According to new-and-terrifying research from DCU

23 minutes: That’s how long it takes before 16 to 18-year-old boys on TikTok and YouTube Shorts shorts are fed misogynistic content, according to new research from Dublin City University’s anti-bullying centre. The study tracked what content was being shown to blank smartphones, registered as belonging to teenage boys.

The results found that “masculinist, anti-feminist and other extremist content,” was shown to the accounts within minutes, irrespective of whether these accounts looked for “male supremacist-related content” or not. This content is damaging and dangerous for women and girls, as much of it centres around promoting the submission of women (sometimes violently), and pushing against gender equality.

The report also found that this extreme content is fed to teenage boys alongside content devoted to “male motivation, money-making and mental health”. This was described by researchers as strategic: designed specifically to tap into boys’ emotional and financial insecurities, the study also pointed out that the men’s mental health content in this sphere is also damaging as it claims that “depression is a sign of weakness and that therapy is ineffective.” Other topics pushed to the accounts included reactionary right-wing content and conspiracy theory, accounting for 13.6% of recommended content on TikTok and 5.2% on YouTube shorts. The report stated that much of this right-wing content was specifically anti-trans.

Andrew Tate was by far the most likely ‘manfluencer’ (male influencer) to be shown to the accounts – despite being banned from TikTok, X, Facebook and Instagram. Tate was arrested last month following charges of sexual aggression, rape and human trafficking. “Our study shows that shutting down influencers’ accounts does not necessarily remove their content,” says Dr Ging. “The overwhelming presence of Andrew Tate content in our dataset at a time when he was de-platformed means that social media companies must tackle harmful content in more sophisticated ways.”

At The Oireachtas Committee on Children on Tuesday, social media firms were accused of causing “unquantifiable damage” to young people by deliberately promoting dangerous and inappropriate content. The attempts to control misogynistic content online is failing. Impacts of this failure bleed out into the real world, into both young boys who are being indoctrinated, and women and girls who will no doubt have to face the harm caused by this content in real-time.

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