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How algorithms, alpha males and tradwives are winning the war for kids’ minds


Toxic masculinity and idealized motherhood content are flooding social media feeds — forcing educators, students and parents to navigate the internet's manosphere.

The manosphere and parallel trends like the tradwife (traditional wife) movement — led by influencers who idealize marriage, motherhood and domesticity — are impacting even socially conscious students who say it’s hard to avoid this content brimming with toxic messages about gender. Over a half-dozen students told The 19th that after the 2024 election, which saw the manosphere blamed for young men’s rightward shift, they noticed changes in their classmates’ behavior — an uptick in sexist remarks, a sense of entitlement to girls’ attention and schadenfreude that yet another woman lost the presidency. Sam Dyer, a recent graduate of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, pointed to the viral fitness influencer Togi, a beefcake who recorded himself slapping a woman’s backside in one video and insulting WNBA fans in another.

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