Andrew Tate has been indicted – but what are social media influencers teaching our boys?

Andrew Tate has been indicted by prosecutors in Romania on charges including trafficking minors, sex with a minor, money laundering and witness tampering. His brother Tristan has also been indicted for alleged complicity. Both men deny wrongdoing, and the allegations against them have not been proven in court.

The criminal proceedings will now take their course. But for parents, teachers and anyone concerned about the wellbeing of young people, there is another conversation worth having. Andrew Tate is not simply a defendant in a high-profile criminal case. He is one of the most recognisable figures in an online culture that has reached millions of boys and young men with messages about masculinity, money, sex, relationships and women. That matters regardless of what ultimately happens in a courtroom.

For years, parents have worried about what their children can find online. The problem today is subtly different. Children no longer necessarily have to go looking for harmful ideas. Social media algorithms learn what keeps them watching and can continually recommend more of it, allowing a teenager who starts by watching content about fitness, money, dating or self-improvement to be drawn towards increasingly extreme material.

Research led by University College London demonstrated how quickly that can happen. Researchers created social media accounts representing different types of teenage boys and examined the content recommended to them. After five days, the proportion of misogynistic material appearing in recommendations had increased fourfold, from 13% to 56%.

Researchers also spoke to young people and school leaders and found that misogynistic ideas encountered online were no longer remaining on screens. Teachers reported seeing some of the language and attitudes entering classrooms and becoming part of the way young people interacted with each other.

Tate’s appeal to some boys is particularly important to understand. Research involving boys aged 13 and 14 has suggested that simply dismissing his followers as misogynists misses much of what initially attracts young people to his content. Messages about becoming successful, making money, being physically strong, attracting women and taking control of your life can sit alongside much more troubling ideas about male dominance and women.

For a boy who feels lonely, unsuccessful, anxious about relationships or uncertain about what becoming a man is supposed to look like, the positive-sounding part of that message can be powerful. The danger is what may arrive with it.

That is why simply telling boys that a particular influencer is terrible is unlikely to be enough. Young people need the skills to question what they are watching, why somebody is telling them something and why an algorithm keeps showing them more of it. They also need adults willing to have conversations about relationships, consent, respect, sex and masculinity without immediately turning those conversations into lectures.

We should also be careful about treating boys themselves as the problem. Teenage boys are growing up in an extraordinarily complicated online environment. They are being sold ideas about what their bodies should look like, how much money they should have, how sexually successful they should be and what supposedly makes a man powerful or weak. Like girls, they are susceptible to insecurity, loneliness and the desire to belong.

If responsible adults leave a vacuum around those subjects, somebody online will happily fill it.

Parents cannot realistically watch every video their child sees, and schools cannot undo every message delivered through a smartphone. Social media companies also have a responsibility for the systems that repeatedly recommend and amplify content because it generates attention and engagement.

But there is something the rest of us can do. We can talk to boys before harmful attitudes become entrenched. We can teach them that strength and kindness are not opposites, that rejection does not create an entitlement to anger, that women are not responsible for validating their masculinity and that a healthy relationship is not a contest for control. Crucially, those conversations need to include boys rather than simply being conversations about them.

The allegations against Andrew Tate are extremely serious. Romanian prosecutors allege that one girl was just 15 when she was recruited and subsequently sexually exploited for financial gain. Tate also faces an allegation involving sexual activity with another 15-year-old. He denies the allegations, and an indictment is not a finding of guilt. Whatever the courts eventually decide, however, the extraordinary reach Tate and similar personalities have achieved among young men should make adults pay attention.

Previous generations worried about who their children were spending time with after school. Today’s parents have an additional challenge: some of the people influencing their children may never have met them, may live thousands of miles away and may nevertheless appear in their bedroom every night through a phone.

We cannot control every message our children encounter. But we can make sure the loudest person on their social media feed is not the only person teaching them what it means to be a man, how women should be treated or what a healthy relationship looks like. We have to do better than that.

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