Understanding Male Anxiety – Physical Symptoms, Fear and the Manosphere

Jett Stone (00:00)

Welcome to No Man's an Island, a podcast powered by Men's Therapy Hub, which is a directory of male therapists for male clients. I'm Dr. Jet Stone, and my guest today is Dr. Krista Fisher, an Australian psychologist and researcher at the Movember Institute, whose work sits at the intersection of young men's mental health, masculinity, and their digital environments. What drew me to Krista was her research on male anxiety, which we'll touch upon.

But more recently, she's done something researchers in this space have not. She and her team went inside the Manosphere machine and worked to create a framework for Manosphere content so it can be better studied. They built dummy TikTok accounts and observed how the algorithm funnels young men from seemingly harmless lifestyle content towards something that's sometimes more suspect and even shady. The study is titled Development and Application of the Masculinity Content Classification Framework.

that's a lot of words there, but it's much more interesting than it sounds at first. Her research brings a level of academic rigor into the global conversation around what's happening with boys and men today, which is why I'm really excited she's here to talk about it. So welcome, Krista.

Krista (01:28)

Thank you. Great to be here. Thanks for the intro.

Jett Stone (01:31)

So you're a researcher in men's mental health. Let's just begin where we often begin in in this podcast. Like what what did you see early in your life or career that pulls you to studying men specifically?

Krista (01:46)

It's a question that I get asked quite a lot as a young woman in this phase too. And when I reflect on the early journey in my career, I I kind of had this question in my mind about whether a men's mental health researcher had to have a lived experience of being a man. I remember seeing a scholarship

opportunity open to do a PhD in men's mental health and caught myself with the

assumption that they would only be looking for male applicants to do that PhD. But I think in a lot of ways my experience being a young woman in this world and seeing the challenges that a lot of men in my life faced around their mental health, feeling the direct impacts of that, being a caregiver, wanting to do more and support

the men in my life who were struggling more really set me up to be well placed to bring in some ways a lens of objectivity to this issue but still carry such a deep connection to cause which now six years after beginning my PhD, I stand here more in love with the field and more dedicated to championing that cause than ever before. So I would say that it was

both a professional path and professional sorry and personal path of yeah, deep connection with the issue and seeing a real gap actually in our work and conversation and awareness around men's mental health challenges.

Jett Stone (03:31)

How did you find yourself pinpointing what you wanted to do within men's mental health? Because know you're I'm familiar with your studies on the male presentations of anxiety. Is that where you began or did you begin somewhere else and you eventually got into that?

Krista (03:49)

Yeah. So like a lot of kind of early research graduates at

In Australia, I'd just finished my psych undergrad and was balancing up do I do clinical work or do I go down a research path? And actually I had had a background in cancer experiences research, so not related to men's mental health at all. and Movember, the

institute that I work at now actually had a PhD scholarship open up and it was focused on men's mental health, young men's mental health specifically, but the actual area and topic for the PhD was quite broad, which most PhD projects are. And I spent a little bit of time immersing myself in the men's mental health scholarship, which

A lot of focus to that point had been more so on male anxiety, sorry, male depression and

Jett Stone (04:51)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Krista (04:54)

male suicidality, but there was this massive gap in our understanding of anxiety. And when I was looking at the prevalence rates, especially in Australia and other high-income Western countries, the US and UK are quite similar, anxiety disorders are actually they're

Primary mental health condition that we see in men. So that gap in understanding and research and clinical support, tailored to anxiety specifically, was my North Star really for the PhD, and what I felt like was really deserving of more attention.

Jett Stone (05:36)

W why do you think that it flies under the the radar? I mean, y the discussion around, you know, male depression and externalizing, you know and and suicidality, it's become I mean, it's such an important thing to research. But what makes male anxiety so under the radar or occult to use a more medical term? Like what what about it? Can you talk about the added the invisible

nature of it and why we've left it out of scholarship and

Krista (06:09)

Yeah. So anxiety typically there's a stereotype and stigma around it which can look quite different to depression or suicidality, where anxiety can often be dismissed as something that's not that serious, that is something everyone experiences. And I do think that stereotype and stigma around anxiety was the reason why it hadn't been given.

necessary focus and attention. the, you know, assumption that it wasn't as serious maybe didn't warrant that dedicated focus in the way that we see depression and a focus on self-harm and things like that. Because we know depression is very closely linked with suicidal ideation and suicidal behaviors. But interestingly anxiety is too and anxiety is

Jett Stone (07:04)

Yeah.

Krista (07:04)

actually a

really critical predictor of later mental health challenges across a life course, whether that be substance use, depression, suicidality as well. and for men in particular, anxiety is stereotyped as more of a feminized concern. it is often associated with

Hyperbolic worry or neuroticism and fear, which, when we see traditional messages and norms around masculinity, around the traits or behaviors that men should exhibit and express in Western cultures, an absence of fear is actually very closely tied with those idolized standards of masculinity. So that certainly

played into this dismissal of anxiety too.

Jett Stone (08:05)

Yes. When I saw that it was a unique predictor up outside of you know, isolated from depression, that was new to me. But I I think what you're getting at here is that you know, anxiety is so much about uncertainty about the future, you know, and ambiguity and and and fear about what could happen. And as men who were once boys,

You know, we were socialized into a culture of fearlessness. And as a clinician now, what I see oftentimes is the occult part of anxiety being that a guy will come to my practice, you know, with problems that have yet to be solved. Right. And then of course I'm going to be the one that's going to, you know, help them solve it. and it often shows up as I can't figure out why I am.

Krista (09:00)

Mm.

Jett Stone (09:01)

feeling so out of control and ungrounded in my life and unhappy. And, you know, you'll hear stress and unhappy or but you don't hear necessarily anxiety or more emotionally

Krista (09:14)

Yeah.

Jett Stone (09:15)

laten terms around it. They'll d talk about the physical symptoms, which we'll get into in a minute here, like, you know, I'm so tense or an old injury from soccer or football or rugby, you know, will have come up and you can sort of enter

The space of anxiety through those physical symptoms and through these quote unquote problems they have. So that just example of what I see in the clinical work, I think, lends itself to your male anxiety phenotype. Can you talk a bit more about what the phenotype looks like? I know it's like somewhat preliminary research, but I think you've started to nail down how male anxiety differs from female anxiety.

And I'd love to know more about that line of research.

Krista (10:05)

And there's some really powerful reflections, Jet, from your clinical work and things that you've seen. Because the important thing and the unique thing about anxiety is that it's both an emotion and it's a psychiatric disorder. So anxiety can present in some ways across a whole range of different life stresses or critical moments in a young guy or young people's lives. and

the the symptoms can be varied to the actual like emotional experiences of anxiety. So that's the really critical distinction here is at what point does anxiety and the experience of anxiety tip over into something that is more

considered of s meeting a certain psychiatric threshold. and so a lot of my work in my PhD, the early studies of my PhD looked at the gender differences that we see in anxiety symptoms and those experiences of anxiety. And one interesting and

unique finding from that was that men were often presenting with more intense physical symptoms. Whereas what we saw with women in other research that had been done to that point was a hyper fixation on the social stresses or social consequences. So perceived judgment from other people or worry about how others might

consider or interpret them and their behaviors and who they are as a person. And the physical experience of anxiety is important for a number of reasons. Namely because when we look at the

Classical diagnostic criteria around an anxiety disorder. Physical symptoms is a part of that, but it may not be given as much weight as we would need it to if we go by what we see in the literature around and in research around how men typically are experiencing anxiety and presenting to health services the symptoms that they're presenting with.

clinicians may not be as aware of what these male type experiences of anxiety or a male phenotype of anxiety look like, we can see those experiences and symptoms of anxiety actually go under identified or under-detected in health services. And the you know downstream implications of that is also that there's a real

lack of understanding and awareness amongst men that what they're experiencing and the physical symptoms that are coming up for them is actually

maybe linked to anxiety and anxiety disorders. So there's a real lack of understanding that the symptoms and things that are coming up for them in their life, like some of the things you talked about, stress or what may be considered a long term injury, is actually more so reflective of anxiety disorder or yeah, subthreshold anxiety disorder.

Jett Stone (13:39)

And there have yet to be instruments to measure that male phenotype, at least from my search, right? I cause the male depression in inventory has actually been helpful to me. I I've actually I give that and the PHQ nine. So this is all technical speak for. There's like a general depression scale that we can give to clients, and then there's a more pointed male depression scale, which looks at the unique phenotype of.

Male depression, which can be more externalizing and involve substance use. And I think that that would be very helpful. I don't know if you're working on that or if you're thinking about it, but it sure is. it it sure would be helpful. And I think a l a lot about this too in the fatherhood space. As a dad, you know, there's all there's so much chatter online now around postpartum depression and it being applied to fathers. And and I think that a lot of the

Anxiety around parenthood comes online in dads in a way that it can go undetected. It

Krista (14:45)

Mm.

Jett Stone (14:46)

can live beneath the surface. And so I think this work on anxiety has like applications not just for young men who may not even have the language for it, but also for you know life stages where where there's where there's changes. And you know, once you slap a label on it, not even necessarily a diagnostic label, even if it's subthreshold, you know.

anxiety disorder. It is like you could see the face of a guy who go from which I'll use your language, resisting, resisting the idea of there being a problem, to reckoning with it, to

Krista (15:19)

Mm.

Jett Stone (15:20)

saying, you know what, okay, maybe there is actually a comfort in knowing that I have this thing anxiety and I have worry. And it's not just problems that are unsolvable that I could like muscle my way through. And

Krista (15:33)

Yeah, okay.

Jett Stone (15:33)

so that's the other thing that you did. You I guess you've been on this

trying to systematize the language we use in in the scholarship of understanding men's mental health. And so you talked about the triple R model, which also caught my attention. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because I just referenced it in what I said, the resisting, reckoning, responding. Tell me about that.

Krista (15:54)

Yeah, absolutely.

And, you know, part of I guess your clinic like clinical role sometimes is not just to solve problems that might relate to anxiety or stress for clients. It's actually about teaching them to sit with that

uncertainty and that anxiety and often it's the acceptance that is actually the critical lever of change, not necessarily the alleviation of anxiety in and of itself. and that was a key finding that did come out of the triple R model and research that you're referring to. So

What I did for that research was actually speak to 30 young guys, 15 to 25, who had had experiences of anxiety or a diagnosis of anxiety to understand from their perspectives what their experiences of anxiety looked like, how

their symptoms first manifested or what the onset of those symptoms kind of looked like and what the longer term journeys of help seeking, if they had sought help,

looked like for them as well. So from those interviews and sitting down and listening to their experiences, I was able to develop a model, the triple R model, that showed those phases from anxiety initially presenting, which was a resisting phase of anxiety where often physical symptoms or more you know

cognitive experiences of anxiety, so rumination, hyperfixation on on certain things presented for young men, but that resisting process looked like them noticing it but dismissing it in some ways.

Jett Stone (17:52)

Mm-hmm.

Krista (17:53)

and not really associating it ever with anxiety. That could be because they didn't necessarily think that those physical symptoms were indicative of anxiety, or it could be that there was this sense of denial and dismissal that, hang on, other men in my life don't seem to be struggling with the same things that I am. So is it a sense of inadequacy or failure

Jett Stone (18:18)

Mm-hmm.

Krista (18:19)

in me that I'm navigating and and dealing with

These symptoms or stresses. But ultimately, what we saw for young men and for the participants that I spoke to was that those symptoms, physical or otherwise, started to present in more and more contexts. So rather than it just maybe coming up for them when they were talking in front of a class or, you know, before a sporting game on the weekend, they started to notice those.

Same things pop up when they were going to meet their friends, you know, on a Friday night where previously that hadn't caused them any stress or concern or worry. Or it might be that when they were just sitting at home on a typical Wednesday night, they started to notice those same things come up for them. And that propelled what

I defined as a reckoning phase. So that was where young men themselves started to put language and gain literacy or understanding that

Linked those symptoms with the experience of anxiety. So either they accessed information that helped them understand their experiences, or just started to introspectively and retrospectively make sense of their experiences. So like, hang on, something's not right, or this isn't normal, or I'm starting to avoid things that I once used to enjoy. And for some young

Young

men, that actually led to a phase of responding to anxiety. So whether that was seeking help through formal mental health services like a psychologist or a counselor or informal help services like parents or friends or a coach or a romantic partner, those informal sources of support were critical for young men as well because that was where we started to see a

a change in their or reconfiguration of their masculine identities as well, as not necessarily seeing their masculinity or men's success as being totally synonymous with anxiety or worry or stress. They started to make sense or in some ways

reorient their anxiety and sitting with their anxiety to be a source of power or a source of courage, to think, hang on, actually it's not an absence of anxiety or an absence of fear. It's being able to sit with that anxiety and fear and do the thing anyway, or to actually put my hand

Jett Stone (21:14)

Mm-hmm.

Krista (21:15)

up and say, hey, I'm struggling, I'm not, I'm not faring that well.

Jett Stone (21:21)

Yes. You know as you know, I'm not I'm no longer, I guess you consider a a a young man. I I once was in a in a in a different generation. Just to go back to the resisting

Krista (21:34)

Yeah.

Jett Stone (21:35)

reckoning and and responding categories, like the resisting part of it is what makes identifying it difficult for a clinician or or even a friend or family member. And that the sense of

I am uncertain, insecure, and don't

Krista (21:54)

Mm-hmm.

Jett Stone (21:55)

know where I'm going in life. I don't feel like I belong. I don't have a sense of coherence around who I should be as a man or what I should do for my life's work. to then apply, okay, you have anxiety or even an anxiety disorder is dissonance. Like it's like that is not who I see myself as. And

Krista (22:15)

That's

Jett Stone (22:16)

if I'm getting giving put that label, then I must be s failing.

You know, I I must be not meeting the masculine expectations, or maybe you wouldn't use that language. I'm not meeting the expectations of who I want to be as like a powerful person with agency. Anxiety

Krista (22:31)

Mm-hmm.

Jett Stone (22:32)

takes away my sense of agency.

Krista (22:34)

Mm.

Jett Stone (22:35)

sort of like that was true of me, right? And

Krista (22:37)

Yeah.

Jett Stone (22:38)

true of so many young men. Like

Krista (22:40)

Yeah.

Jett Stone (22:40)

before I trained to be psychologist, I didn't necessarily have the language that what I was feeling was

anxiety and the stream of thoughts that I was having was worry about my future. Right. And it sounds so simple now when you're like immersed in the space. But for that young man who's not like brought up and swimming in the language of therapy speak and it's it's actually quite a revelation, you know, which is the reckoning part comes in where you start to accept, you start that process.

And then the responding, I think, is very interesting. And then maybe it's a good segue to your to the to the manosphere, because ideally you were saying that the informal supports and accessing information becomes part of the process of working through anxiety, right? Like we're all gonna have anxiety if it's how we respond to it, right? It's almost like not if it's going to be there, but it's how we respond to it in a gracious or or mindful or compassionate way. And so what ends up happening is

young men do turn to informal supports. And here we are online with them. And are they responding to it in the way that you were talking about it, in a supportive, normalizing way? No, anxiety gets capitalized on quite literally.

Krista (24:02)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jett Stone (24:03)

So that's I think a good segue because what you were doing in your early research feeds into the manosphere.

machine because these are anxious, insecure young men who are understandable. I was one of them who are trying to figure out who they're going to be and what are they who do they meet? The seemingly

Krista (24:21)

Mm-hmm.

Jett Stone (24:22)

most secure, non-anxious man in the world who in my opinion is deeply anxious and and and just that that's so untapped to untapped into. So tell me, I not very long winded, but tell me about this study and its origin. And I think it's a good segue from where we were the the TikTok study that

Has just been released.

Krista (24:44)

Yeah, I think there's some really powerful reflections because the context in which young men are socialized sets the course for those three stages of what that resisting looks like, what the reckoning looks like, and what the responding looks like. And young men now are growing up and being socialized in a world of social media. you know, I

still had social media when I was going through high school, but it looks so different to what it does now. When social media originated, it was very much as a means to connect with people you already know, but in an online environment. Now the connecting with people we know is almost

absent really from our social media experiences. It's very algorithmic driven. It's all about short form content and visual content.

And in some ways, when we think about the you know resisting, reckoning and responding parts of anxiety for young men, social media changes all of that in both positive and potentially more negative ways. So young men are coming through their early adolescence and adulthood now with language and awareness around men's mental health in a way that we have never seen for previous generations.

Jett Stone (26:08)

Mm-hmm.

Krista (26:09)

So it may be

easier to tie certain experiences or symptoms to anxiety disorders because they're gr yeah growing up with that language, they're growing up with sports athletes that they look up to openly talking about their mental health struggles, openly taking time off and challenging that that stigma.

And it also opens up pathways for informal support and connection. Reddit and Discord groups are now a primary space where young men are finding community, finding belonging when they are struggling or when they are navigating certain parts and challenges of early adulthood, like maybe navigating their sexual identity or going through a breakup or

Even just thinking about who do I want to be? what do I want to do when I grow up? What kind of man do I want to show up as in a relationship and in a family? but what

That is also exposing them to is a raft of bad actors, either influencers who are taking advantage consciously or sometimes unconsciously, maybe, of their young male viewers, and weaponizing those insecurities and vulnerabilities that we know are such a critical part of young men's well-being, young men's development of their own masculine identity, and young men's formation of relationships.

both with their male friends or you know, a potential romantic partner.

Jett Stone (27:54)

Tell tell our listeners how what you did in order to step into the manisphere, right? Because there's a lot of it's easy to, you know, offer your two cents from afar or, you know, try to study it from afar. It's very difficult to to do that. But I think the gift of social media, among its many problems, is that it actually can be you could do like you can quantify it in in some way or systematize it.

Rather. and you did that. So what what lengths? Talk about the lengths, because it was there's a substack piece that people should should look at where you wrote your a personal account of doing this research. So talk about from a personal level what you did to I want to say infiltrate makes you seem like a

Krista (28:39)

Mm.

Jett Stone (28:40)

like a drug enforcement agent, you know, in in the in the US who's like kicking through doors.

Krista (28:42)

Yeah. Undercover and also yeah.

Jett Stone (28:46)

but you know, you weren't wearing a fake mustache and like, you know, walking into places. But you you had to go to some lengths maybe that it

is different than a typical researcher would have have to do. So tell us about that.

Krista (28:59)

I maybe wearing a digital fake mustache in some ways. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah.

Jett Stone (29:01)

Yes. 'Cause it's November, right.

Krista (29:06)

Yes, exactly. The mustache has taken on a whole new yeah, a whole new persona. but when I so when I finished my PhD and I had wrapped up some of those studies that was looking at male anxiety, there was a position to come into November and really explore

the manosphere and social media and the influence of those digital worlds on young men's mental health. And that was, you know, at the end of twenty twenty three or twenty twenty four. So the manosphere was something that was being talked about, but it

wasn't by any means as popular or mainstream and I guess recognized in public discourse as it is now. And so when you know we I started this research and my team started this research, it was very much from the perspective of wanting to understand what those fringe

online communities look like that was historically defined as the manosphere. So some of your listeners may have heard of it, but there are groups like incels, men going their own way, looks maxing communities where

Typically men largely, there were some women, but majority men create accounts or join online forums and Discord groups to kind of contribute to these communities. So it was almost a a self-driven membership-based engagement with the Manosphere.

But since starting that research and over the last three years almost, we started to really notice what has been referred to as a mainstreaming of the Manosphere. So rather

Jett Stone (31:14)

Mm-hmm.

Krista (31:14)

than it just being something that was located to fringe online groups, ideologies, content, the influencers who are creating the content are now being engaged with

young men and being pushed to young men on mainstream social media platforms like TikTok, YouTube, Instagram. So the manosphere today looks completely different to what we had you know, once defined the manosphere as five, ten years ago.

Jett Stone (31:50)

Yeah.

Krista (31:51)

and the the problem with that and our current like scholarship base and foundation

foundational understanding of the manosphere was that it doesn't accurately represent the way that the manosphere is showing up in young men's digital worlds today. So the research that I've been pioneering and leading lately has been to actually understand the mainstream manosphere to date, how young men are engaging with it, how the algorithm is

feeding and fueling this rise of manosphere ideologies and manosphere content and more, you know, critically in some ways too, to answer this unaddressed question, which is how is this content and this masculinity digital ecosystem now, which is social media content, but it's also the podcasters, it's AI, it's you know

still Discord and and Reddit type text-based discussions and dialogues, how is that shaping young men's health, well-being and relationships to date? So the you know undercover type study and and exploration that we were referring to was myself and my research team creating some dummy accounts to understand

How quickly some of that masculinity content is being fed to young men. How closely some of that mainstream content now looks and resembles the communities that were synonymous with the Manosphere five years ago, and how much has changed. And from doing that and setting up those dummy accounts and spending hours and hours.

On TikTok, following certain hashtags, following certain influences, we realize that there was this real gap in an operationalized definition of the mainstream

Jett Stone (34:00)

Mm-hmm.

Krista (34:00)

manosphere on TikTok that shows not just a binarization in some ways of a video either being Manosphere content or not, but actually maps the full spectrum of Manosphere ideologies and

health harm behaviours for men themselves, but also for other people like women and like other minority groups that do often get get lumped in and victimised by the manosphere.

Jett Stone (34:35)

Yes, and you had to spend a lot of time in these now more mainstream. So you're saying it's gone from this fringe, these kind of like, you know, Discord spaces to what's on Instagram or n in this case a study TikTok, which is like a obviously a massive social media platform. And what I found interesting was that it starts with what you're calling cultural touch points, right? Which I'll get in my feed.

you know, you know, creatine supplements supplements, like or a how to, you know, fix work with your back pain or exercise techniques or fashion, pop culture stuff, grooming, and it's an entryway. And that's just for listeners, you described it as an inverted iceberg.

Krista (35:27)

Mm-hmm.

Jett Stone (35:28)

And at the top of it is stuff that's very mainstream that anyone

could get. And then it's like if you wait long enough, or if you let the algorithm do its work, you come into a different aspect. You go down into the iceberg a little bit deeper into like masculine status and then

Krista (35:51)

Hm.

Jett Stone (35:51)

degrading health, which is where a small percentage but high impact in terms

Krista (35:59)

Mm-hmm.

Jett Stone (35:59)

of its, you know,

driving risk-taking and bad health behaviors and misogyny and and mogging, right? I'll use these terms, like you know, hammering your face. Like it can get really, really problematic

Krista (36:14)

Mm-hmm.

Jett Stone (36:15)

and dangerous. So talk about that inverse iceberg because it does systematize it and hopefully it can be used by other research to understand that it's not just you show up and there's a bunch of bad actors online and you can watch them do their

Like misogynistic dance. No, it's like it starts it's a slow boil.

Krista (36:36)

That's exactly it. Yeah, it's a pipeline, as we call it. and to go back a little bit. So when we were creating these dummy accounts, myself and my research team and following other researchers who had shown how quickly these dummy accounts

Created as a 16-year-old young guy in the US, or something like that, how quickly those accounts were fed incel-related content, suicide and self-harm content, substance use-related content was really informative and shocking and alarming in a number of ways, but often opened itself up to criticism by the

tech companies themselves like TikTok to say, well, that is not reflective of how actual young men use and experience our platforms and products. So noticing that that critique and I guess gap in the field and our understanding of the manosphere, what we did was look at the actual TikTok histories and

data usage from young men's TikTok

accounts themselves. So we recruited 142 young men and they shared with us all the videos that they'd watched on TikTok in the last month. And with those data files and we you know work working our way through trying to code those videos we then came up against that challenge of how we actually code these videos when there wasn't a clear definition or criteria to go by

That

kind of allowed us to map what is manosphere content and what's not. So what we did was we watched a subset of those participant videos and developed that masculinity content classification framework, which is also more easily understood as the inverted iceberg you referred to. And so what we noticed there was that yeah there there was the largest bucket of content in some ways that young men were

engaging with on TikTok sat in that cultural touch points thematic area. So that was videos directly targeted to a young male audience about things that we know engage them in pop culture. So it's sports, it's dating, it's men's fashion, it's men's grooming, gaming as well was a big part of that. and the

The second biggest trench of content that young men were engaging with was that masculine status content. So this was where we started to see messages come through that related those cultural touch points to masculine ideologies or

Behaviors, traits, values that men should care about, should live up to in some ways. So that there were messages and ideas about what men should be or the identities that they should adopt. and the last smallest but in no way you know

un unconcerning bucket of content was the degrading health content. So all of those videos, whilst they made up less than one percent of the participants' TikTok data,

All of those violated TikTok's community guidelines. So the fact that they were still there on their platform, they had still been engaged with by not just our participants, but millions of young men who had either liked, commented, or shared those videos.

s you know, says to to us that there is still a lot of work that we need to do to actually upskill the moderation processes on TikTok and ensure that we're keeping these platforms safe for for young men showing up and young people showing up on social media, for anyone showing up on social media.

Jett Stone (41:06)

Mm-hmm.

Krista (41:06)

But that degrading health content was where we saw explicit health harms

depicted. So it was videos that showed violence towards others or it showed self-harm, promoted messages about hopelessness and suicidality.

there was substance use coming through quite prominently in some of these videos, peptides and self inject injections of certain compounds and unregulated substances and gambling, high risk financial behaviours as well.

Jett Stone (41:48)

Ca can you give me a sense of the the time frame of like, you know, you you start, let's say, looking at I think there's an example in the study of like haircuts, right? Like boys like hanging out and like rating each other's haircuts playfully or something, I I think is what it was. Okay. Like, what is the timeline? How long before you get to degrading health, right? Which is the most even though it's one-ish percent.

The content, it could be the main thing that someone remembers or takes away. Or, you know, it occupies some place in their mental real estate of what it means to be, you know, a viable person on the dating market, right? Like that I have to do this in some way, or he's doing that. So I might have to think about like I know it's only 1%, but how give me the time frame of it? Like because I think you you did discuss that a bit.

Krista (42:45)

Yeah, yeah. There was a team at Dublin City University. They've released a report called Recommending Toxicity. That's a great in terms of the the timeline and how quickly some of this content is fed to to young men from the point that their account is created. I would recommend some listeners who are interested in that to go and read this report because what they showed is within thirty minutes of creating an account, a TikTok account,

Jett Stone (43:14)

Mm-hmm.

Krista (43:15)

identifying as a young man under 18, suicide, self-harm, incel, drug-related content was showing up on these dummy accounts. So that says and speaks to how quickly the algorithm can feed this degrading health content content to young men. So whilst we didn't

capture the timeline in our study, there is other research, adjacent research that we can use to understand how quickly that takes place. Anecdotally from all the preliminary research that we did, I I could can say and speak to how quickly some of that degrading health content was fed to our research teams, dummy accounts as well. And

Often the way that the algorithm functions, that amplification of intensity of this content can come so quickly and speaks to the importance of kind of understanding the role that those cut cultural touch points play in this masculinity digital ecosystem. Because when you look at

Category like diet and exercise, for example. The first video, a cultural touch points video, a clear example might be a gym content creator showing their or talking to their audience about the correct way to do a

Light pull down at the gym, for example. And then the next video that they might be fed could be an influencer talking about how gym for him is not just about getting strong and looking fit. It's about showing every day that you have the discipline to prioritize yourself. And if you can prioritize

Jett Stone (45:10)

Mm-hmm.

Krista (45:10)

yourself, that means that you can be a good provider and that your girlfriend or your wife.

Will take you seriously. And that is the expectation that successful men, men or men who want to succeed in this day and age, that is the type of routine and behaviors and mentality that they need to be adopting. Then an example of that degrading health content might be the same, you know, male physique typically, so a shirtless guy with, you know, ripped

abs and biceps might be encouraging their audiences to use a certain type of peptide that they have just started

Jett Stone (45:54)

Mm-hmm.

Krista (45:55)

using and that

that's the quickest way to feel good about yourself, to level up and ascend as a male, and to be able to get the girl that you're after. So you can see how quickly that intensification can happen because the cultural touch points set the scene and create the cultural waters almost in some ways for the more loaded messages about masculinity or the more

risky health behaviors seem palatable

Jett Stone (46:29)

Mm-hmm.

Krista (46:30)

and become palatable to young men watching this content.

Jett Stone (46:35)

You know, it's as a man it's the it's

it can get depressing, you know, to to see what's happening to younger generations of men and and what they're like, you know I occupied spaces where I you know we would locker rooms, barbershops, lunchroom tables, you know, walking to school together. Th there were these offline

Krista (47:02)

Mm.

Jett Stone (47:03)

ways. that, you know, you you're you're it's it's banter

And then something gets slipped in. Most adult men have an experience of starting at a cultural touch point, shooting the shit, as we would say, or in in the in the US, you know, then getting into masculine status stuff, which can be harmful or can be harmless, right? It's it's it's sometimes it's playful and it stays in that space. And then we all know that it can go into the degrading theme.

Bucket that you've described. And what it's been industrialized now, that experience

Krista (47:45)

Mm-hmm.

Jett Stone (47:45)

that I may have had as a young man in these offline spaces. But is it just the same thing now in an online? Like what it's I know it's there's algorithms in it, it is industrialized, but like how is it more problematic? What makes this new era

Different than what maybe I had in let's say the nineties and two thousands. Like, what is worrisome about the infrastructure that we build? And you know, we're perpetually online, young men are perpetually online. And like, so is it just more time spent being inculcated into this whole nanosphere that's that's different? Do you get where I'm going with that question? Like

Krista (48:27)

Mm. Absolutely.

Yeah. And those, you know, messages about masculinity, what's normalized for men's behaviors and the roles and things that men should be adopting in society, that has been around for millennia in some ways, or we have seen throughout you know, historic context those

Same power structures or same gendered expectations play out. But what is so different in this social media context is not only the ways that men and young men are exposed to content, these ideas, these unrealistic standards in some ways, from not just

their dads or coaches or friends at school, but it's people all around the world. So it's the accessibility that is part of this, but it's also the metrics that sit alongside those messages or those norms and some of this content. So, you know, some of these videos they get millions and millions of likes and hundreds of thousands of comments. So

in some ways you have like a sense check for the norm, how many you know people seemingly agree with this or not. And the algorithm also ranks those comments. So the top comments that you would see if you were watching the same video as what I'm watching would be totally different. So it's this perception that gets swayed as well. And

Without the counter-perspectives, without having interactions with other people who might have different political leanings to you, who might have different gender identity to you, who might have a different experience you know, existing in this world. without that, we get so centralized and dogmatic in some ways in

the content that we're seeing in our point of view of the world without, yeah, that that counter perspective and exposure to to the other side of this. and yes, in some ways these insecurities and vulnerabilities and challenges that you know we've faced as a population for a long time has been industrialized in

the world of social media and digital technologies, it's also been commercialised. So their influences and the social media context now is selling products, be it protein, creatine, through to you know, peptides or other substances, to young people online.

For the insecurities and very real mental health challenges or stresses that they're facing, rather than teaching them the skills to sit with that uncertainty or to know that many other people, just like them, are navigating the same challenges or same stresses. So we're not actually building that sense of.

Capacity, that sense of personal acceptance or personal compassion that is going to exist outside of social media and maintain across the life course for young people that allows them to sit with anxiety, body image concerns, financial stresses, relationship stresses in the way that they're instead being sold.

you know, short term relief or short term solves.

Jett Stone (52:50)

Yeah, or the relentless mental fortitude that sort of fix fits with their model of, you know, strong strong men masculinity, right? Which which I certainly have seen. That that one is very interesting to me. I don't know if we'll have time to like double click on the what the amount of relentless mental fortitude content you get. If you're just interested in exercise, like you're gonna get hit with David Goggins and others, you know, like who

I think that language really captures it. I'm actually interested, you know, as as we start to wind down this conversation, for you, like you talked about having like some objectivity being socialized as a girl and becoming a woman. Like, what is it like for you to step in with some distance, with that distance, right?

I I'm just wondering like how it hit you when you're sitting in front of these videos encoding them and does it make you cynical? I I mean does it make you h somehow hopeful? Just like what is the experience of delving into this online world?

Krista (54:06)

Hm.

After the TikTok studies come out and doing some you know, media and and interviews and things about the research, I've actually really had quite a lot of time to sit and reflect on the last two years and ask myself some, you know, very like honest questions about how much doing this research has impacted me. And I've

I I think the best way to describe it would be that I've come away with a more you know certain perspective that two things can be true at once. And in some ways, from spending the amount of time that I did in some of these you know, known manosphere communities and seeing the

you know, deep sense of pain and nihilism and you know worthlessness and things that young men were sharing online. I have such a deep sense of empathy and a deep sense and belief that

Addressing some of those concerns is ultimately going to have significant ripple effects, not just for young men themselves, but for everyone else that interacts with young men who are engaging in these communities. So women, people from different gender identities and all types of ethnic backgrounds. And

You know, I I I was only able to get that exposure from spending the time that I did actually understanding this content and really walking in the digital shoes of of young men. and also seeing the way that other people kind of responded to them when they shared those vulnerabilities, when they shared those insecurities too, that there was this real sense of

Either piling on and saying, you know, yeah, no one will ever love you, or, you know, yes, I would rate your physical appearance as a two out of ten. and yes, you should go and kill yourself. that that really troubled me, and that still really troubles me. and that fuels my fire to do more about this. But the other truth of this is that men who cause harm online.

need to be held accountable. And part of that is educating and improving young men's awareness of the consequences of the content that they create, of the things that they might say, of the comment that they might leave on a video that they think no one else will see. And you know, another part of this is the accountability that tech platforms need to have.

for the environments and the products that they're creating and ensuring that users that show up on these platforms are safe. Not just women and girls, but boys and men as well. and I'm, you know, very committed to holding these tech platforms accountable to the level that we're able to as academics and you know, as Yeah, not for profit spaces.

Jett Stone (57:50)

Good luck with that.

Krista (57:54)

Right. But it's also about educating young men about the power that they actually have over their algorithm too. And that yes, these algorithms are powerful and yes, these tech companies are powerful, but that they are in control of their digital

Jett Stone (58:10)

Yes.

Krista (58:10)

worlds. and we need to ensure that they know how to take control of that. That there is things like resetting your algorithm or unfollowing certain profiles or

you know, wanting to opt out of certain hashtags and things like that. they are levers at their disposal.

Jett Stone (58:29)

Yes. Part of what you're saying is accountability, compassionate accountability is the language I think that you use. But also being more critical consumers of this content that we know is going to come into their feet. We c it's like I I I've sort of given up. I mean, you're closer to this Movember, you know, maybe talking to tech companies, but I don't have faith that, you know, meta and TikTok are gonna come to the table because it's such a capitalist

These are such capitalist organizations. But being a critical consumer, you know, I was I was I got a chance to talk to some undergraduate students recently at at the at a university and just talked to them about many young men's mental health and masculinity. And I was showing them some of the content that is on in the manosphere. And one of the things that I found some traction with was having them be the psychologist, right?

Krista (59:29)

Mm.

Jett Stone (59:29)

So

it's like saying, not saying this is wrong or this is right, even though I feel strongly about that. It's saying like, how would you unpack this? What do you think this person what do you think they're longing for when they put this content out? What do you think the person is trying to get at a deeper level from watching this, you know, looks maxing content? Like what do you think is happening? Like make them do make them be the psychologist, the therapist, like to to

Help figure out, okay, there's a message you're getting, but what's the message they're actually sending? And I found that actually, like that's not talking down to them, it's actually helping them do some of that work themselves. And I and I think that I'm just sharing that with you because as practitioners and researchers, I think we can bring young men into this work, right? It's like what comes from your study is talking with them, you know, and

having them do the work of unpacking it instead of us teaching them in a pedantic way about let me tell you why this is misogynistic. So I just I've been thinking about that.

Krista (1:00:40)

Yeah, or labeling them all as misogynists. You know, it's w we need to bring young men into the cause here and empower them to take control, to start to critically reflect, as you said. I think that's th they're great reflections. And I also talk to young men a lot about

Actually spending time first to think about what do I believe? how much do I agree with what this influence is is saying? What kind of man do I want to be? What do I think masculinity means to me? Because these big existential questions as a young person, you're not necessarily sitting there thinking that, but instead you're consuming content where you're being told. You're not

Jett Stone (1:01:23)

Yes.

Krista (1:01:24)

introspectively developing or considering those values yourself. and I think we need to create spaces for young men to be able to do that and not judge

Jett Stone (1:01:33)

Mm-hmm.

Krista (1:01:34)

them and to open up these conversations from a place of curiosity. yeah.

Jett Stone (1:01:40)

Yeah. the if you have time for a final question here, I would love to know and we ask all of our guests, it's like it's the magic wand question. Like if you had the keys to the vault, you could do research to advance the cause of young men's mental health and you had all the money in the world, right? November just put a you know, a big suitcase of I don't know, a billion dollars,

Krista (1:02:03)

Yeah.

Jett Stone (1:02:04)

a r random number. Like what what do you wish you

could do or what are you doing perhaps th to advance this cause and to tap into your passions in this. Like I'm just curious what comes to mind for you. When you think of unlimited resources

Krista (1:02:22)

Mm-hmm.

I mean, there is so much that I would love to do. I would say honestly, I'm so fortunate to be in a situation where I get to research the things that I genuinely do feel like are gonna make a difference. I don't have unlimited resources, don't get me wrong. but I I I feel like I am very much genuinely kind of living out those curiosities and the

inquiries that I feel like are going to make substantial change in the future. And the next focus area of mine is AI. And it's understanding

Jett Stone (1:03:04)

Hmm.

Krista (1:03:04)

in some ways how young men are using AI as a form of emotional and social support now and really unpacking the opportunities that AI affords.

young men but our entire population, but also being very realistic and very aware of what the risks are. Especially for young men when we know that they're up against so many barriers to either talking about their mental health or accessing you know, clinical services, which are amazing but cost a lot.

require young men to go in to a doctor, to get a referral, to even be at a place in their life where they can take an hour from school or work or whatever to go and prioritize their mental health. That isn't always possible. So I think that there there is great opportunity that AI can can offer to keep young men safe, to give them a place to actually, you know, understand their experiences, circling back to the very

start of this conversation bringing language to their symptoms or experiences of anxiety, depression, suicidality even. but as we've seen a number of really harrowing cases reach media and proceed into lawsuits,

Jett Stone (1:04:30)

Yep.

Krista (1:04:31)

there is real risks that we

I I wouldn't say are not taken seriously, but are not kind of at a place in society where we can actually act because they're

you know, are only so many things we can do to hold these tech companies accountable, as we said, but I think the real opportunities is actually upskilling young men and empowering them to take control of how they're using AI, how they're so showing

Jett Stone (1:05:04)

Mm-hmm.

Krista (1:05:05)

up on social media. so I would say that that that would be where I would be focusing my attention.

Jett Stone (1:05:11)

Fascinating.

And we d ho you know, if you had a magic wand you could have open AI and Cloudanthropic open the vault in terms of give

Krista (1:05:15)

Hmm. Yes.

Jett Stone (1:05:18)

you all give you all the data. I'm I'm helping you out here. You need as much like, you know, raw data as you can get. So and they're usually pretty

Krista (1:05:25)

Amen. I would if

I had all the money in the world I would infiltrate open AI and and probably, don't you worry.

Jett Stone (1:05:28)

Yes. Yes. I've thought

about that question for you before you got a chance to answer it. Well well

Krista (1:05:34)

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Thank you.

Jett Stone (1:05:37)

look, it was it was f such a pleasure getting a chance to talk to you. thank you for coming on. Where where can listeners find your work?

Krista (1:05:46)

Yeah. So you did mention Substack. you can find me on Substack. I write about young men's online worlds and all the new insights that is coming out through our research. they can find me on LinkedIn as well, Dr. Christopher Fisher, and follow some of the work myself and the broader team at Movember are doing on our Movember webpage and the Movember Institute of Men's Health.

Jett Stone (1:06:12)

Lovely. Awesome getting a chance to talk to you. Thank you again for for coming on.

Krista (1:06:17)

Yeah, thank you and thanks for all the great work you're doing too.