How to Help Boys Resist the Manosphere: A Guide for Parents, Coaches and Educators
Photo by Foto Bakirkoy
A lot of people watched Louis Theroux’s Inside the Manosphere when it dropped on Netflix in March. Some found it eye-opening. Others found it frustrating. Most people we know who work with young men found it both.
A colleague of ours who builds public education workshops pointed out that there are countless guides explaining the manosphere and decoding incel terminology, but almost nothing on how to meaningfully address it. An Instagram post making the rounds this week said the same thing in five words: 91 minutes on the problem. Zero minutes on the solution.
We see this across the entire conversation about boys online: There are plenty of guides explaining what the manosphere is. Very few tell a parent, a coach, or an educator what to actually do about it.
So let’s try something different.
We keep diagnosing the problem. Here's what the solution actually looks like.
The manosphere is a loose—and increasingly mainstream—network of online communities, influencers, and content creators: pick-up artists, incels, red pillers, men’s rights activists, fitness influencers, finance bros, and the podcasters and clippers who package all of it for young audiences. It’s not one ideology. But it reliably finds boys who are searching for something, and it hands them answers.
Why Boys Are Drawn to the Manosphere
Different areas within the manosphere each have their own beliefs, with both positive and harmful messages existing side-by-side. But underneath all of them is a single question: How do I become a man who is desired, respected, and not rejected?
That's a deeply human question. It’s easy to understand why boys are asking it.
One fan of Justin Waller said it plainly on camera: As a man, you're born without value. You have to build that value over time. It’s a devastating thing to believe, but it points at something real. Many boys feel like they don’t know how to find their place in the world, and nobody’s handing them a map.
Except masculinity influencers, that is.
What Boys Are Actually Looking For
Psychologist Dr. Martin Brokenleg developed the Circle of Courage model—an Indigenous way of knowing that identifies four things young people need to grow up healthy: Independence, Mastery, Belonging and Purpose. (For a deeper look at how the rigid rules of masculinity undermine all four of these, How Patriarchy Hurts Men Too is a good place to start.)
Look at those four needs, then look at what’s on offer within the manosphere. It’s uncomfortable how directly manosphere culture speaks to each one.
What Boys Need |
What the Manosphere Offers |
The Catch |
|---|---|---|
| Independence | ‘Don’t let anyone control you.’ Going your own way. | Trades one kind of dependence for another—the influencer's course, the community’s approval. |
| Mastery |
Fitness. Status. Becoming ‘high-value’ through discipline.
|
The goalpost never stops moving. There’s always another level, another program to buy. |
| Belonging |
A brotherhood. A group of men who ‘get it.’
|
Built on shared resentment, not actual connection. |
| Purpose | A mission. Protecting civilization. The red pill ‘awakening.’ | The purpose requires an enemy—women, feminism, ‘the system.’ |
The manosphere works because it’s genuinely responsive to real needs. That’s the uncomfortable part. Dismissing the manosphere doesn’t make those needs go away.
The question is who gets there first with something better.
Photo by Greyson Joralemon
The NGM Answer: Four Conditions That Actually Work
At Next Gen Men, our work with boys is built around a Systems of Care model of Safety, Engagement, Connection and Empowerment.
This is what the manosphere can’t replicate. It can simulate some of these things, but it can’t actually deliver them—because they require a real person, showing up consistently, who actually knows and cares about the boy in front of them.
So here’s what each condition looks like in practice—whether you're a parent, a coach, an educator, or some combination of all three.
Safety
Safety is the condition that most directly produces Independence. A boy who doesn’t feel safe—who’s been humiliated, let down, or punished for getting it wrong—won’t take the risks that real autonomy requires. He’ll outsource his thinking to whoever makes the world feel most predictable. That’s exactly what the manosphere offers: a rigid script that eliminates uncertainty. It feels like independence. It’s the opposite.
Real safety means creating the conditions where a boy can express doubt, show weakness, ask a ‘dumb’ question, and not be punished for it. When boys feel genuinely safe, they start making choices for themselves—not performing someone else’s idea of who they should be.
Parents: Let him make real choices with real consequences. Not what he wants for dinne—let him navigate conflict, sit with failure, work things out. Be available. Don’t rush in.
Coaches: Give him room to try things and get them wrong without it becoming a story about who he is. A boy who knows he can fail safely will take bigger, better risks—the kind that actually build capability.
Educators: Build choice into how he approaches problems. Boys who feel agency in a space tend to stay in it.
Try this: "What do you think you should do?" Then wait. The silence is the point.
Engagement
The manosphere is really good at engagement; it’s full of effective entry points—first-contact topics like fitness, money, and discipline that meet boys in their actual interests and speak their language.
Engagement means connecting boys to things that matter to them, on their terms. When that happens, Mastery follows—because a boy who is genuinely engaged in something will work to get better at it. The manosphere’s version of mastery is narrow—money, body, status—and designed to be permanently out of reach. Real mastery comes from genuine engagement with something that has actual stakes.
Parents: Find what he’s genuinely pulled toward and help him go deeper. Music, mechanics, cooking, coding—it doesn’t matter. What matters is that he builds the feeling of getting better at something real.
Coaches: Name what you see. “You got a lot better at that. Did you notice?” Boys often can’t track their own growth without someone pointing to it.
Educators: Find the thing he’s competent at, even if it’s outside your subject, and reference it. Connect it to what you’re teaching. A boy who feels seen as capable somewhere is more willing to try somewhere else.
Try this: Ask him to teach you something he knows how to do. Watch what happens to the dynamic when he’s the expert.
Read more: We’ve written about the tactics of masculinity influencers in past Learnings & Unlearnings blog post, How to Tackle Andrew Tate in Schools.
Connection
The manosphere creates a version of connection through shared grievance—you’re all in it against a common enemy. Being actually known, without having to perform, is something most boys haven’t experienced much before.
Connection is the condition that most directly produces Belonging. And it doesn’t require a program or a curriculum. It requires an adult paying attention.
Parents: Make home a place where he doesn’t have to be ‘on.’ Ask questions that don’t have a right answer. Don’t flinch when the emotions get messy.
Coaches: Pay attention to who sits at the edge of the group. A boy who seems detached isn’t necessarily checked out—he may just be watching to see if it’s safe to show up. Welcome him into things explicitly. Give him a role.
Educators: Notice who isn’t connecting in your classroom or hallways. Belonging doesn’t announce itself. Sometimes it looks like a kid who’s just quietly absent even when he’s physically there. A two-minute check-in after class can matter more than you’d expect.
Try this: “I noticed you've seemed a bit off this week. You don't have to talk about it, but I’m here.” That’s the whole move.
Read more: For a deeper grounding in how boys experience school, 6 Things Educators Should Know About Positive Masculinity is worth your time.
Empowerment
The manosphere is adversarial. There’s always an enemy. The reason young men stay in those communities isn’t just belonging or status—it’s that the enemy gives them somewhere to put fear, shame, and confusion without having to sit with any of it. The ‘red pill awakening,’ the mission to protect civilization—these feel like purpose, but they require a target. Take the enemy away and the purpose collapses.
Purpose, however, doesn’t need an adversary. It comes from feeling like your existence matters to someone, somewhere, in a way that’s concrete and meaningful.
For many boys and young men, righteous anger directed outward is a rational response to past hurt or current grievances. The answer is to give him something real to care about, and the sense that he’s actually capable of making a difference.
Parents: Help him find ways to matter to other people without it being about status or competition. Contributing to a younger sibling, doing something useful for a neighbour, building something someone else will actually use. He needs to feel his existence makes a difference somewhere concrete.
Coaches: Frame your program in terms of what it’s for—not just skill-building, but what the skills are in service of. Boys who feel like they’re contributing to something real are less available to movements that run on resentment.
Educators: Give boys visible ways to contribute. Peer mentoring, leading a discussion, presenting to a younger class. Purpose tends to start small and close. Feeling useful to someone nearby is often where it begins.
Try this: “What do you actually care about?” And take the answer seriously, even if it’s not what you expected.
Why This Is Hard
The manosphere is free, available in the middle of the night, and designed to be found by boys who are already vulnerable. It’s hard to compete with that. A teacher sees a kid for 50 minutes at a time. A coach sees him three times a week. A parent sees him between homework and screens.
But you have something the algorithm doesn’t. You know him. You’re real. And over time, that can become a sustaining anchor for boys as they become young men navigating the choppy waters of growing into adulthood.
In a recent interview, Theroux said the thing that worries him as a parent is that his boys spend many more hours on their phones than they do with the adults around them.
In our families, classrooms, sports teams and even in digital spaces, we can be mapping boys towards safety, engagement, connection and empowerment. All it requires is adults who are willing to show up consistently, stay curious, and have small conversations day after day.
The manosphere is very good at filling a vacuum. We need to spend less time combatting their tactics and more time filling boys minds, hearts and lives ourselves.
If boys have what they need, their resistance is already there.