Why So Many Teen Boys Are Getting Their Life Advice From TikTok ‘Alpha' Influencers

Yahoo

21 hours ago

With the rise of 'tradwife' content on TikTok — romanticizing women staying at home and sticking to traditional gender roles — another worrying trend has popped up. Teen boys are turning to 'masculinity' or 'alpha' male influencers for life advice, from fitness to dating and money, and it's affecting their mental health.
Movember conducted a survey of over 3,000 young men aged 16-25 across the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia about their viewing habits with these masculinity influencers. (Think: gym bros, hustle culture, Andrew Tate-adjacent men.) The study found nearly two-thirds of young men (63 percent) are regularly engaging with men and masculinity influencers. This is no longer a fringe sub-culture or for 'incels' — a term for bitter men who call themselves involuntary celibates — it's becoming the mainstream type of content they see on TikTok, YouTube, and other forms of social media.
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The content they were consuming revolved around a wide range of topics, including fitness, financial success, and relationships. Many reported following the influencers for entertainment, motivation, and inspiration purposes, and they reported 'frequently acting upon influencers' advice.'
And while the teens and young men who watched these videos felt 'more optimistic about their personal circumstances and the social circumstances of men in the future,' they are also more likely to report 'worse mental health outcomes, a reduced willingness to prioritize their mental health, and higher rates of risky health behaviors.'
The young men watching this type of content reported 'significantly higher levels of worthlessness (27% vs. 23%), nervousness (26% vs. 19%) and sadness (26% vs. 19%)' compared to young men who weren't actively following these influencers.
It's no surprise that its affecting boys mentally. After all, the influencers are preaching self-reliance and emotional control as norms for men; negative and limiting attitudes towards women and their roles in relationships; and prioritizing friends with ambition, popularity and wealth as opposed those with trust and kindness.
Research has shown that Gen Z is lonelier than other generations too, and this could be one reason why. Dr. Laura Erickson-Schroth, chief medical officer at The Jed Foundation (JED), a teen emotional health and suicide prevention nonprofit, previously told SheKnows, 'Teen boys face stigma and societal expectations when it comes to emotional vulnerability. They're discouraged from reaching out to form closer connections or seeking help when they need it.'
The findings from this Movember report match what other studies have shown: that boys are increasingly following traditional gender roles. A 2024 International Women's Day poll by Ipsos found that nearly half of American men (47 percent) think men are expected to do too much to support gender equality and that gender equality has gone too far and is hurting men (47 percent).
'When you're a teenage boy, you're looking for an answer to what being a man means,' one 18-year-old told SheKnows as part of its Be a Man project. 'And one thing about Andrew Tate, I think his counterculture movement is very attractive to teen boys because no responsible parent figure is going to find Andre Tate to be a good role model. So maybe that's why it's so compelling.'
As a boy mom, I've made it my mission to ensure my sons view women equally, paint their nails if they want to, and treat everyone with kindness and compassion. But is my influence going to be enough to outweigh the harmful ideologies that alpha male TikTok creators are pushing down boys' throats every day? I still have several years until my boys are teens, but I want to help them avoid these toxic ideologies now.
Ruth Whippman, author of BoyMom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity, previously told SheKnows that parents need to ensure they aren't neglecting their sons emotionally.
'We don't tend to their emotional needs in the same way that we tend to girls,' she said, adding, 'Even from earliest babyhood, we handle them in a different way. We jiggle them and wrestle with them and handle them really physically, but we don't give them the same level of caretaking — that more nurturing touch. So in some ways boys benefit from this system, and we don't hold them accountable in the same way, but in other ways, they're really losing out.'
She continued, 'Right from the beginning, we kind of socialize boys away from connection and away from intimacy. … We engage with them in a different way. Things that get marketed to boys tend to be about fighting and combat, rather than cooperation, communication, relation, or learning. And so it's there's a real lack of role models for boys to see themselves in those kinds of roles in any complex way.'
So what do we do? Whippman suggests being sure 'to engage with boys in more emotional ways, to see them as emotionally complex and in need of emotionally complex nurturing. Boys are every bit as emotionally complex as girls are, and we should engage with them in that way.'
You can try to limit or prevent the type of content your teens and young sons are looking at, but more importantly, talking to them, encouraging them to be emotionally vulnerable, and having these broader conversations around what it means to be 'masculine' is even more important.Best of SheKnows
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