Lancet report urges public-health response to manosphere

A report in The Lancet urges governments and online platforms to treat the manosphere as a public-health concern, recommending coordinated action to reduce harms the authors associate with its commercial online ecosystem. The report describes the manosphere as a diffuse collection of online communities linked by beliefs about masculinity, misogyny and male victimisation. Its authors argue that content creators and hosting platforms can profit from boys’ and young men’s insecurities by promoting grievance and framing personal difficulties as the result of feminism rather than broader social conditions. The authors say the environment contributes to harms including violence against women and girls, mental-health problems and discouraging boys and men from seeking help. These are the report’s conclusions; the articles describing it do not present underlying study data or independent verification of those effects. The report draws comparisons with tobacco and ultraprocessed-food industries, arguing that commercial strategies can shift responsibility to individuals while products and paid content reinforce health-harming ideas about masculinity. It calls for regulation to focus on...