1 Thing Teachers Fear About Today's Youth

A growing number of teachers warn that toxic online masculinity is reshaping how young people see respect, gender, and relationships.

By Mark Travers, Ph.D. | November 11, 2025

Screen time is no longer the only worry parents need to have about their kids' online habits. Increasingly, today's educators are reporting that toxic online ideologies have now made their way into the classroom, seen clear as day in how youths are treating one another.

A February 2025 study published in PLOS One, which surveyed 200 teachers across the UK, suggests that the fastest-growing concern among teachers today is the influence of online misogyny. The findings paint a sobering picture of what teachers are seeing play out at school.

According to the data, 76% of secondary school teachers (ages 11 to 16) and 60% of primary school teachers (ages four to 11) said they were "extremely concerned" about the ways in which online misogyny is affecting their young students.

Of course, online hate isn't a novel phenomenon. However, the patterns described by the teachers in this study point to something far more terrifying than online hate itself. That is, that gender-based disrespect is being normalized among children as young as ten — or, in some cases, even younger.

A Worrying New Classroom Trend

Teachers rarely receive due credit for being the first of us to notice subtle shifts in youth culture. Beyond the more obvious trends like slang and fashion, teachers are firsthand witnesses to how children interact with one another, empathize for each other and form the values that they will hold for the foreseeable future.

But within the last few years, many educators have been shocked by the rise of a distinctly new attitude among some of their students, particularly the boys: the glorification of online influencers who promote blatantly misogynistic rhetoric. What's worse, however, is that these ideologies are spread under the guise of "self-improvement" or "male empowerment."

When asked to provide real-life examples, the teachers' accounts were notably consistent. Some educators described their students casually quoting high-profile online figures who advocate dominance over women. Others made references to instances where boys made sexist jokes, dismissed female peers' opinions or even praised said misogynistic public figures.

Secondary school educators explicitly mentioned being concerned about the fact that young boys were speaking and behaving in ways that were discriminatory toward women — both their fellow students and even staff members who were female. The specific examples these teachers provided were appalling:

• Some teachers reported cases in which male pupils were abusive towards female partners, and that they even tried to intimidate them physically
• One teacher reported an incident where a male pupil said, "Women are too big for their boots," and that it won't be long until "Women wouldn't be allowed outside"
• One teacher reported scenario where a a male pupil said "It wouldn't be rape if nobody found out"

These patterns weren't confined to older teenagers, either. Shockingly, primary school teachers recalled students as young as eight years old parroting rhetoric and behaving in ways that were equally as concerning:

• One teacher recounted a moment in which a boy announced in class that, "It's okay to hurt women because Andrew Tate does it"
• Another described a pupil telling a classmate that "she belonged in the kitchen"
• One teacher even explained that their male pupils "touch girls non-consensually" and "do not understand why this is inappropriate"

The Emotional Fallout For Girls

It might, in light of this information, be many's first instinct to place boys' behavior as the primary focus of concern. However, this behavior doesn't exist in a vacuum. This makes it incredibly important to also pay attention to the toll these behaviors are taking on girls at school, too.

According to the teachers within the study, female pupils consistently reported feeling anxious, unsafe or demoralized at school due to how their male classmates behaved. One primary school teacher even wrote that "the majority of the girls in my class have been worried about coming to school due to what the boys may say or do to them."

To say this is merely a matter of "hurt feelings" would be an egregious understatement. In reality, these teachers are watching their schools become psychological unsafe environments for young girls. And as a 2014 annual review explains, developmental psychologists posit feeling safe and respected as being fundamental to our productivity, learning and social growth.

In this sense, it should be a concern of the highest order when a classroom becomes a space where a child — girl or boy — must constantly worry how they're dressed, how they speak or how to respond to others. Living in constant fear of ridicule or harassment, like some of the young girls are in school today, can cause severe and lasting damage to a child's confidence and sense of belonging in educational environments.

Teachers in the 2025 study notes that they've seen declines in their female pupils' well-being, self-esteem and participation in classes. What makes this finding even more devastating is that a majority of these girls are too young to fully contextualize the ideologies that motivate these kinds of behaviors. In all likelihood, most of these young girls will simply see that some boys in their class see them as less worthy of respect. This realization can be profoundly detrimental to a young girl's outlook on life and the world as a whole — even more so if it comes before reaching adolescence.

The Internet's Hidden Curriculum

Parents would be wise to start viewing the internet as a classroom of its own kind. Modern-day social media platforms have developed algorithms that actively reward outrage. Leveraging this, controversial influencers (especially those who cater to young men) have learned how to package harmful messages in ways that make bigotry seem either funny or empowering.

And in doing so, they offer boys a narrative of superiority, belonging and rebellion against perceived societal unfairness — with the unfortunately large omission of just how harmful the narrative itself is.

Upon being asked to describe the impacts of this, 90% of secondary school teachers and 68% of primary school teachers claimed to staunchly believe their institutions would benefit from "dedicated teaching materials" to counteract online misogyny. Just this level of consensus alone is enough to emphasize how dire of an impact this rhetoric is making.

However, teachers aren't simply pointing their fingers at parents, or even on the internet and social media. Rather, they're asking for structured, evidence-based interventions that will reach kids before any of the harmful beliefs that they're exposed to start to solidify.

This idea of early intervention is of utmost importance. It can be incredibly tempting to assume that elementary and middle school kids are "too young" to absorb and internalize misogynistic content. But, evidently, current research suggests otherwise.

Perhaps the most critical fact that parents should make note of is that radicalization doesn't require your child to actively engage with harmful content. It's something that can, and often does, happen passively — through their older siblings, their TikTok "For You page" or even through a playground retellings of an online joke.

Once they start normalizing these ideas, it becomes all the more easy for them to embed within a child's understanding of gender. And should this happen prior to adolescence, it will be ten times harder to correct later on.

Although the research doesn't claim to have all the answers to this epidemic, the implications are still incredibly clear: we need interventions, and we need them to start as early as possible. Teaching respect, empathy and equality simply cannot be an afterthought that we squeeze into a one or two lessons in teens' social studies. These values need to be made inseparable with the rest of the material they're taught.

However, this is not a burden that teachers must carry alone. Schools cannot undo hours of online exposure in a 30-minute health class; it's just not enough time. We all — teachers, parents, older siblings, policymakers, social media users — need to do our due diligence to protect young minds.

This is especially important in today's day and age: children are learning from highly ubiquitous and charismatic online figures, who are painting empathy as a weakness and equality as a form of oppression.

Parenting today's youth requires constant adaptation and vigilance. Take this science-backed test to find out if it could be leading to burnout: Parental Burnout Assessment

A similar version of this article can also be found on Forbes.com, here.