The Manosphere, the Feed, and the Cult in Your Pocket
Everything we said with a number in it, the study it came from, how many people they asked, and what it does and does not prove. Check us. That is the whole point.
Checked against the original reports on October 21, 2026. If a study gets updated or we got something wrong, the fix goes here first.
How to read a stat in 20 seconds
Who asked, and how many? A survey of 3,000 people beats a survey of 300. A survey of people who already follow the show beats nothing but not by much.
Correlation or cause? Most of these studies show two things happening together. Only an experiment, where researchers change one thing and watch what happens, can show one causes the other. We label every card.
Who paid for it? A men's health charity, a university, a women's safety charity and a tech watchdog all have a reason to care. That is not the same as a reason to lie, but you should know.
ExperimentSurveyPlatform testInvestigative reportCourt record
Not a corner of the internet. The mainstream of a generation.
63%
Survey
Nearly two-thirds of young men aged 16 to 25 regularly watch men-and-masculinity influencers.
Who asked
Movember Institute of Men's Health. Over 3,000 young men in the UK, US and Australia, 2025.
How to read it
Movember is the moustache charity. This is men's health researchers studying men, and the number is self-reported, meaning the guys said it themselves.
33.2% of American teen boys say they follow Andrew Tate at least a little.
Who asked
Researchers at UMass Amherst and the University of Michigan. 601 boys aged 13 to 17 across the US. Published October 2026 in the journal Psychology of Men & Masculinities.
How to read it
"At least a little" includes boys who watch out of curiosity or to make fun of him. When asked to name their favorite creators with no prompting, only about 9% named anyone from the manosphere. The authors say this cannot show cause.
In 2023, eight in ten British boys aged 16 to 17 had consumed Andrew Tate's content. Fewer had heard of the prime minister.
Who asked
HOPE not hate, a UK anti-extremism group, polling 16 to 24 year olds in early 2023. Their January 2024 follow-up of 2,040 young people found 95% had heard of Tate.
How to read it
An advocacy group, so read the framing with that in mind. The raw reach number has been repeated by UK Parliament and the BBC and nobody has disputed it.
More than half of dads aged 25 to 34 who know who Andrew Tate is have a positive view of him. So do 23% of boys aged 15 to 16.
Who asked
Internet Matters, a UK online safety nonprofit, surveying parents and children, September 2023.
How to read it
This is not just a kids problem. Young fathers liked him more than their sons did. One correction from us: the number is dads 25 to 34 who were familiar with Tate, not all young fathers.
Researchers made fake accounts and timed how long it took.
68%
Survey
Of boys who have seen masculinity content online, 68% say it started showing up in their feed without them searching for it.
Who asked
Common Sense Media, the kids' media nonprofit, in their report Boys in the Digital Wild on boys aged 11 to 17. Nearly three-quarters of boys regularly encounter this content.
How to read it
Self-reported. Boys may not remember what they searched. But it matches what the platform tests below found with no humans involved.
Every male test account was fed toxic content within 23 minutes and manosphere content within 26, including accounts that only watched gym and gaming clips.
Who asked
Dublin City University Anti-Bullying Centre. Ten blank smartphones, five on TikTok and five on YouTube Shorts, set up as 16 and 18 year old boys. April 2024.
How to read it
No people were surveyed. The researchers just watched what the algorithm served. After two to three hours of viewing, 76% of TikTok and 78% of YouTube Shorts recommendations were toxic. Ten phones is a small test, so treat the exact minutes as an example, not a law.
In October 2026, fake profiles built to look like Danish boys aged 16 to 19 with fitness and dating interests were shown manosphere content in an average of three minutes.
Who asked
Center for Digital Pædagogik with Analyse & Tal, a Danish research group, reported by DR, Denmark's public broadcaster.
How to read it
Fitness and dating are the on-ramp. One Danish researcher cautioned that seeing it is not the same as believing it. We agree, which is why the next section exists.
About 6% of what young men actually see on TikTok is harmful masculinity content, and it is mixed into gaming, fashion, sports and music rather than sitting in its own channel.
Who asked
Movember. 142 young men aged 16 to 25 in Australia, the UK and the US handed over their real TikTok histories. Researchers sorted about 2,000 videos. May 2026.
How to read it
Real phones, not fake accounts. 44% of videos had something to do with masculinity; only a slice was the harmful kind. The point is where the slice lives: inside the stuff boys actually like.
This is the section with the strongest evidence, including the one real experiment.
Cause
Experiment
Showing young men manfluencer content increased misogynistic attitudes, and the effect was strongest in men who felt rejected by women.
Who asked
Swedish researchers led by Emma Renström. A survey of 2,857 men, then two experiments with 597 men and 630 men aged 18 to 25. Published in the journal Sex Roles, 2024.
How to read it
The only study on this page that can say "causes." In the experiments, men were randomly shown either manfluencer posts or neutral posts, then measured. The survey part is correlation; the experiments are not.
Young people who had seen misogynist influencer content were five times more likely to think hurting someone physically is acceptable if you say sorry afterwards. Almost one in five, versus 4% of those who had not.
Who asked
Women's Aid, the UK domestic abuse charity, in their report Influencers and Attitudes, October 2023.
How to read it
A charity with a mission, so the framing is theirs. The underlying comparison, exposed versus not exposed, is a fair one. Correlation, not cause.
About 40% of Australian boys aged 13 to 17 agreed that women lie about domestic and sexual violence. 31.8% said equal opportunities for women have gone too far. 24.7% said feminism should be resisted with violence if necessary.
Who asked
University of Melbourne, Dr Sara Meger. 1,122 young people aged 13 to 17, 2,307 adults, and over 500 teachers. Funded by Australia's Office of National Intelligence. Published August 2026.
How to read it
The teenagers held harsher views than their grandparents' generation. Hostile attitudes toward women were the single strongest predictor of support for violent extremism in the whole study. Gen Z women were twice as likely as Millennial women to agree that marriage entitles a husband to sex.
If this were nature, nobody would need to sell it.
$184M
Investigative report
Andrew Tate's main platform, The Real World, charges $99 a month to about 155,000 students. That is roughly $184 million a year.
Who asked
The Grift Economy, a report by Reset Tech and Equimundo, two research nonprofits, August 2026.
How to read it
The report calls these membership schemes "fraud at scale": recycled content, affiliate pyramids, cancellation barriers, deceptive testimonials. Tate's company did not respond to the report. The revenue figure is the report's estimate from the price and member count.
The War Room, Tate's top tier, cost $8,000 a year. Leaked video from inside shows Tate teaching men how to control women by isolating them from their friends.
Who asked
Hacked War Room videos reported by the Daily Dot. A separate BBC investigation found War Room members used techniques to isolate women from their social lives and groom them into webcam work.
How to read it
Leaked material, so you are trusting the outlets that verified it. The BBC and the Daily Dot both published; Tate has denied wrongdoing. The method described is the textbook cult move: cut someone off from their people.
Say "charged," not "convicted." Nothing below has reached a verdict and every one of them denies it.
Andrew Tate
Arrested in Miami on July 18, 2026. A federal judge denied bail on September 9. Held while fighting extradition to the UK on charges that include rape, human trafficking, assault and possession of child pornography. A separate Romanian case charges him with trafficking, rape and forming a criminal gang to exploit women. He denies all of it. Court record
Calls himself the Tates' "third brother." YouTube terminated his channel in early 2024 after he used it to recruit boys as young as 12 into Tate's programs. Dined with Barron Trump at Mar-a-Lago and arranged a call between Barron and Tate. Investigative report
Says on camera in the Louis Theroux documentary that he is a "dictator" in his relationships. His podcast is where white nationalist Nick Fuentes most often reaches young men. Investigative report
Started as a MrBeast employee. Followed Tate, then Fuentes. In January 2026 he was filmed in a Miami nightclub with Tate, Fuentes and Gaines singing along to an antisemitic track. Banned from Australia for life in May 2026. Investigative report
The face of "looksmaxxing." Says he started injecting mail-order testosterone at 14. Promotes hitting your own face with a hammer to reshape the bone. Reportedly earns $100,000 a month streaming on Kick. Arrested for battery in Florida in March 2026. Charged in October 2026 with raping a 17-year-old. He denies it. Court record
Not on this list, and we want to be clear about why. No paid inner circle, no isolation teaching, no criminal charges. The October 2026 teen study found following Peterson predicted beliefs about male toughness but did not predict anti-women beliefs. He is the respectable cousin whose ideas the others borrow.
The paradox: it feels like winning and like nothing, at the same time.
43% / 27%
Survey
Young men who watch masculinity influencers say the content is motivating (43%). The same group reports feelings of worthlessness (27%) more often than young men who don't watch.
Who asked
Movember, the same 3,000+ survey as above, 2025. Watchers also reported less willingness to prioritize their mental health and more risk-taking, like steroid use and exercising while injured.
How to read it
Self-reported and correlational. Movember says itself that more research is needed. The fair sentence is "the men who watch this are more likely to report feeling worthless," not "it makes them worthless."
One in four teen boys reports feeling lonely. Among boys with high exposure to masculinity content, it rises to 30%, and they struggled more with self-esteem.
Who asked
Common Sense Media, boys aged 11 to 17.
How to read it
Correlation. Lonely boys may seek the content, the content may deepen the loneliness, or both. Either way, the content that promises brotherhood is not delivering it.
Stigma around asking for mental health help is particularly high among young men who engage with the manosphere.
Who asked
Konu and colleagues, 2024, summarized in an editorial in the journal Child and Adolescent Mental Health by researchers at the University of York, 2025.
How to read it
The influencers say they are helping men's mental health. Their audience is less likely to get real help. The York editorial also says plainly that long-term data on all of this is still limited.
A cult recruits at the moment you need answers and have nobody to ask.
3% to 15%
Survey
The share of American men with no close friends went from 3% in 1990 to 15% in 2021. Among men under 30, 28% reported no close social connections.
Who asked
Survey Center on American Life, American Perspectives Survey, May 2021, compared against a 1990 Gallup poll.
How to read it
Two different polls thirty years apart, so the comparison is not perfect, but the direction is not in dispute. Men with six or more close friends fell from 55% to 27% over the same period.
If we only showed you the scary numbers, we would be doing the thing we are criticizing.
13% to 32%
Survey
How many young men actually like Tate depends on who asks and when. 32% in 2023 (Savanta), 21% of men 16 to 29 in 2024 (King's College London), 13% of Gen Z men in 2025 with 71% negative (YouGov).
How to read it
Most young men do not like him, and the numbers may be falling as his legal problems grow. The honest range is somewhere between one in eight and one in three.
Almost every study on this page shows two things happening together, not one causing the other. The researchers say so themselves.
How to read it
The Swedish experiment is the exception. Everything else earns "linked to," not "causes." A boy who already holds these views may seek the content; the content may push him further; both are probably true.
The October 2026 teen study found boys who follow manosphere figures were no more depressed, hostile or isolated than other boys. Fans of Tate and Sneako in a 2025 US poll skewed higher income and more optimistic than their peers.
How to read it
The "sad lonely incel" stereotype does not fit most of the audience. The recruit usually thinks he is winning, and talking to him like a loser is the fastest way to lose him.
Men in Brazil with high levels of social support were 80% less likely to perpetrate tech-facilitated violence against women and girls.
Who asked
Equimundo, a nonprofit that studies men and masculinity. This research was described as forthcoming in March 2026 and we have not seen the full study.
How to read it
Treat this one as a preview, not a finding, until the study is published. The direction matches everything else on this page: connection is the protective factor.
