Last week, I found that more U.S. teens suddenly began to support more rigid gender roles in recent years, even becoming more likely to not agree with men and women getting equal pay for equal work. I concluded that “the manosphere and tradwife culture have won.”
Not completely, of course, but it’s clear they’ve had some impact when the number of teen boys who don’t agree with equal pay for women goes from 12% to 22% (since 2017, with most of that change occurring 2022-2024). In my view, it’s not a coincidence that these attitudes shifted in the age of ubiquitous social media use and the concomitant rise of manosphere and tradwife influencers.
In discussion of the post on X, this comment popped up:
My initial thought was “OK, fine, it’s probably not just time spent – teens could still be influenced by manosphere and tradwife content in an hour or so a day.” An inverse relationship also seemed at least somewhat plausible as I’ve found (with 12th graders) that more liberal students spend more time on social media. Still, I thought, that might not be true for these particular views around gender … and then I realized: Why speculate when I can go look at the data? And the link between social media use and gender beliefs is an interesting research question.
I used 8th and 10th graders in Monitoring the Future 2018-2024, as the response choices changed for the social media questions in 2018. I looked at hours per day of social media use and the percentage who agreed or mostly agreed that “It is usually better for everyone involved if the man is the achiever outside the home and the woman takes care of the family.” The results are separated for boys vs. girls and controlled for grade level (8th vs. 10th), race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status (mother’s education). Total n was 24,971, so a nice sample size.
So, do heavy social media users have the most progressive views, as Dr. MacDonald posted on X?
