The digital world our young people inhabit is changing rapidly. One emerging concern is the growing influence of the “manosphere”, a network of online spaces and influencers that can promote rigid ideas about masculinity, misogyny and the relationships between women and men. Australian researchers are increasingly seeing these attitudes move beyond social media and into the everyday experiences of young people and schools. Monash University, together with Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS), has recently produced guidance specifically to help secondary schools understand and respond to this influence.
For OLMC, this raises important questions about our responsibility as educators. Our role is not simply to shield students from difficult ideas. It is to equip them to recognise, question and respond to them. The ANROWS guide emphasises the importance of helping young people develop critical digital media literacy, understand how online platforms and influencers shape what they see, and make informed choices about the content with which they engage.
This is particularly important because harmful content does not always announce itself as harmful. Recent Australian reporting highlights how young men can encounter increasingly narrow or misogynistic messages through algorithms even when they initially engage with seemingly unrelated material such as fitness, self-improvement or motivational content. Young women, too, need the language and confidence to recognise when messages about relationships, appearance, gender or power diminish their dignity or normalise disrespect.
At OLMC, this responsibility is deeply connected to who we are as a Catholic school in the Mercy tradition. Our own formation material describes Mercy as something experienced through relationships and made credible through action, calling us to honour the dignity of each person and to act with compassion, courage and justice.
In the spirit of Catherine McAuley, education must therefore be about more than academic achievement. It is about forming young people who can think critically, recognise injustice and have the courage to respond. For our students, that means developing the confidence to challenge narratives that diminish women, resist stereotypes about gender and relationships, evaluate what algorithms place before them, and recognise that respect and equality are fundamental to healthy relationships.
Schools cannot address these influences alone. Families have an important role in maintaining open conversations about what young people encounter online, while schools must provide safe opportunities for students to question, discuss and critically examine what they see.
For OLMC, this is ultimately a Mercy issue. Compassion asks us to listen carefully to young people's experiences. Justice calls us to challenge attitudes that diminish the dignity of others. Courage asks us to speak when something is normalised but not acceptable.
In an increasingly complex digital world, one of the most important things we can give our students is not simply protection from harmful ideas, but the knowledge, values and courage to recognise them and choose something better.