A popular narrative suggests young people are liberal and getting more liberal. Thus, social media buzzed when a chart surfaced in spring that seemed to suggest 12th-grade boys had become overwhelm…

While many believe young people are becoming more liberal, data shows that 12th grade boys are nearly twice as likely to identify as conservative compared to liberal. Around 25% of high school seniors identify as conservative while only 13% identify as liberal. In contrast, the share of 12th grade girls identifying as liberal has risen to 30%. Many factors may contribute to this trend, including the rhetoric of Donald Trump which appealed to disaffected young men, and the focus of progressive movements on issues of gender and racial equality which some young men perceive as a “matriarchy.” However, most high school seniors claim no political identity, and many boys in high school do not actively discuss

  • Cryptic Fawn@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    45·
    1 year ago

    I partially blame the Left for not addressing mental health issues for our younger boys and men and not doing a better job at expressing what healthy, happy masculinity actually looks like. So the likes of Andrew Taint, Joe Rogan, Matt Walsh and the likes basically swooped in and took that over.

    I’ve got a 15 year old nephew who’s starting his Sophomore year in like a week. I’ve already heard him say some rather disturbing extremist right-wing shit, and sadly his father fucking sucks at being a father so correcting him hasn’t been easy for me (I’m the aunt, his mother is not currently in the picture). And he says this shit with his little sister around too.

    • Asafum@feddit.nl
      22·
      1 year ago

      It’s not the fault of the left that the right creates propaganda.

      Propaganda is really effective on everyone and they’ve had the help of algorithms that boost anger inducing material which leads one from “self help” alpha jerk all the way to “the left are demons that want to kill babies.”

      It’s not the fault of anyone other than the propagandists. :/

      • t3rmit3@beehaw.org
        10·
        1 year ago

        That’s not what they’re saying, they’re saying- very correctly- that whereas the Right has cultivated a pipeline for reaching out to young men via these propagandists, the Left has not. We’re largely ceding the conversations about young male disaffection to those kinds of Right-wing assholes who tell them it’s the fault of the Left.

        Vaush, for example, is not a good resource for someone who’s just some awkward high school kid who knows nothing about politics. He’s not speaking to that kid’s concerns, he’s ranting (very justifiedly, but that’s irrelevant) about the manosphere. If you look at the videos by the manosphere, they’re trying to touch on points of interest to young men as a group. If you look at the Left-wing YTers, they’re talking to people who already dislike the manosphere: “Conservatives don’t understand Manga or Anime” (Tim Poole) vs “This incel video is pathetic” (Vaush).

        I think a key problem is that for many of us on the Left, it’s very difficult to understand (or believe) that someone could look at what right-wingers are doing and not care, so we think it’s just an issue of exposure. What we forget is that they have to click on the video/ article/ podcast first, before they get exposed to the content, and right-wingers are sitting there putting out the exact opposite stuff about the Left (“Watch these crazy liberal college feminists getting owned by Ben!”) To someone who is disconnected, it does look like it’s just 2 equal sides ranting about each other.

        So if I don’t know who Andrew Tate is, I’m not going to click on a video about why he’s bad.

        But manga and anime? I love those! I’ll click on that. “Why young men feel like no one cares?” I’m an angsty young man, I’ll watch that! Then that video leads to the “Why Socialism is Destroying America!” one, and down the rabbit hole they go.

      • Bonesince1997@lemmy.ml
        5·
        1 year ago

        Right. While I feel for what OP has said, it’s like the right can be as nasty as they want to be while it’s the left that’s charged with picking up the pieces. I don’t know what the answer is but it can’t be let the right do and say whatever.

      • AdmiralShat@programming.devEnglish
        7·
        1 year ago

        It’s not that they are good at addressing it, they’re they only group that vocally addresses it at all.

        Young white men are a group, a large group, in the US and when then ONLY people saying “hey its okay to be YOU SPECIFICALLY YOUNG WHITE MAN”, their social media algorithms tend to lean toward that.

        I’m pretty liberal because of my own life experiences, and my youtube feed is just filled to the brim with Andrew Tate, Walsh, Shapiro, Peterson, Jones, etc. I happen to find Jor Rogan funny and that’s about the furthest right I go, but because of that I’m can’t not open youtube and be subjected with this type of content that, more or less, targets my demographic.

        Personally, I see it as a grift. To me, these people are just making money selling bullshit by the bulk, and young white men happen to both have money and no other ‘pick me’ iconography.

        I’ve dealt with suicidal ideation and mental health problems all my life, and Peterson comes on and tells me it’s okay to feel emotions, but then immediately starts talking about how trans people will never be happy and should never try to transition. I’m pretty cognitive and can see its more or less book sales for him and he’s talking about an experiences he’s never had, but a 15 year old isn’t quite as cognitive nor has had the same level of life experience as my age group

          • AdmiralShat@programming.devEnglish
            2·
            1 year ago

            Yes, but there aren’t figure heads targeting this demographic with a specific rhetoric/ideology.

            When they teach it in school about kids working in coal mines and meat factories, they don’t teach the politics that went along with it.

      • Cryptic Fawn@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        I would love it if his father bothered to put in effort in raising my eldest nephew, but that isn’t going to happen sadly.

        And I never insinuated the right was doing a good job???

    • Pokethat@lemm.ee
      2·
      1 year ago

      … what’s wrong with Joe Rogan? The traditional media has smeared him because they don’t like that CNN plus shat the bed and they’re sad about it.

      He’s just a ‘normal’ dude. The fact that you put him in with he likes of Andrew Tate, or Peppa Pig fame, says a lot about what you’ve been led to believe.

      I’m not a big fan of Rogan, but I don’t dislike either, I’m just not a podcast person very often. The guy just has conversations with all kinds of people.

      • Smellmop@beehaw.org
        13·
        1 year ago

        I think the main issue with Rogen is that while he provides a platform for voices across the political/social spectrum (which is great), he does very little to challenge his guests and generally goes with the flow. This means that people making false claims or dog whistle statements are being taken at face value alongside people making good faith arguments, which grants those bad actors some amount of undeserved authenticity.

        So no, he is not nearly as bad as Andrew Tate etc; but he has a lot of exposure and clout that he does not always bring to bear in the name of true and honest discussion. Also the whole RFK debate thing is really poignant here as it’s a typical example of taking two “balanced” perspectives on vaccines and assuming that they both deserve to be at the same table, when in reality the anti vax movement largely gets by without any scientific evidence and isn’t a reasonable position to hold.