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.”
When I was 10, or 13 there were literally no issues like this at all. Well, I didn’t even think about girls that much at that age, let alone in overly sexual way, lol.
What the actual fuck is happening with society recently? Is everybody going insane because of social media?
Murica is doing typical murica things.
Isn’t this story about the UK?
Yes 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.
This is absolutely a kind of rage-bait.
I don’t doubt that there’s a growing segment of misogynistic boys who have been influenced by Tate and our society’s general check-out when it comes to being communal and supporting each other and the absolute bullshit mess that social media and online dating has created for young relationships, the statistics are abysmal and worrying…
But that said, the large majority of all Americans at any age are still pretty much just getting through it like always.
These kinds of stories, while beneficial that they are highlight and showing us problems that need to be addressed, all they’re doing without a prescriptive solution or counter-point is just wedging this division in our community further and further apart. It’s making girls scared of boys. It’s making boys scared that girls will think they’re horrible misogynists, and thus they will be defensive at the ready accusations and the exchanges spiral from there.
It’s revolting that we cling to hateful figures so readily. They give us validation for pent-up frustration and anger at a system that has abandoned us. That’s why it’s addicting to read about horrible things and horrible people. Which makes horrible things and horrible people. Our addiction to hating people is creating people like Tate, because our desire to hate someone makes us click on these stories over and over and feel that righteous outrage that seems to make everything make sense. It’s addicting and we need to recognize it and stop imbibing in it.
Where are the parents, if my son pulled that shit I would put him a position where he MUST listen to and work for women until he realizes how ridiculous he is.
Stories like this are what I think of every time the topic of regulating social media comes up.
We know it’s programmed to create rage machines. We do, and then people act surprised when social media works as designed.
Fake Sky News is also a rage machine.
This is totally a diffusion of social media issue. Twenty years ago, the media that kids had available for consumption was age rated. We had agreed as a society that certain things should not be visible to children until they grow up. It was possible to do because it was centralized (TV, movies, radio, print) and it was accountable to regulatory bodies and the rest of society. If a TV channel showed something as shitty as Tate style propaganda, there was institutional pushback, there were letters to the editor, there was someone specific to be targeted for accountability.
With social media being dominated by US style “freedom of speech” algorithms and US style acceptance of the impossibility (or even undesirability) of regulation and with completely unaccountable megacorps running them while giving very minimal if non-existent attention to who is watching what, we have a complete lack of age rating. We have given up on the idea of protecting childhood it seems.
Coupled with every fucking other issue being brought up in this thread, from COVID, to economic issues, to cultural misogyny, there is a perfect storm…
With social media being dominated by US style “freedom of speech” algorithms and US style acceptance of the impossibility (or even undesirability) of regulation and with completely unaccountable megacorps running them while giving very minimal if non-existent attention to who is watching what, we have a complete lack of age rating. We have given up on the idea of protecting childhood it seems.
…and you have clearly given up any pretense of not being extremely authoritarian it seems, what the hell does “freedom of speech algorithms” even mean? Rhetorically you are completely mixed up about what is going on and what the solution is, I am amazed you made it here to the fediverse.
We had agreed as a society that certain things should not be visible to children until they grow up.
Do you have evidence the systems we employed to do this actually didn’t make problems worse? As far as I can see, it is also just overly righteous adults desperate to fix the world in ways that don’t make them look inwards and question the policies they support and the beliefs they hold.
I missed a comma before “algorithms” it seems.
The kind of “extreme authoritarianism” you’re pearl clutching about is literally the age ratings system that was in place in the late 90s. Get a grip.
You are the one pearl clutching.
The rise of criminal assholes like Andrew Tate has to do with ADULT MEN VALIDATING these figures all the way up to the most powerful adult men on earth.
Why do you think turning up the centralized censorship dial is NOT going to directly benefit people like Andrew Tate when Andrew Tate is exactly the kind of person the people who have control of that dial actually want?
I am in support of more human moderators moderating social media for kids, but in an empathetic way of giving kids more actual human attention, not as an authoritarian impulse to fix things by always just tightening control over others.
First. If the kid doesn’t want to talk to the teacher then put the kid into detention until they will. If the kid misses more then a certain number of days of class. Make them take the entire grade again. Fail them.
Second (and I’m not sure how we would do this) cut them off from the internet. There are books in the library for doing research.
These kids already have been left behind by someone and they filled the void with people telling them it wasn’t their fault.
And your solution is to leave them even more behind? That’s just compounding the problem.
The solution is guidance and therapy. What you’re describing is retaliation.
These kids already have been left behind by someone
It’s like bullies. People always come down hard on bully kids. They rarely act like that naturally, they learned this behaviour. They’re probably being abused at home. Coming down hard on them just makes them more angry and confused.
You have to figure out what is making the kids act the way and address that.
Gotta love how many self-identified leftists we have that are actually confused authoritarians.
Maybe check if Sky News is making stuff up first?
Second (and I’m not sure how we would do this) cut them off from the internet.
There are a whole bunch of ways to monitor, limit, and even cut off your kids internet usage. If you get your kid a cell phone or computer, you can install apps to monitor and limit what they watch and when. The fact that parents just let their kids freely use the internet with no supervision blows my mind.
I grew up in Dubai and most of my teachers were women. None of the boys ever gave any lip on account of their sex. If they did, the teacher wouldn’t need to discipline them… we would.
Have you ever had a creepy guy who hangs around the school desperately trying to impress little kids? Yeah he’s the online version.
There was always a large number of stupid kids who were jerks in school, but it was always hidden behind a mentality of stern rebukes of fights and an occasional suspension. Now, all of those same types of moronic assholes have a digital distillated stream of garbage that fits with their natural tendancies, putting these idiots into hyperdrive.
Honestly, it’s probably better that the problem gets worse so that it unmasks the high amount of bullying and abuse that’s normally accepted in schools.
Worst of all, when bullies harass and attack and beat people over and over in school, on the rare occasion when a student defends themself, the defender often ends up charged because “cool” bullies get a free pass unless bones are broken or the victim dies, while uncool victims are castigated by schools for defending themselves. The unfortunate recent charging of the innocent Karmelo Anthony with murder for refusing to be bullied by some asshole jock is an excellent example of this.
Andrew Tate is not the problem, this problem has existed for a long time with school just letting it fester. Tate at least finally makes the problem noticeable. The problem has always been school administrators who allow this sort of stuff to happen.
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.
Imagine believing that catholic school cures people of their misogyny. Wow.
Abuse isn’t the solution to miseducation.
I am just saying that they don’t know what they are asking for with this behavior: such places already exist and they are abusive to their own members.
Yall didn’t see this coming with the red pill derived slang that kids have been using? They’re obsessed with their value. It’s terrifying and capitalism loves it.
I’m clueless, what slang are we talking about here, I doubt I’d know it if I heard it.
Rizz, alpha/beta/sigma, mid, simp. A lot of importance placed on your value, your masculinity and a lot of overlap between gaming and red pill content.
You got kids mewing trying to get their jawlines looking nice. Little girls obsessed with makeup and skincare. It’s wild and people think it’s all innocent. It’s not. It’s early indoctrination.
It’s honestly wild to me that people in my age bracket can grow up with heroin chic, and think it somehow just vanished into the ether. I don’t know why it’s so hard for them to understand that kids are just getting hit with an evolved form of the same bullshit message that you’re worthless if you don’t fit a specific aesthetic.
I don’t know much more than you, but they said it right in the comment. “They are obsessed with their value” Such as, “High value man” “low value man” ect
I do know my 14 year old nephew is obsessed with making money in ways I never saw in my youth cohort
I don’t really see this as something new. None of it really. There have always been backward ass people. They have always called other kids losers and ostracized them. There has always been a classroom full of kids dragging everyone around them down. School never solved these problems so how am I supposed to react when I hear it’s getting worse?
It’s from the Matrix, maybe you’ve seen it. For those who haven’t here it is without giving any major spoilers: at one point one of the main characters tells the protagonist that if he wants to learn the truth he could take a red pill that he offers to him, but if he wants to remain oblivious and continue to live normally he should take a blue pill. They’re using this analogy to describe how the media peddles as normal what they consider wrong values and ideas like lgbtq tolerance, feminism and so on.
Needless to say, Tate is a big fan of that movie. So much so that he named his “course” the Matrix Academy. One of my former classmates actually paid for that nonsense. It was just a discord server and the lectures were useless. All the information there could be found for free on the internet by just doing a Google search or watching a few videos on Youtube.
Every teacher I hear from (US) these days basically says the newest generation coming up is completely screwed. Unreal levels of behavioral issues that are not being addressed at home. Complete lack of engagement with the lesson plan, unfinished assignments all over. They need to curve grades left and right just to get the majority of the class to pass. The parents are more emboldened than ever to make the teachers’ lives hell over things they know nothing about and refuse to take responsibility for.
It’s easy to brush it off as the standard generational nose-thumbing…but this seems different. Something is really breaking down and I think social media is at the center of it.
I am, not great at parenting, I’ve made hella mistakes. I’ve only one son and do my best.
The number of teachers/therapists (my son works a few programs for his needs) that have been floored by my willingness to parent and hold my son accountable for his actions, is far too high.
While I’ll take the compliment being “a breath of fresh air” (an actual compliment from a therapist) it bothers me more parents cant take thier own faults to accountability nor hold their children to any standard of conduct really saddens me. I shouldn’t be a wildflower in a field of dirt, it should be a field of flowers damn. A silly metaphor but you get my point hopefully.
I am, not great at parenting, I’ve made hella mistakes. I’ve only one son and do my best.
It sounds like you are
I’ll broaden it to not just social media, but the totality of endless scrolling social media, plus endless access to narcissist “influencers”, plus addicting video games (inspired by gambling patterns), plus must watch addicting TV shows and movies on demand. A lot of this is endless dopamine machine. Add in both parents working and only children with no siblings is less socialization.
Not just the US. One of our school districts can’t fail anyone and your final grade is determined by the work you hand in.
It’s mass narcissism and it’s going to destroy our society.
If I don’t see signs of change soon, I’m getting tf out of here.
This is it. We’re a Narcissistic culture, and it’s getting worse.
So this teacher had nothing bad to say about the teaching or the education system? It’s just bad kids and their bad parents, right? How convenient for teachers.
In reality these schools are indoctrination camps on the school-to-prison pipeline. We live in a fascist society that’s literally destroying the planet. Schools are a fundamental part of this process.
TBH kids shouldn’t listen to their teachers and schools. That’s what got us here.
Covid really fucked them in not getting normal socialization at school and put a lot of kids behind by a couple of years accedemically. Right now 4/5th grade and up are really screwed. Plus parents just aren’t engaged.
I’d at least consider parents aren’t engaged due to time and energy, cause of pressures at work.
Also, when I was at school there were teachers that put extra time and effort in with kids that were top of the class and bottom of the class. Bet it wouldn’t be like that now cause everyone is so rundown.
The curriculum has changed so much and policies require that kids with learning disabilities can have an IEP (Individualized Education Program) and teachers have to come up with alternative learning for multiple kids, leaving them with little time to do anything else. On top of that, experienced teachers have stated that behavior has taken a sharp decline. They no longer separate the problem kids from the rest of the class because studies have shown that their outcomes are better if they remain in normal classes. However, this forces teachers to deal with constant disruptions which causes negative effects on the other students.
Throw into that mix all the parents who think home schooling is best. Sure, for a select few it’s going to be better, but the majority are going to struggle in later life.
What usually happens is a parent gets reported to social services for child abuse. Then they go to facebook ranting about how bad the school is and that they’re being targeted. Then they pull their kids out of school to “homeschool” so they can continue to abuse their kids.
It is different, because never in human history has it been easier to influence people. We are literally addicted, as in the brain is literally addicted, to our little disinformation device, the output of which is largely controlled by malicious powerful entities. Now add impressionable young brains to the mix.
It is a pretty terrible scenario with no obvious solution.
It’s a shame teachers are pressured to “curve grade” rather than just flunk these people and hold them back a grade.
Schools now lose funding when kids don’t pass, so admins press teachers to move them along.
Republicans really do destroy everything
This is true for nearly every state, from deep red to deep blue. It is not a party issue but a stupid policy that intended for teachers and faculty to work harder to teach students.
It’s from a federal law passed under the Bush administration, tying funding to standardized testing scores.
But it was bipartisan, so you’re not wrong.
The ironic tragedy here is that the new MAGA GOP is going to destroy and dismantle public education, citing the “failure” of public education to meet the needs of our children, even though it was a Republican policy that crippled the system in the first place.
All Kids Left Behind
Murica’
Many if not all school districts in the States have their funding tied to their performance, so there is a negative incentive to make grades look good. My elementary school tried to place me in their Special Ed program because my grades would have brought the average up there.
Plus, holding back 60, 70, 80% of an entire class just isn’t logistically feasible in most cases.
Its so absurd.
I went to a rural title one highschool. I took general level classes and had honors/high honors at least half of my semesters.
Half way through my senior year, I moved. It sucked balls. My new school, was small, literally the smallest school in my state. Graduation class size was 54 students. It was outside the Capital city, and affluent. Everyone was a “prep” had money, some drove very fancy cars to school ect.
The new school didnt offer Gen level classes, only college and AP. I was upset at that because those classes were known to me to be super difficult at my old rural school. At that time I just wanted to smoke pot with my friends tbh. But … I took the classes.
Y’all. This little rich prep school’s College course classes were easier than my Title one school Gen Ed. I couldn’t believe it. This was 2006, and I know now, they did that to keep the funding going. All the little rich kids had parents who could afford to send them all to college, and they needed to look good for thier hard-to-get-into universities.
It still frustrates me the world is like this.
I believe it. I think the much older push against standardized tests was so that “fancy” schools could pump up their grades. I never understood the newer push against standardized tests, you want them exactly so schools can’t pump up their grades. Standardized tests create an actual level playing field.
The recent push came from Covid when many people could not take the tests, and then it stuck around after since administrators wanted to focus on your “well-roundedness” and not high test scores.
The newer push was years before covid.
Something is really breaking down and I think social media is at the center of it.
I feel like you could apply this to almost every societal crisis we’re facing. It’s like social media took every little crack in the foundation and turned it into a chasm.
Parents in Facebook echo chambers trying to discover who to blame for their child’s shitty behaviour then getting into arguments when they are told to perhaps get off their phone and speak to their child.
Children in Facebook echo chambers where they make their neurodivergence their entire personality while simultaneously excusing any and all behaviour due to it.
If both groups spoke to each other a lot could be changed.
I retired from the job 5 years ago. Your description rings true from my experience then (and was a big part of me retiring), and the colleagues I’ve stayed in touch with say it’s very noticeably worse now. I’m glad I got out when I did.
From your experience, why do you think that is? Mostly social media? If so, what about it? Bad parenting? The whole Covid remote stuff? Is it economically driven? Are the schools doing anything differently that could cause it?
I would love to pin it on one thing, like social media. While I felt, feel, like that was a big variable in the downfall, I can’t underestimate the loss of the “American Dream”. I felt like phones should be banned. But some teachers felt like phones could be integrated into the curriculum. I could see both points, but honestly I just felt like society had passed me by. One of my master teachers, when I had been student teaching 25 years previously, said it was time to go when the students no longer entertained you. I felt like that was about right. I don’t think knowledge at your fingertips is a reason not to actually learn stuff.
Thanks for sharing that. Like any job, when it’s no longer fun, it’s time for a change.
Based on who America voted for president I don’t feel very surprised about the issues and behavior of parents.
I would be surprised if this were the case in every state though.
lol, and here’s me thinking I’ll get to finally loosen these bootstraps one day. Wouldn’t be Millennial difficulty if something nice happened for once, so why should I expect reprieve in retirement age? Probably just be anxious af anyway because not being abused by another generation seems too good to be true.
Nooo, kids were like that form the ancient times /s.
Seems like teachers and schools aren’t properly equipped for modern kids.
More like modern kids aren’t equipped to deal with reality.
Probably going to get slated for this but surely at some point we need to accept our being all nice and friendly all the time just doesn’t work.
Like if kids are this bad send them off to military school for a month till they shape up. Happens again 6 months, then 12. Government mandated, parents don’t like it, they can look after their kids better.
People are absolute shits and don’t give a fuck about others or their future. No amount of “please pay attention or you won’t understand algebra and won’t get a good job” will do anything, you will just get “Why do i need to learn algebra! I’ll never use that. John just told me to shut up, what am I meant to do? Just let him disrespect me like that. You should be talking to John!”
Fuck them. Make them do press ups in the rain see if they learn to shut up then.
I actually agree with you. There used to be real consequences for bad behavior and being lazy, and now you get told that it’s not really your fault. Zero concept of personal responsibility. Now society is an epidemic of mass narcissism and selfishness. It clearly isn’t sustainable. There are going to be severe consequences for our quality of life in the future, and that’s assuming society even survives this epidemic at all.
How many Gomer Pyles will that produce?
Maybe less than all the murderers we have now. Being straightened out by the military is a well known phenomenon. We can’t keep doing the same things when trends are showing they aren’t working, then expect them to work better. Something needs to be changed.
Those damn machines, impacting the youth!
Those damn newspapers, impacting the youth!
Those damn radios, impacting the youth!
Those damn TVs, impacting the youth!
Those damn internet connected computers, impacting the youth!
Those damn smartphones, impacting the youth!
Those damn AI models, impacting the youth!
We really have reached a whole new level of impression.
Our youth now love luxury, they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders, and they love to chatter instead of exercise. Children are now tyrants not servants of their household. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.
Thousands of years of this stuff.
I’m probably just another old idiot who can’t see things for what they really are, but social media does scare the hell out of me. It’s hard to imagine it being a good thing when personalities are shaped by algorithms that exist entirely to drive engagement so a company makes a buck.
It isn’t just rich chocolaty ovaltine. The kid isn’t being brainwashed to drink a sugary drink from time to time. The kid is a constant revenue stream.
I feel like literally every generation for the last 1000+ years probably had a similar sentiment
They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents,
Uh…
Watch the series Adolescence (Netflix)
Next to the fact that every. Hour long. Episode. Is a one-take, it shows that this phenomenon is real. It is based on a true story and I won’t spoil anything, but it gets dark from the second it starts.
why periods in weird places?
Unlike the reference series, the comment was not done in 1 take and didn’t have the budget for professional editing.
It was a toilet comment. I can only take so long before people notice I’m gone.
Just read it out loud (even in your head) and you’ll notice it’s adding pauses for emphasis. Whether it’s good style or not is a different question, but the why seems pretty clear.
Either a 3rd grade drop out, or someone too old to remember what they learned in 3rd grade.
The series is addressed in the article
Fail em. It’ll be hilarious to the next group of kids who see someone his age in their class. And then the next
With the “no child left behind” act, it’s really turned into pass every kid no matter what.
Everyone talks about reading, did y’all know for a number of years schools stopped teaching phonics and instesd introduced sight words? Aside from many parents handing over an ipad instead of reading to their young children- the schools dropped phonics for the last 5 years or more in place of “sight words”. I believe they’ve seen the damage and have gone back to phonics now, but there is a whole generational cohort who got fucked now.
Im glad I read to my son. Im glad I never gave him Internet access outaide of supervised educational time, or watching cat videos together. My son, who is in special education for learning disabilities, is one of the best readers in his class, and this year(6th grade) started in with Gen Ed and is excelling there too!
Reading is so good for children. As a toddler and beyond it is easy to bake into bedtime routines. Bedtime took 30-60mins, and we created so many memories for both of us. I’ll always remember the silly voice I used to read the Dogmans’ “haw-haw-ha-ha” laugh. Close familial bonds keep these kids from feeling alone and turning to social media for support.
With the “no child left behind” act, it’s really turned into pass every kid no matter what.
I fucking hate that act so goddamn much.
That’s not how it works in the UK. Everyone progresses through school regardless of how you perform.
Also known as kicking the can down the road.
If you don’t fail a kid in elementary school they’re gonna fail in high school. If you don’t fail them in high school they’re gonna fail in university or in life in general.
Life has consequences for making mistakes and not learning from them. If we try to shelter children from their mistakes and bad habits then we raise adults who are poorly equipped for handling the challenges of life.
When I was in first year of university I met so many nice, seemingly-well-adjusted people who hit a brick wall with their coursework. I believe around a third of my peers failed to graduate at all in their programs. Many dropped out or transferred to other departments or other universities.
But here’s the thing: my peers had already been subject to a rigorous selection process to get in (only about 10% of applicants were admitted). If you had put all applicants through the rigours of the coursework far more would have failed.
The really tragic part of this whole story is when you factor in the degrees of the consequences for failure. In elementary school the consequences for failure would be very low. Children who are older than their peers tend to outperform them anyway. In university, however, the consequences for failure are very high (thousands of dollars wasted on failed courses that need to be repeated).
The consequences for failure outside of school (real life as they call it) are even higher: unemployment, homelessness, incarceration, and even violence and death.
I remember there being someone held back a year. I think it happens.
No one fails. You can’t drive yourself to elementary school.
That’s good, just fuck 'em without disregard. Great model to follow.
oh the society is totally not turning to shit because of terminally online kids. No worries at all.
