The Manosphere | What Therapists Need To Know

The manosphere | What therapists need to know

A 15-year-old sits down and tells you, calmly, that women only want the top 20% of men, that therapy is for the weak, and that his real problem is his jawline. None of these ideas started with him. They arrived through his phone, often somewhere between a football clip and a gym video.

For therapists, youth workers and coaches, the manosphere is no longer a niche internet topic. It is part of the inner world many young men bring into the room.

This article, written by Pieter, one of our Trainee Psychosexual and Relationship Therapists, looks at what the manosphere is, how far it reaches, what it is doing to boys and young men, and how therapists can respond without pushing them further away.

What the manosphere is

The manosphere is a loose network of influencers, forums, podcasts and short-form video accounts that promote male dominance and hostility towards feminism. It has several overlapping strands:

‘Alpha’ self-improvement content: influencers such as Andrew Tate, who package misogyny inside advice about money, fitness and discipline.
Red pill and pick-up artistry: the belief that women are manipulative and status-driven, and that relationships are a game of strategy and control.
Men’s rights activism: raises some real issues (male suicide, custody, educational underachievement) but often frames women as the cause.
Incel and ‘blackpill’ communities: a fatalistic view that looks and genetics decide a man’s worth, and that unattractive men are doomed.
Looksmaxxing: appearance optimisation that ranges from skincare to steroids, extreme dieting and ‘bone smashing’.

Its power lies in the entry point. Very few boys go looking for misogyny. They go looking for help with loneliness, confidence, fitness or money, and the content meets them there.

How widespread it is

The reach is large, even if precise measurement is difficult. Hope not Hate found that around 80% of UK boys aged 16–17 had consumed Andrew Tate’s content. In a UK survey of teachers, 76% of secondary and 60% of primary teachers said they were extremely concerned about how online misogyny was influencing their pupils (Over et al., 2024).

The algorithm does much of the work. In a 2024 study led by Dr Kaitlyn Regehr (UCL, with the University of Kent), researchers created TikTok accounts modelled on teenage boys interested in themes such as loneliness or self-improvement. Within five days, misogynistic content rose from 13% to 56% of the videos recommended to them. The boys did not have to search for it; it found them.
Wider attitudes are shifting too.

In the University of Glasgow’s 2025 UK Youth Poll, two-thirds of 16–29-year-olds said toxic masculinity was becoming more common.

We should be honest about the evidence base. Researchers at the University of York note that systematic, long-term data on the manosphere’s mental health effects remain limited. What we have is strongly suggestive rather than conclusive, and it helps to say so when talking with families.

Why it is problematic

The most obvious harm falls on women and girls. Teachers in UK studies describe boys citing Tate to justify hurting women, and sexualised taunts aimed at female pupils. One study found that the level of manosphere engagement in a school tracked with depressive symptoms and work stress among its female teachers.
The harm to boys themselves is easier to miss, partly because the manosphere presents itself as their ally. Four mechanisms stand out:

It hijacks real distress. Loneliness, rejection and uncertainty are genuine. The content validates the pain, then redirects it into blame.
It sells a rigid script for masculinity. Emotional control, dominance and wealth become the only acceptable ways to be a man. Anything else is weakness.
It discredits help. Many influencers claim depression is exaggerated or invented. Konu and colleagues (2024) found stigma about help-seeking was especially high among young men who engage with this content.
It is fatalistic. Blackpill thinking tells a boy that his face, height or income has already decided his future. That removes hope, and hopelessness is a clinical risk factor.

The pathways also connect. Alan Turing Institute researchers found that 44% of looksmaxxing videos on TikTok also carried blackpill hashtags, which can funnel users from appearance tips towards far more extreme material.

What we are seeing in young men

Therapists, teachers and youth workers describe a recognisable cluster of presentations. None is unique to the manosphere, but together they form a pattern worth screening for.

Body image distress and muscle dysmorphia. Gym and looksmaxxing content present steroid-enhanced bodies as natural. Clinicians report boys as young as 13 using anabolic steroids, and young men buying SARMs and peptides from unregulated sites. About one in three people with an eating disorder is male, though boys more often chase leanness than thinness, so it is easily missed.
Hopelessness and suicidal thinking. Body dysmorphic disorder carries a markedly raised suicide risk. Researchers have documented blackpill spaces encouraging self-harm in users judged to have ‘failed’ appearance standards.
Loneliness and withdrawal. When women are framed as adversaries and relationships as transactions, connection starts to feel dangerous or pointless.
Anger and contempt. Irritability, black-and-white thinking about gender, and hostility towards women, sometimes including mothers and sisters.
Shame and emotional suppression. The belief that vulnerability is weakness shows up as flat affect, minimising, or refusing help altogether.
Status anxiety. Constant comparison around money, ‘high-value’ status and sexual success, which can feed get-rich-quick schemes and sexual performance anxiety.

In psychosexual therapy especially, we may meet young men whose ideas about sex, consent and women’s desire have been shaped largely by this content.

Countering the misinformation

Arguing directly with a young man about Andrew Tate rarely works. It tends to confirm the manosphere’s claim that mainstream adults look down on boys. Approaches grounded in curiosity tend to go further than correction:

Separate the need from the message. “You want to feel strong, respected and less alone” is something we can agree with. The problem is the route the content offers.
Show how the feed works. The UCL/Kent findings are a useful tool in themselves. Learning that an algorithm can shift a feed from 13% to 56% misogynistic content in five days invites the question: who profits from my attention?
Follow the money. Many influencers sell courses, supplements or affiliate links. “What is this person selling you?” is less threatening than “this person is wrong”.
Correct specific claims with facts. The real risks of steroids and SARMs; the reality of male depression; and partner-preference research, which consistently ranks kindness and emotional stability highly for both sexes (Buss, 1989).
Offer alternative voices. Positive male role models, mentors and peer-to-peer programmes, which the UCL/Kent report specifically recommends.

The aim is not to win the argument. It is to keep him talking long enough to think for himself.

A therapeutic approach

The therapeutic relationship is itself the intervention. Many boys drawn to the manosphere have experienced rejection, humiliation or absent male figures, and the influencer becomes a surrogate father. We cannot compete with that by lecturing. We can compete by offering a relationship that is steady, respectful and unafraid of him.

Start with the person, not the ideology. Ask what drew him in and what it gives him. Belonging, certainty and a plan are powerful offers when life feels chaotic.
Be warm and honest. Unconditional positive regard does not mean agreement. We can name the impact of his beliefs on him and on others without withdrawing care.
Include the body in assessment. Screen for muscle dysmorphia, disordered eating and substance use. Somatic and body-image work can reach what argument cannot.
Build emotional literacy. Helping young men name feelings beyond anger, often side by side or through activity rather than face to face, reduces reliance on rage as the only permitted emotion.
Treat fatalism as risk. Blackpill hopelessness calls for a risk assessment, not just a debate.
Work systemically. Parents, schools and coaches need to be part of the plan. Whilst therapists can’t engage directly with anyone other than the clients, they can explore with them the support they have outside of therapy.
Watch our own reactions. Female therapists may become targets of hostility; male therapists may feel pulled to collude or to confront. This is supervision material.

The manosphere offers young men a story about who they are. Our work is to help them write a better one, in which strength includes tenderness and relationships rest on mutuality rather than power.

Sources

This article was written by Pieter, one of our Trainee Psychosexual and Relationship Therapists.

Pieter offers a calm, respectful, non-judgemental space where people can bring whatever feels difficult or unclear, be met with empathy and care, and be supported in moving towards feeling more accepted, both within themselves and with others.

He works online and in North London.