I posed as a 17-year-old boy on social media. It took 13 minutes to be shown the manosphere

September 3, 2026 — 7:30pm

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Thirteen minutes of scrolling on social media is all it took for my fake profile of 17-year-old Jaden Michael to be exposed to the manosphere content pipeline.

Toxic online content is increasingly linked to violent sexualised behaviour in young men. Last month, two separate groups of private school boys were charged over the alleged gang rape of girls. A 16-year-old Sydney girl died after a suspected act of strangulation during sex.

The government is considering banning porn which depicts choking alongside a crackdown on social media algorithms serving “rubbish” to children. On Wednesday, Teach Us Consent chief executive Chanel Contos used her National Press Club speech to call for better protection for boys from the manosphere, proposing opt-in algorithms and feeds limited exclusively to subscriber accounts.

Research from Dublin City University found it took just 23 minutes for a new male social media profile to be served misogynistic content. This masthead decided to replicate that 2024 experiment, spending an hour on TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts.

Using a factory-reset phone set-up with a US-based e-SIM (which doesn’t require ID), I set up an account for 17-year-old Jaden Michael. For the first 30 minutes, I was a passive user. After that, I began linking videos and following users who promoted........

© Brisbane Times