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.”
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.
Yep, that’s why the only way to be a good parent nowadays is to not give your kids smart phones or computers of their own. There was a time when it was kinda ok for them to have those devices, but that time is permanently in the past.
Closeted queer kids with bigoted parents need online safe spaces.
I mostly disagree with that. Cocooning up into a terminally online person makes one’s life worse, not better.
Straight up abusive parents are another thing of course. But even then those kids need sheltering, not the internet.
I think you underestimate the sheer number of homophobic parents that aren’t necessarily abusive but would be if their kid ever came out. There are a lot of people I’ve talked to that their online escape was the one thing that kept from killing themselves.
I’m not saying that it’s healthy but there are a lot of kids in a situation that they can not escape from because of the way that society treats children. Children are treated as something that is closer to property than an individual when it comes to things like law enforcement and emotional abuse.
I think muad’dib is just projecting and maybe you are, too.
Using the internet to avoid dealing with problems in real life is an unhealthy crutch.
unfortuatly the healthy way to deal with a situation like that is to remove yourself from it which children are not allowed to do.
Homophobia is abusive. Regardless of the intentions. Ignorance of that fact doesn’t excuse it.
I agree. Try arguing that to a conservative judge in the south and you will simply be sent home with your abusive parent, who is likely enraged about having to defend themselves from the “law”.
It used to be that to put something in front of kids it had to approved by some sane adult.
I love how you got a ton of upvotes by vaguely gesturing at the past.
When was this time you speak of?
What has changed is the social fabric of society has been ripped up.
Back when media for kids consisted mainly of broadcast TV shows and books. It’s not some mythical past; it’s my childhood.
Send them to a Catholic male-only school, which incidentally is also one of the most right-wing places I can imagine. Let’s see how long they remain up to their “masculine” standards.
Abuse isn’t the solution to miseducation.
I don’t think it is social media. It is much more simple: people can’t spend time with each other. Employers keep reducing the wages, while maintaining or increasing the amount of work their employees have to do. This means that workers can’t invest time into friends or family, which in turn deprives children of healthy role models.
Jackasses like Tate get to influence the children, because there is a void that has been left empty - Tate has enough wealth and time to fill in for society. Work culture is a ravenous beast, forever chasing workers. If you pause, you lose everything. So you might as well sacrifice the time you could spend with family, since you would lose them anyway if you shirk being a breadwinner.
Optimization for the sake of line going up, inevitably destroys everything that surrounds the pillar that society is forced to worship.
Jackasses like Tate get to influence the children, because there is a void that has been left empty
I’d like to amend this to say that there is void that support “boys”. There’s a lot of encouragement for the development of girls into STEM, into sports, into everything else but there’s no encouragement for boys. Boys are left to fend for themselves and if they don’t get the right support and encouragement at home, they end up ripe for influencers like Tate.
A lot of them spend their free time in their bedrooms, gaming. Their only friends are online gamers that are in other parts of the world. They have no actual physical interaction.
I’ve even seen posts where young men in their 20s are finally making enough money that they can finally visit online friends that they’ve known for years, often describing them as “best friends.”
It’s interesting my friends kid is 13. A couple of years ago they were able to take a trip across country to visit their online friends that they spend all their time with in games. Those kids are all girls. This life style truly isn’t exclusive to one gender. The father works a 9-5 and the mother is a stay at home mom with some side hustles for extra cash. Their kid seems to be kind but who knows what she is really getting into online. This world is like a caricature of itself.
I’m glad that people can’t hide behind a face anymore. In the old times, and this still happens in some places, people will get away with abuse because they’re good at using their faces to manipulate people. Preachers, community leaders. They used body language to win people’s trust and gain positions of power to abuse people, especially children.
On the internet, people have to be more honest. Video chat is unpopular, so most people are only using words to communicate. Sometimes voice. You’re looking straight at someone’s soul with less distraction from the physical plane. It’s safer.
I wouldn’t trust a guy who I’ve only ever met in the flesh. Ugh, creepy.
On the internet, people have to be more honest.
I… don’t think that’s how it works lol.
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.
I mean, I’ve worked as a teacher for eleven years and I don’t know a single person who doesn’t think that social media contributed to declining behavior standards. When I say, ‘a single person’, I am referring to other teachers or administrators. I am not using hyperbole. Nobody thinks it is good, everyone thinks it’s bad, and every year we tighten the noose.
This is across three school districts and nine grade levels.
I don’t doubt you. Can you give examples of how it’s changing their behaviour?
Hey! Sorry for the delay. I am an infrequent poster at best.
When kids have access to phones, then they want to be on their phones. They rush through their work, don’t pay full attention to their instruction, and have no distance from their friends in which to process their lives.
Rushing through their work and doing a shit job in order to get back on their phone sets up power struggles in the classroom with children who become offended if you tell them that their work is insufficient. Since they were not fully paying attention to the lesson, they have to go back and correct mistakes, which they view as ‘cutting into their time’.
The biggest behavioral impact is that once phones are in the mix, the conversation in the friend group never stops. Arguments continue, jokes continue, complaints continue, and all of this spirals and escalates on itself. Kids get stuck into online arguments with people they then see at lunch. So, you have kids talking mad shit online, creating this culture of anxiety and fear that keeps the students on edge. Grudges continue on for years. Literal years, over stuff that would have been forgotten in a week if it wasn’t constantly recycled in the friend group for content.
Finally, kids who are removed from their phones freak out. That constant conversation that they know is happening is now inaccessible to them, and they know how they talk about each other. Now they have to worry about not knowing who has beef with who, what is being said about them, and not understanding the latest ridiculous meme or joke.
So, in answer to the specific behaviors that cell phones cause, there is no direct answer. Rather, take a school, give bullies access to everyone all the time, amplify every disagreement, argument, or compromising picture or piece of information, add in a constant distraction to the task at hand, which reduces reflection and growth, keep kids in constant contact with their parents and stymying their independent development, and then ask which behaviors are the result of that. Is it the violence? The disrespect? The apathy toward classroom instruction? The anxiety? The reliance on constant reassurance from either looking something up or receiving real time feedback from their parents and friends? It is tough to say.
What is easy to say, based on a lot of experience, is that when you stamp out cellphone culture, everything improves by every metric. Grades go up, discipline goes down, positive interactions with peers and kindness become the norm, and kids are able to just be kids while they are at school.
