By Sam Eustace, former DSL and CPOMS Senior Product Manager
A perspective based on frontline safeguarding experience.
When I watched Louis Theroux explore the online world known as the “manosphere” in his recent Netflix documentary, one comment stayed with me long after the programme ended. Theroux reflected that many of the male content creators he met appeared to carry unresolved trauma. It was a simple observation, but a powerful one.
For me, it triggered a series of uncomfortable recognitions.
As someone who has worked with young people in schools for many years, I could not help but see echoes of boys I had known. Boys who had struggled in the classroom. Boys whose behaviour could be disruptive, withdrawn, defensive or angry. Boys whose stories, when you looked more closely, often included difficult childhood experiences.
The trajectory from vulnerability to ideology
Many had lived through what professionals describe as Adverse Childhood Experiences, commonly referred to as ACEs. These can include neglect, domestic abuse, parental substance misuse, bereavement or instability in the home. Research consistently shows that early trauma can affect emotional regulation, relationships and long-term wellbeing.
Watching the documentary, I found myself wondering how many of the men now speaking confidently in these online spaces had once been those boys.
The documentary highlights how online communities can provide belonging, identity and a sense of explanation for personal struggles. For young men who feel isolated, angry or rejected, the narratives promoted within parts of the manosphere can be extremely compelling.
The danger lies where those narratives lead.
When grievance becomes a worldview
Rather than encouraging reflection or growth, some of these spaces frame the world through a lens of grievance. Responsibility is shifted outward. Women, society, institutions and culture become the explanation for personal pain. Over time this can solidify into hostility and rigid ideas about gender roles.
In practice, this ideology can feel less like support and more like a feedback loop. Misogynistic content algorithms reinforce the same viewpoints. Communities reward increasingly extreme takes. What begins as frustration can gradually become a worldview.
The role of early intervention in schools
What struck me most strongly was how preventable much of this feels.
In schools and youth settings we often see the early signs long before adulthood: withdrawal, anger, misogynistic language, fascination with certain influencers, or a pattern of classroom disruption framed around identity or status.
But those behaviours rarely exist in isolation. They often sit alongside trauma, unmet emotional needs, a lack of positive male role models, or a sense that the world has already decided who they are.
Early intervention matters here. Not simply through discipline or behaviour management, but through exposure to broader perspectives, positive relationships and spaces where young people can explore identity safely.
When young people encounter only one narrative, particularly one amplified by social media platforms and online influences, the risk of radicalisation into harmful belief systems increases.
The impact on girls and young women
Perhaps the most concerning aspect of this cultural shift is its effect on girls.
Misogynistic attitudes that once sat on the fringes of society can now be mainstreamed through short form video, gaming communities and influencer culture. Teachers and safeguarding leads increasingly report sexist language, degrading comments and performative gestures copied directly from online figures.
These behaviours can appear small in isolation; a comment, a symbol, a hand gesture or a pattern of classroom disruption framed as humour.
Yet when viewed through a safeguarding lens they often signal something deeper: exposure to online communities that normalise the demonisation of women.
For girls sitting in those classrooms, the consequences are immediate. Confidence, participation and a sense of safety can be affected long before adulthood.
Challenging harmful gender views
In many ways it is striking that, despite extraordinary progress in science, technology and social understanding, some of the attitudes circulating online feel like a return to debates which society believed it had left behind many years ago.
Despite the scale of the problem, the solution cannot simply be suppression.
Theroux’s observation about unresolved trauma feels important here. If early pain remains unaddressed, young people will often seek explanations elsewhere. Online communities are ready to provide them.
Sometimes the most effective safeguarding intervention is not removing content, but ensuring young people have the emotional tools and support networks that make harmful narratives less appealing in the first place.
Young people need alternatives, not just restrictions. In practice, this means:
- Positive narratives around masculinity
- Exposure to different perspectives
- Trusted adults who can challenge ideas without humiliation or dismissal
Most importantly, they need opportunities to process the experiences that shaped them in the first place.
A safeguarding challenge for a digital age
Tracking these influences has become far more nuanced than it once was.
In the past safeguarding professionals might have looked for clear indicators such as extremist symbols or direct threats. Today the signals can be subtler.
They may appear as subtle patterns:
- Language shifts in the classroom
- Repeated references to online influencers
- Dismissive attitudes toward female authority
- Coded phrases or gestures taken from online culture
- Sudden changes in peer dynamics
Understanding these patterns requires contextual knowledge of digital spaces that evolve rapidly.
For schools, safeguarding teams and youth workers, this presents a growing challenge. Identifying harmful influence is no longer about a single incident. It is about recognising patterns across behaviour, language and online culture.
Software like CPOMS StudentSafe equips school leaders and safeguarding practitioners with the tools to recognise and respond to early indicators of harmful influence. Through customisable categories of concern and comprehensive chronological reporting, Designated Safeguarding Leads (DSLs) can build a more complete picture of a pupil’s experiences. This goes beyond isolated incidents, enabling practitioners to identify patterns of behaviour and better understand the underlying influences or trauma that may be affecting a young person.
The work now is not simply about reacting to the manosphere. It is about shaping the environment young people grow up in.
Schools, families and communities all play a role in this. From providing balance to offering challenges and modelling respectful relationships.
The next generation will form its views somewhere. The question is whether those views are shaped primarily by algorithms, or by the real-world relationships and values we help them build.
To learn more about how our solutions like CPOMS StudentSafe can help your school better protect students and provide earlier intervention, book a free demo today.
