this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2025
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Summary

Social media influencers are fuelling a rise in misogyny and sexism in the UK's classrooms, according to teachers.

More than 5,800 teachers were polled... and nearly three in five (59%) said they believe social media use has contributed to a deterioration in pupils' behaviour.

One teacher said she'd had 10-year-old boys "refuse to speak to [her]...because [she is] a woman". Another said "the Andrew Tate phenomena had a huge impact on how [pupils] interacted with females and males they did not see as 'masculine'".

"There is an urgent need for concerted action... to safeguard all children and young people from the dangerous influence of far-right populists and extremists."

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[–] nixigaj@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago

A lot of young boys had an "edgy" phase. Let's hope this is somewhat true here as well.

[–] sanpedropeddler@sh.itjust.works 32 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Some of you need more empathy. These are children whose insecurities are being exploited for profit. Be mad at their parents, and be mad at figures like Andrew Tate. But these are children and they deserve more grace than that.

[–] a9cx34udP4ZZ0@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

I know it'll come across as an unpopular opinion, but some of them just need their ass kicked. Literally went to high school with a kid who was insufferable, a prick to everyone. One day he started bullying one of my buddies who proceeded to beat the shit out of him. He told his football coach he ran into a mailbox on his bike when he had to explain his face looking like it did. After that he was the nicest kid ever - he realized "being tough" wasn't all it was cracked up to be. I guarantee a few of these kids just need to get punched in the face one time and they'll start rethinking the "alpha male" ideology.

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[–] dick_fineman@discuss.online 34 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Fine, just fail them. This is a problem for the parents to address. And if the parents refuse, then they can enjoy having a child who lives off of benefits and aspires to be an "influencer". Lol.

[–] pablodaniel@lemmings.world 5 points 1 day ago

You don't actually need to talk to the teacher to pass a class in most cases.

I don't think the kids doing this are doing well in school anyways, but it is possible to never say a word and still get an A from your schoolwork.

[–] pyre@lemmy.world 37 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (4 children)

can you blame boys for aspiring to this

[–] blimthepixie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 hour ago

What about the picture where he's sat in trunks and there's literally no visible bulge?

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[–] peekingduck@lemm.ee 18 points 1 day ago

The funny thing is that people like Tate would be the first to be eaten when the world ends lol

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 21 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Research from anti-fascism organisation Hope Not Hate, which polled about 2,000 people across the UK aged 16 to 24, discovered that 41% of young men support Tate versus just 12% of young women.

That is quite a worrying statistic: 41% of young men endorsing a human-trafficking misogynist rapist.

[–] Jackhammer_Joe@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

It's even more insane that young women (!!) support a misogynic douchbag. What's wrong with them?

[–] WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)
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[–] VeryVito@lemmy.ml 31 points 2 days ago (2 children)

In 10 years, it seems we not only gave up our own nations’ dreams of equality and union, but lustfully decided to lick the boots of those telling us our dreams aren’t worth having. It doesn’t help that the self-proclaimed “leader of the free world” is a known rapist who cuts deals with the Taliban at the expense of women’s liberties.

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[–] lechekaflan@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago

If that is where America is heading, to some theocracy like Iran and where men see women as chattel, then I would rather raise children elsewhere there is a culture of empathy.

[–] EuropeanPrimate@lemm.ee 39 points 2 days ago (10 children)

Parents need to raise their children and stop letting social media do it.

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[–] Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 29 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Just proves he attracts the immature mind

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[–] DarkFuture@lemmy.world 18 points 2 days ago (2 children)

We're in for a very, very stupid future.

[–] Really_long_toes@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

Idiocracy isn't just a great movie that holds up, it's a accurate depiction of the future and it has electrolytes, it's what plants crave

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[–] lennybird@lemmy.world 27 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I think about just how many shitty fathers these kids have, most of them in the maga cult that are lapping up the likes of Carlson and Peterson's lessons on red pilled bullshit and condoning the behavior of their kids (albeit from a notably absent distance).

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[–] peteyestee@feddit.org 19 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (9 children)

Sometimes I wonder if the Internet should only be allowed for people 21 or 25 years or older.

21 is the new 16... 25 is the new 21.

But... At the same time older adults are extremely dumb too.

But giving a young person access to the Internet is like letting them walk NYC alone at night during the 70s.

Ever since Facebook and 9/11 the Internet has been kind of awful.

[–] WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Honestly, at this point, I'm on board with just banning social media algorithms entirely. No more personalized feeds. You can have a website that publishes whatever you want, but you can't tailor individual feeds to individual people. People can replace their "feed" with what the original internet was meant to be - visiting a series of websites. Want to read nothing but right wing blogs? Fine. You can spend all day navigating to different URLs for them. But no more spoon feeding individually personalized content to people.

It turns out that method of content delivery is just a very dangerous and damaging technology that really fucks with the workings of the human mind. If you tell AI to build an ideal feed model for a person, it builds a nightmare that traps human beings in skinner boxes.

We can ban these algorithms. We don't have to continue to tolerate their existence. And in the grand scheme of history, it would be no different than a thousand other things that we discovered, at first thought was a panacea, but eventually decided the benefits weren't worth the costs. Asbestos is a fantastic fireproof insulator, but we willingly let those benefits go in lieu of its severe respiratory effects. DDT is an incredible pest killer and insecticide, but it also was rendering entire species of birds extinct. Targeted, individually tailored social media algorithms create entertainment feeds that can entertain us to such degrees that the kings of old would lament their jesters in comparison. But what these algorithms are doing to us, what they are doing to our society? On political polarization? The effects they are having not just on children, but of people of all ages? We as a society need to recognize that the benefits just aren't worth the costs. We are tearing our civilization apart for the sake of cheap entertainment.

We need to ban targeted social media feeds. We have faced technologies like this before. We have made the choice before to give up the benefits of these things for the sake of the greater good. We've done it before, and we can do it again. It is time we ban targeted social media feeds.

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[–] Realitaetsverlust@lemmy.zip 7 points 2 days ago (3 children)

The problem is that parents - apparently - have no interest in educating their children anymore. They just place their kids in front of a PC or give them an iPad so they can watch TV or something.

Forbidding people from accessing the internet is going to raise a generation of children unfamiliar with it and then drifting off completely. Just look at the NK soldiers when they were shipped to russia and first had access to the internet. Half of them became porn addicts.

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[–] BeNotAfraid@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

Dude, we're all stupid. We are all effected by the Internet and propaganda algorithms. We are not superior, most of us just don't realise we're programmed. Exactly the same as Gen Alpha, Zoomers, Gen X and Boomers. We're all profiled and we all see how everyone else is a victim of indoctrination. That's how this works, social engineering innit?

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[–] ECEC@lemmy.world 32 points 2 days ago
[–] melsaskca@lemmy.ca 31 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Those little shits should be slapped by their mom's when they get home from school. Suburban trash.

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[–] Hyphlosion@lemm.ee 8 points 1 day ago

Dude, I never cared who my teachers were, so long as they weren’t jerks. Even then, I got over it.

[–] Boppel@feddit.org 12 points 2 days ago (5 children)

So? You get a F, you get a F, you get a F...

[–] CoolMatt@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 day ago (2 children)

"That fucking stupid bitch woman teacher gave me an F because (insert misogynistic mental gymnastics to make it her fault for being female here)"

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[–] BenjiRenji@feddit.org 11 points 2 days ago

I can really recommend the mini series Adolesence on Netflix (or wherever) to get a great, dramatized example of how this effect looks like.

[–] el_bhm@lemm.ee 82 points 2 days ago (2 children)
[–] nialv7@lemmy.world 44 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (16 children)

The problem isn't that we need to get rid of Tate. They are like flies and there will always be more like him.

What we need to figure out is what made him so persuasive to young boys - that's the real problem. We need to know why young boys are willing to listen to bullshit like his, and we must figure out what we can do to correct that.

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[–] Kurious84@eviltoast.org 42 points 2 days ago (3 children)

I truly thought that this Tate guy was a complete character like Borat. I'm floored realizing this is a real "person"? How does anyone care about helping this guy. Oh wait.

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[–] andros_rex@lemmy.world 80 points 3 days ago (19 children)

"In a secondary English class last year, a group of boys opted, despite discouragement, to write a persuasive essay on why Andrew Tate is the GOAT (greatest of all time) which included praise of his view that women are a man's property... all of the parents were contacted and were appalled."

When I worked in a middle school a couple years back, I heard the Tate shit there. Had a student who would name their Kahoot something like “[female students name] has a nice ass” and administration would refuse to allow me to impose consequences.

If you are around teen boys, please talk to them about Tate. He’s not someone who should be walking free, and he’s not someone children should be listening to.

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[–] scarabic@lemmy.world 60 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Andrew Tate should just put on the Taliban turban and be done with this charade. His entire schtick is Sharia for Americans.

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[–] ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 146 points 3 days ago (29 children)

In my opinion the huge difference between this generation and all previous ones is that content is no longer vetted by anyone. It used to be that to put something in front of kids it had to approved by some sane adult. If a TV station marketed to children something that most parents would not approve they would face protests or maybe even legal action. On social media any asshole can post literally anything and millions of kids will consume it without any supervision.

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[–] Red_October@lemmy.world 63 points 2 days ago

Well the solution to that one 10 year old is pretty clear. Actions have consequences, if he wants to be a little shit he can repeat the grade next year after hard failing this one.

[–] Carmakazi@lemmy.world 346 points 3 days ago (71 children)

Every teacher I hear from (US) these days basically says the newest generation coming up is completely screwed. Unreal levels of behavioral issues that are not being addressed at home. Complete lack of engagement with the lesson plan, unfinished assignments all over. They need to curve grades left and right just to get the majority of the class to pass. The parents are more emboldened than ever to make the teachers' lives hell over things they know nothing about and refuse to take responsibility for.

It's easy to brush it off as the standard generational nose-thumbing...but this seems different. Something is really breaking down and I think social media is at the center of it.

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[–] Matriks404@lemmy.world 73 points 3 days ago (25 children)

When I was 10, or 13 there were literally no issues like this at all. Well, I didn't even think about girls that much at that age, let alone in overly sexual way, lol.

What the actual fuck is happening with society recently? Is everybody going insane because of social media?

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[–] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 79 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (5 children)

Gotta remember... This is sky news. Probably fake. Especially since the "survey" doesn't even match the headline.

More than 5,800 teachers were polled… and nearly three in five (59%) said they believe social media use has contributed to a deterioration in pupils’ behaviour.

Wow it seems like everyone here is completely credulous and happy to have their bias confirmed.

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