Overview

• Common Sense Media surveyed 1,017 U.S. boys ages 11–17 in July 2025 and found 73% regularly encounter masculinity-focused posts, with 23% seeing a lot.
• Messages about making money (44%), building muscle (39%), and fighting or weapons (35%) were most common, and 91% reported body-image content.
• Sixty-eight percent said such posts appeared in their feeds without searching, and 25% saw them via friends’ shares.
• Boys with high exposure reported worse outcomes, including more loneliness (30% vs. 18%) and lower self-esteem (14% vs. 5%), plus greater reluctance to express emotions.
• Experts urge schools to teach how algorithms work, create safe spaces and mentorship, and parents to talk with boys and build offline supports, while researchers emphasize the results show associations rather than causation.