Teach Secondary 14.4

Since its release, the Netflix drama Adolescence has been watched by 66.3 million people and counting, including the Prime Minister. Inmuch of the coverage surrounding it, the show has been described as ‘shocking’ – and whilst it’s never easy to be confronted with the extreme consequences of online radicalisation, I doubt that anyone regularly working with young people will have been especially shocked at the show’s themes. Nor, indeed, anyone paying attention to discussions of online radicalisation and misogyny around two years ago, when female teachers were speaking to media outlets about male pupils telling them to ‘ Make me a sandwich ’, experiences of physical intimidation and feelings of being unsafe at work because of the so-called ‘Tate Effect’. Aweirdmood I first became awake to all this in 2014, when I was giving a talk on body image at a co-ed private school. The mood felt weird, but I couldn’t work out why, since all the pupils appeared to be listening respectfully. Then, about 10 minutes in, two of the boys stood up in unison, did a weird salute, turned on their heels and marched out of the room. The atmosphere immediately changed in their absence, and I realised that the hostility I’d felt radiating from the audience had been coming from them. I later discovered that they were big fans of Milo Yiannopoulos – described by Google’s AI overview as ‘ A far-right political commentator whose content is highly critical of Islam, feminism and social justice. ’ He was also a key figure behind ‘Gamergate’, which was a misogynistic online harassment campaignmotivated by a backlash against diversity in video games. These two pupils had messaged Yiannopoulos on Twitter, telling him that I – a reasonably high profile feminist and campaigner for equalities – was giving a talk at their school, and asking himwhat they should do. ‘ Boycott, ’ he replied. After that, I realised that there were a handful of boys inmost of the schools I visited who were devotees of Yiannapoulos’ content. I made it my mission to learnmore about this stuff, speaking to experts in online radicalisation from the Centre for Countering Digital Hate. I read Crash, Override by Zoe Quinn – a video game content creator whose life was almost destroyed by Gamergate – as well as MenWho Hate Woman , which documented an investigation into the so-called ‘Manosphere’ by feminist campaigner Laura Bates. Online echo chambers I came to believe that part of Yiannopoulos’ motivation had simply been attention – so when Andrew Tate first made his presence known in the schools I visited, I didn’t mention him by name. Especially since, around this time, there was a trend for pupils asking their teachers what they thought of him, covertly recording their responses and uploading them to TikTok, tagging Tate in the process (who apparently loved that he was being discussed). I did, however, begin dedicating a section of my talks on social media and mental health to online radicalisation, explaining how algorithms rewarded producers of the most shocking and outrageous content, since that’s what grabbed viewers’ attention. And how, if we consume enough of such content, we’ll soon find ourselves in an online echo chamber. All this happened before ElonMusk, and later Mark Zuckerberg (who own five of the 10 most used social media platforms between them) announced they would be dispensing with fact- checking and loosening their platforms’ rules around online hate speech. Soon after, the accounts of previously-banned hatemongers were duly reinstated. Right now, if you’re a teenage boy on social media, approximately 25% of the content in your feed is likely to be misogynistic in nature, simply because of your age and gender. If you engage with that content, that proportion will then increase to 75%. Against this backdrop, it’s therefore frustrating to hear both Keir Starmer state that Adolescence should be shown in all schools, and Gareth Southgate’s calls for male role models. The first suggestion won’t achieve anything (the programme isn’t for teenagers, it’s an introduction for adults), while the second is an important issue, but one we’ve been discussing for decades. If we really want to solve this problem, the government must find a way of reigning in the tech oligarchs whose platforms are poisoning children’s minds. Adolescence has got people talking about the harms of the online manosphere – but the issues it shines a light on have been with us for a long while, and there still seems to be some reluctance to do something about the root of the problem... Natasha Devon Natasha Devon is a writer, broadcaster and campaigner on issues relating to education and mental health; to find out more, visit natashadevon.com or follow @_NatashaDevon 15 teachwire.net/secondary S C H O O L O F T H O U G H T