‘Slut,’ he replied – nobody said anything, nobody laughed. ‘So I kept quiet for the rest of the day,’ Luise remembers.

The 17-year-old school student had come across a follower of the incels in her circle of friends – a subculture with largely misogynistic content that organises and spreads mainly in digital spaces.

Social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Reddit are ever-present in the lives of most young people. These digital worlds shape trends and opinions, create a sense of belonging and offer orientation. At the same time, they can also be a breeding ground for polarisation, dangerous ideologies and hostility. 

‘I can only remember fragments,’ says Luise. ‘It happened in 2021 – it was the first time we met in real life as friends of the same age.’ The teenagers had got to know each other online during the pandemic. ‘Over the year we’d spent time together almost every day.’ That day, they were thinking about what to do. After they had eaten together, he suggested going to play laser tag. ‘When I said I didn’t feel like laser tag, he called me a slut,’ says Luise.

‘That hurt,’ she says. ‘Not just being called that, but because it came from someone who was supposed to be a friend  – with such hatred – just because he didn’t like my answer.’ It didn’t stop there. He also started calling Luise a slut behind her back, even when she had had no contact with him for six months. 

Looking back, she remembers that he talked down to her the whole time. ‘I was different in his eyes because I was a woman,’ says the 17-year-old. ‘As soon as I let him know that I had a personality and was more than my gender, I was insulted, ignored and put down.’

For some years now, online platforms have seen more and more content that takes up radically conservative images of masculinity and misogynistic (from the Greek mísos, ‘hatred’, and gyné, ‘woman’) beliefs, reaching young men in particular faster and earlier than ever. Such digital spaces, as well as certain narratives and beliefs, are often grouped together under the umbrella term ‘manosphere’.

At a meeting to analyse the problem, the ‘Youth and Education (RAN Y&E)’ working group of the EU’s Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN) also made concrete recommendations for dealing with these issues more effectively. They are aimed both at youth workers and at politicians. The recommendations for youth work take up more space and explain in concrete terms how best to respond in particular situations.

Only four recommendations are addressed to policymakers, including enabling further training for people working in social services and youth work, and building digital skills and critical thinking into teacher training at an early stage.

This is where the political dimension comes in: in Germany’s 2025 federal budget, for example, funding for children and youth policy and for voluntary services was cut compared with 2024. The money earmarked for the voluntary social year (FSJ) and the Federal Volunteer Service fell significantly – programmes that often serve as a springboard into careers in social work and education.

For 2026, total spending by the education and family ministry was increased and the Child and Youth Plan was raised slightly, but organisations such as the German Federal Youth Council and the Federal Association for Cultural Youth Education complained that the increases were structurally insufficient to meet the real needs of the youth and social sectors in the long term. This particularly affects services that provide preventive, advisory and psychosocial support.

Why this kind of content resonates so strongly with today’s young generation is a complex question. Misogyny is not a new phenomenon, but social media gives it a reproduction machine that works faster, more intensively and more precisely than ever before.

Especially on platforms such as TikTok, which are dominated by short-form content, algorithms encourage the gradual normalisation of misogynistic narratives, according to a study from the UK. The researchers examined the For You page (the personalised home feed) of newly created accounts and found that the number of recommended videos with misogynistic content quadrupled within five days, without anyone actively searching for such content at the start.

Fred Hahndorf, an educator working with boys and men at the association mannigfaltig e.V., also sees social media as a kind of accelerant – even though many young people understand in theory how filter bubbles work. ‘It’s so tempting – you can take it all in quietly on your own and then decide what you share with others, without having to actually talk about things.’

This unchecked, constant consumption, often without any context, gives young people searching for an identity something false but instant to hold on to. It is ‘very stabilising’, he says, when an influencer says: ‘You’re feeling insecure right now, I’ll help you, we’ll find a way out, you have to be like me.’

These false promises are ultimately reinforced by the fact that the videos can be watched over and over again: ‘At some point you start believing things yourself.’ The sheer range of subcultures within the manosphere amplifies this effect even further, because young people can choose from all kinds of offers of orientation for every experience they have.

Fred sees a general sense of insecurity as the reason why ever younger men are susceptible to misogynistic ideologies. Although the media now present many alternative images of masculinity and ways of life, the pressure of male competition remains in everyday life: ‘That’s how masculinity works in the traditional sense – it’s always about coming out on top in the competition.

Just being content in yourself comes a long way second,’ says Fred. Many of the young men he talks to are shaped by a façade of masculine ideals, behind which real needs, experiences and insecurities are often hidden. In his work, Fred tries to look behind this façade by building relationships with young people that are based on empathy and understanding rather than authority.

In niches such as fitness and self-optimisation culture, and the pick-up artist scene, images of masculinity are often reproduced that centre on toughness, control and an unstoppable success mindset, while insecurity or vulnerability is seen as weakness. Especially at times when young men are searching for their identity, such thinking has a stabilising effect and promises orientation – while at the same time cementing dangerous images of themselves and of women.

Accounts from users of incel exit forums show how such narratives creep in step by step and have a lasting effect on how social relationships are perceived. One former incel reports: ‘At first we all think these ideas are just some internet nonsense made up by insecure kids. Then there’s the moment your brain starts to rot. You start seeing real interactions through the lens of these communities and start thinking they were right all along.’

Another looks back on how he got into the scene and the long-term consequences: ‘When I was 14, I went online looking for ways to get a girlfriend. I was shy, isolated and had no experience of relationships. In the PUA scene of the time, I came across content that seemed like secret knowledge: apparently scientific guides to how women “think”, how to approach them and what behaviour would bring success.’

He goes on: ‘In my insecurity, I quickly bought into these explanations – they gave me the feeling of gaining control and finally understanding how relationships were supposed to work. […] It was only two years ago that I realised I had never really seen women as people. Not consciously or with bad intent. But that’s how it was. They were targets to be reached and puzzles to be solved. It was all about performance and control, never about real human connection.’

The lack of awareness in the offline world feeds fears about the consequences in real life. Luise voices a very real fear shared by many young women: ‘I don’t know where it could end: whether later on they won’t know how to deal with their daughter and will offload responsibility onto their partners – or whether they’ll actively act out a more extreme hatred of women that goes beyond traditional gender roles.’

This fear is well founded. Online statements and ideologies don’t stay in the vacuum of the internet. International reports show that misogynistic narratives from the ‘manosphere’ have real effects and can translate into everyday verbal, psychological and physical violence against women.

They find their way into schools, youth centres and peer groups, as the European Commission report from 2023 mentioned above sums up: ‘In the classroom and in youth organisations, as well as online, debates about masculinity and gender are ubiquitous and often highly polarised, extending to concerns about radicalisation.’

In situations where male classmates would usually just get a friendly laugh from their friends, Luise and the other girls in her class get insulted. ‘I’m sitting in history, the topic is Afghanistan and the Cold War. I find it interesting, I often put my hand up and join in the discussion,’ she says.

When she puts her hand up again, she hears a whisper from the row opposite. ‘One of the boys says quietly: “What’s the slut got to say this time?” – and my teacher did nothing the whole time,’ says Luise. ‘It’s always women teachers who step in, never men.’ Whether you feel comfortable in class depends heavily on the teacher, she says.

Another story shows how commonplace sexist comments are at school: ‘During a discussion about grades, the teacher asks one of the girls in my class to step outside,’ Luise says. She is outside for a while, and after a bit the boys in the class start cracking jokes like: ‘Looks like she wants to improve her grade’ and ‘Is she putting out?’*

Some people laugh, including some of her male friends. In moments like these, she says, nobody says anything, so as not to make things even more uncomfortable for the girl concerned.

Luise says there is a clear desire among both students and teachers to address these issues. At the same time, she stresses that schools often fail to tackle the problem head-on. Instead, they point to neutrality and a fixed curriculum. There is a clear lack of education here, the 17-year-old stresses.

Social media plays a major part in spreading and normalising misogynistic content ever faster, unfiltered and without critical context. Young girls and women in particular feel the effects, both online and in the real world.

Current recommendations call not only for a clear legal framework against digital violence but, above all, for investment in education and prevention, greater awareness of the problem and ongoing monitoring of developments and trends.

A strong social infrastructure is crucial to give young people orientation early on and to prevent insecurities and online narratives from turning into real violence. At the same time, the operators of social media platforms also have a responsibility to regulate misogynistic content more rigorously and to counter escalation at an early stage. 

Experience from youth work clearly shows that long-term services, qualified professionals and adequate funding are urgently needed to implement the measures called for. Media literacy, critical thinking and a reflective approach to gender images must be specifically encouraged. 

Just as important are places where young people can discuss controversial topics openly without being stigmatised. At the same time, effective protection for those affected is particularly important. At school and beyond, they depend on clear responsibilities, well-informed teachers and reliable places to turn to.