Building positive spaces for young men online 

© Shutterstock/ Evgeny Atamanenko 

On a school bus, a 14-year-old watches a clip on his phone that feels like a pep talk. The doors hiss, his thumb flicks, and the next video promises ‘getting fit fast’, and another claims to decode ‘what girls really want’. Within minutes, his feed becomes a list of rules and advice about being a ‘real’ man.  

What he’s seeing is part of the manosphere, an organic network of online communities, channels, and forums that talk about what it means to be a man. It ranges from personality-driven influencer feeds, to anonymous forums, monetised coaching courses, and an endless stream of short-form clips. He did not go looking for it – it is engineered to find him.  

While these communities are diverse, many orbit a core claim that society is biased against men. A study across the United Kingdom, United States, and Australia found that 63 per cent of young men aged 16 to 25 regularly engage with men-and-masculinity influencers online.¹ What began as fringe discourse is now mainstream, shaping how millions of young men understand masculinity, power, and relationships. 

Multiple pathways link the manosphere to peer-to-peer sexual violence among young people. Repeated exposure to hostile, sexist, and male-dominance narratives normalises sexual coercion, which increases acceptance of aggressive behaviour and minimises the importance of consent.² A narrative that ‘the system is rigged against men’ fosters feelings of resentment and backlash. These, in turn, correlate with real-world violence.  

Worryingly, young men who regularly engage with manosphere content report worse mood and loneliness.³ Psychological distress is a well established risk factor for harming oneself and others, including coercion and gender-based violence. The manosphere offers boys simplistic fixes for loneliness and insecurity. It teaches men to hide their worries and never ask for help. At its core, the manosphere casts men as victims of social change, eroding respect, consent, and trust. The harm is real for women who face contempt and harassment, and it is real for boys who are promised strength, but handed isolation and fear.  

The good news, however, is that online feeds can be steered, conversations can interrupt these scripts, and the collective voices of survivors can fuel change. Three promising solutions are mapping a better path toward healthy masculinity – a flexible set of beliefs and behaviours that support men’s mental and physical health while promoting respect and equity. Read on to find out more about the work of our grantees.  

LinkUp Lab – turning scrolls into belonging  

LinkUp Lab starts from a simple idea: if algorithms can push boys toward isolation and misogyny, they can also guide them toward care, community, and healthier ways of being men. Co-founded by Equimundo and Futures Without Violence, two US-based not-for-profit organisations, the lab invites young men to meet on the platforms they already use and offers something better.  

“By working with game studios, moderators, and creators whom young men already trust, LinkUp Lab builds campaigns that seek to move young men away from toxic content and toward supportive communities, mental wellbeing resources, and opportunities for offline connections,” says Gary Barker, founder and CEO of Equimundo, which runs the LinkUp Lab project. “LinkUp Lab also produces tools for parents, educators, and community groups to help them strengthen real-world interactions among young men.”  

Young Men and Media Collective – storytellers rewriting the narrative  

The Young Men and Media Collective (YMMC) supports initiatives that produce and distribute relatable, emotionally honest digital content that seeks to engage young men and strengthen their mental health and wellbeing.  

Co-convened by Movember and Equimundo, YMMC funds creators, media organisations, and youth-led groups that aim to shift the dominant digital culture, replacing harmful myths about what makes a successful man with alternative narratives that feel not only acceptable, but aspirational.  

“Young men are not drawn to harmful content because they want to hurt others,” says Sarah Sternberg, director of Movember’s Global Reimagining Masculinities Initiative. “They are drawn to it because they are looking for guidance, certainty, and direction. If we want to shift the culture, we need to offer healthier stories that meet those same needs.”  

Everyone’s Invited – when shared stories reshape culture  

Everyone’s Invited began during the Covid-19 lockdown, when student Soma Sara posted on Instagram about the everyday sexism and harassment she had experienced at school – the comments, pressures, and assumptions that make sexual abuse among young people feel normal. Her posts exposed what many had long sensed but rarely named: a pervasive rape culture within schools, where harmful behaviour and attitudes were normalised, ignored, or minimised. She didn’t expect the response she received – within days, hundreds of students had sent in their own, similar stories. Soon it was thousands. ”  

Her posts revealed how widespread harmful behaviour and attitudes were – and how alone many students felt navigating it.  

What began as a safe space for anonymous testimony grew into a youth-led movement calling for empathy, accountability, and reform. The UK Department for Education launched a new helpline for students. Ofsted, the UK Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills, conducted a rapid review of sexual abuse in schools and colleges. In 2023, a parliamentary inquiry on attitudes toward women and girls credited Everyone’s Invited with surfacing thousands of testimonies and highlighting the toxic influence of social media on boys and young men.  

Today, Everyone’s Invited works with schools and education programmes at universities that have reached more than 82,000 students and almost 13,000 staff between 2022 and 2024. These sparked conversations about consent, respect, healthy relationships, and the online forces shaping young people’s beliefs.  

Together, these three organisations offer practical steps for building positive change. LinkUp Lab shows that the same algorithms that funnel boys into harm can guide them toward connection. The Young Men and Media Collective shows that when you invest in new storytellers, you can change what millions of boys see as possible. And Everyone’s Invited proves that when young people speak up, institutions listen, and culture can shift.  

Our grantees promote belonging for all and agree that if the problem has arrived by design, the solutions can too. 

Oak Foundation supports LinkUp Lab, Everyone’s Invited, and the Young Men and Media Collective through the Prevent Child Sexual Abuse Programme, which works towards a world where all children can thrive. Supporting survivors is a key part of our programme strategy, which can be found here. 

References: 
_{1: Fisher, C., Rice, S. & Seidler, Z. Young Men’s Health in a Digital World. Melbourne, Australia: Movember Institute of Men’s Health, 2025. Available at: cdn.sanity.io/files/d6x1mtv1/mo com-production/1054b901ac235e16f177a2bc a8ee760fb8e6a19.pdf (Accessed 23 February 2026). 
2: Salazar, M., Daoud, N., Edwards, C., et al. (2020). PositivMasc: masculinities and violence against women among young people. Identifying discourses and developing strategies for change — a mixed method study protocol. Available at: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/ PMC7520833/pdf/bmjopen-2020-038797.pdf (Accessed 23 February 2026). 
3: Fulu, E., Jewkes, R., Roselli, T., Garcia Moreno, C. & UN Multi country Cross sectional Study on Men and Violence research team. Prevalence of and factors associated with male perpetration of intimate partner violence: findings from the UN Multi country Cross sectional Study on Men and Violence in Asia and the Pacific. The Lancet Global Health, 1(4), 2013. Available at: doi.org/10.1016/S2214 109X(13)70074-3 (Accessed 23 February 2026).}