In sexual abuse therapy programs for boys, clinicians have noticed something consistent: kids idolize figures like Andrew Tate. Not because they share his politics, exactly, but because he offers a sentence therapy can't compete with. "If you become strong like me, no one will ever be able to hurt you again." That is a product pitch. It is also the best line in a very bad movie, and it is working.
Louis Theroux's Netflix documentary Inside the Manosphere, released this month, embeds with the most extreme versions of these creators and does the obvious thing: exposes them. Pediatrician Delaney Ruston, writing on March 17, called out how the influencers Theroux follows exploit boys' loneliness with promises of dominance and sexual conquest as stand-ins for self-worth. Ruston is right. The documentary is worth watching. But "exposing" the manosphere has been the cultural response for 4 years now, and the audience keeps growing.
What the Pipeline Actually Looks Like
Depression among boys has doubled, per psychologist Jean Twenge's research cited in 2026 commentary. Adverse childhood experiences correlate directly with susceptibility to extremist belief systems, including manosphere ideologies. A boy who has been abused, who feels powerless, who is spending 6 hours a day on screens, is not a mystery consumer. He is a target with a profile that manosphere creators understand better than most school counselors do.
The research from Marchment et al. (2025) puts it plainly: boys with ACEs often develop schemas where they see themselves as helpless and the world as dangerous. The manosphere offers a solution to that schema that requires no vulnerability: become the threat, not the victim. Therapy offers a different solution that requires sitting inside the wound before anything heals. One of these has a shorter wait time and no insurance co-pay.
I'll grant the counterargument its strongest form: most traumatized boys do not become extremists, and treating them as pre-radicalized stigmatizes a population that mostly needs support, not surveillance. That's fair. But it does not change the question of why the manosphere wins the first click.
The Front Door Is Broken
Tate faces sexual assault and trafficking charges. His audience knows this. The cognitive dissonance isn't a bug in his appeal; it functions more like proof of concept. If even a credibly accused predator can project invulnerability, the logic goes, then invulnerability must really be available. Therapy cannot offer that fantasy. It offers something harder and slower and better, but the marketing is terrible.
Mental health providers are not primarily responsible for recruiting vulnerable boys. But they should want to compete. The average wait time for a child psychiatrist in the US is over 6 weeks. The average wait time to watch a Tate video is 0 seconds. This is not a moderation problem or a content problem. It is an access and friction problem, and the mental health system owns part of it.
Ruston argues that parents who show up with curiosity and consistency matter more than most people realize. She's right, and that is also the most actionable takeaway from all of this. The documentary, the statistics, the academic research on ACEs: they point to the same conclusion. Boys are not failing to find the right content. They are failing to find adults who make vulnerability feel survivable before the manosphere makes it feel like weakness.
The Theroux film will generate think pieces for two weeks. That is not enough. The boys watching Tate clips tonight are not waiting for the discourse to catch up.
