences are going to be appealing to different communities? And if you perceive somebody to be similar as yourself, to have similar cultural values to yourself, they might be more persuasive than if you feel less of a connection to them. So I think we can try to incorporate intersectionality into our interventions in that way by working together with local communities, people from diverse backgrounds, to then understand what type of content is going to work best for the teenagers that they know well.

Dr. Jane Gilmour: And just as you're speaking, Harriet, I was casting around thinking, where would you send someone who's looking for interesting content? That's absolutely fine. You know, powerful language. That's fine. And I came across Lewis Hamilton, who's got is he's got an organization called Mission 44. And if you look on his social media, and I wouldn't pretend to know a lot, but I scan through it and he used the same power language that a lot of these Manosphere influencers use, very ultimate kind of, strong language that might appeal to a testosterone infused young boy. But the language is similar, but the messages are very different. So for example, they celebrated International Women's Day. But it's about connecting to these already high profile individuals who can re-deliver. I love the idea of re-delivering some good stuff and neutralizing some of these concerning questions and influences.

Prof Harriet Over: Yeah, there are these fantastic male role models out there, aren't there? And I think we can fall into a trap of implying that masculinity is a bad thing. And that's absolutely not the case, is it? It's like a more equal society will help everyone, including young men.

Prof Umar Toseeb: Thank you. think that that would be now be a good time to say thank you so much, Harriet. That was a really, really interesting and insightful conversation. I definitely learned a lot and I'm sure everyone else has too.

Prof Harriet Over: Thank you so much, it's been a pleasure.

Prof Umar Toseeb: Okay, so that was a really, really helpful insight. And I think it was really nice to hear from the expert who does this research day in, day out. Let's see if we can take some of what we've learned and try and apply it. So I know that you're a clinical psychologist, Jane, so you will see young people regularly in your clinical practice. Do you see this in clinical practice or do you see the effects of it in clinical practice?

Dr. Jane Gilmour: Well, radicalisation is not a mental health condition in itself, but a series of steps that occur in a vulnerable context and then very often triggered by a personal event. So I would say as clinicians or any professional working with young people, we need to be alert to these risk factors associated with radicalisation. And interestingly, simply adolescence itself is a risk factor for lots of good reasons if we think about the teenage brain literature. And we know these young people are likely to be socially isolated and have vulnerable family setups. They're often looking for certainty and they have a perception of injustice. So they feel they've been abandoned or have been abandoned by people or perhaps society. So I guess from a clinical point of view, we're not treating radicalisation, but we need to use our clinical skills to address the risk factors that might. So that might mean a social skills programme or improving family functioning, or even, as I have done many times in the past, help with applications for housing or financial support. But Umar, I'll tell you what we don't do. We wouldn't shame a young person for looking at that content or ban phones as a punishment. If you shame them, it's likely to drive them away and polarize you at the very time when you need to be alongside that young person. So clinically speaking, we play to the strengths of the teenage brain and use a consultative model. So ask with a calm, respectful language why they're watching the the content. our job here really is to get in amongst it. So if you can look at the content together as a professional or in fact a parent, start with the information they give and work with that. Now look, I know from clinical experience that anxiety and anger is often the first response from adults for very good reason. So it's tempting to intervene, assuming the worst possible outcome that this young man is a card carrying misogynist. In fact, that's rarely the case, but looking at that content is often a warning sign, and so we do need to act. The second and final point I'd make from a clinical point of view is that it's often very young teens that are most likely to explore this content. Now, bear in mind, this is not systematic data, but I'm certainly more concerned about older teenagers connecting with this content. And part of the reason for that might be that we know teenagers experiment with their identity, they explore extremes, but most often they reject extremity as part of the developmental process. So while I'm not minimizing the risk to young teens exploring this content, particularly as they have that heightened associated learning that we talked about earlier, but I wonder if there's often an element of experimentation in the content of that consumption, in some cases at least. And so that's the sort of clinical points I would make.

Prof Umar Toseeb: What you've described really well there is there's two types of intervention slash approaches here. There's the preventative approach where you are implementing changes and ideas and ways of working within schools, within society, within various parts of society that young people interact in that prevent people from engaging in this kind of content, having these kinds of views. And then... what we can do if children and young people do engage with this kind of content and I think both are necessary. And I think what I also like about what you said is that some of the time is, yeah, when I see any sort of behavior in the literature portrayed as problematic, I think well what's the underlying problem here? And a lot of the time it's some sort of underlying psychological distress that's manifesting in a certain way. So we see this in the bullying literature where even the kids who are doing the bullying, they're experiencing poor mental health too. So the bullying might be an external manifestation of whatever is going on. And online misogyny and engaging with that, engaging with the manuscript might also be an external manifestation of what's going on. And there might be something else that we need to try and address. And shall we take, shall we go on to the takeaway and the take home messages for the various groups? So shall I try and summarize it for academics and you can try and summarize it for clinicians. So as an academic, I think that what I'm taking away from this conversation is that the Manosphere is important. We need to be thinking about its effects. And actually in the type of research that I do at the population level, it's something that we need to start measuring in big population studies because a lot of the time. We measure things like bullying and online social media use and friendships and all of those things that we know that young people are important in young people's lives and they spend time doing these things. And actually engaging with the Manosphere isn't something that is routinely measured in studies. So I suppose the take home message for me as an academic is that we need to start thinking about measures of engagement with the Manosphere in whatever psychological research study that we're doing on young people's mental health and development more broadly.

Dr. Jane Gilmour: In terms of takeaways, I'm thinking here of teachers and other professionals as well as clinical colleagues. Now, although Lucy Foulkes and others have quite rightly called for caution in the application of some types of universal intervention, we know that whole school culture change is possible, if the change is embedded in day-to-day culture. And so here we'd be looking to male teachers and role models who will live by example how to be an aspirational man who likes and respects women. It's no big task, right? So whether a universal intervention or an individual clinical treatment, we need to address the true function of a young person's interest in the Manosphere.

Prof Umar Toseeb: Well, that was fantastic. I really enjoyed that and I hope that you did too. Next week, join us on Mind the Kids when we'll be speaking to Dr. Miriam Martini, who's a postdoctoral researcher from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. I'll be talking about 'Autism Diagnosis, The Long and Winding Road'.

Dr. Jane Gilmour: Well, radicalisation is not a mental health condition in itself, but a series of steps that occur in a vulnerable context and then very often triggered by a personal event. So I would say as clinicians or any professional working with young people, we need to be alert to these risk factors associated with radicalisation. And interestingly, simply adolescence itself is a risk factor for lots of good reasons if we think about the teenage brain literature. And we know these young people are likely to be socially isolated and have vulnerable family setups. They're often looking for certainty and they have a perception of injustice. So they feel they've been abandoned or have been abandoned by people or perhaps society. So I guess from a clinical point of view, we're not treating radicalisation, but we need to use our clinical skills to address the risk factors that might. So that might mean a social skills programme or improving family functioning, or even, as I have done many times in the past, help with applications for housing or financial support. But Umar, I'll tell you what we don't do. We wouldn't shame a young person for looking at that content or ban phones as a punishment. If you shame them, it's likely to drive them away and polarize you at the very time when you need to be alongside that young person. So clinically speaking, we play to the strengths of the teenage brain and use a consultative model. So ask with a calm, respectful language why they're watching the the content. our job here really is to get in amongst it. So if you can look at the content together as a professional or in fact a parent, start with the information they give and work with that. Now look, I know from clinical experience that anxiety and anger is often the first response from adults for very good reason. So it's tempting to intervene, assuming the worst possible outcome that this young man is a card carrying misogynist. In fact, that's rarely the case, but looking at that content is often a warning sign, and so we do need to act. The second and final point I'd make from a clinical point of view is that it's often very young teens that are most likely to explore this content. Now, bear in mind, this is not systematic data, but I'm certainly more concerned about older teenagers connecting with this content. And part of the reason for that might be that we know teenagers experiment with their identity, they explore extremes, but most often they reject extremity as part of the developmental process. So while I'm not minimizing the risk to young teens exploring this content, particularly as they have that heightened associated learning that we talked about earlier, but I wonder if there's often an element of experimentation in the content of that consumption, in some cases at least. And so that's the sort of clinical points I would make.