Will is like a lot of 15-year-old boys. He likes sports, hanging out with friends and spending time on social media, but his mother fears he has been “radicalised”.
Jane took a call from her son’s school to say Will was involved in an “incident” involving a teacher.
She said Will and some other boys echoed the views of controversial online influencer Andrew Tate to make the teacher “squirm”.
Some teachers are concerned, seeing an increase in boys citing Mr Tate.
A leading child protection expert has said the Online Safety Bill, which aims to police the internet and could become UK law next year, should protect “impressive men” from “misogyny”.
Jane said Will – not their real names – kept pushing the teacher at his school in North Wales, even as she told him Mr Tate’s views could be characterized as extreme.
“He sees a man who is strong and powerful and made a lot of money,” Jane said of her only son.
Mr Tate is a former kickboxer who rose to fame in 2016 when he was removed from the TV show Big Brother for a video in which he appears to be assaulting a woman.
At the time of his removal from the Big Brother house, Mr Tate said the controversial video had been edited, calling it “a total lie trying to make me look bad”.
He rose to internet fame when Twitter banned him for saying women should “take responsibility” if they were sexually assaulted.
Mr Tate was banned from other social media platforms including YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, with TikTok also removing him, saying “misogyny is a hateful ideology that will not be tolerated”.
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His posts on other online sites promote misogyny and target women and have been viewed by millions. BBC disinformation and social media correspondent Marianna Spring said earlier this year its content had “raised concerns about the potential real-world impact”.
Together with former US President Donald Trump, he was recently allowed to be back on Twitter after Elon Musk took over.
Mr Tate, who was approached by the BBC for comment, told Piers Morgan in a recent interview that his views had been “misunderstood”.
He previously said his comments were “taken out of context and amplified” to present “false narratives” about him.
Jane said her son believes “everything Mr. Tate says is taken out of context and used to make him look bad”.
After the school incident, she said she was relieved that the teacher knew the family well enough to understand that the view Will was expressing was not consistent with the values he was raised with.
“I was going to say, ‘Don’t you see how sexist and awful that is?'” Jane recalled.
“It worries me because you’re hearing him speak and I don’t think I would ever want anyone from his school to think that’s what we think or believe in anything like that.”
“It’s sad because you instill values in children from birth. Unfortunately, the power of social media outweighs years of good parenting.
“He just gets such a kick out of it. He’s always been a liquidator, but not by using unkind things to piss people off.”
Will even showed videos of Mr Tate to his mother to explain his views.
“I’d like to think long-term, if he has his own family it’ll just be a blip,” mused Jane.
“But it also feels like radicalization.”
Jane says she listens to Will’s views to calmly defuse extreme views.
“I don’t want to turn it into something he can’t talk about because then you’ll have no idea,” Jane added.
Teachers have expressed concern as they have seen an increase in boys citing Mr Tate. When some high school students were asked to write about their idols, they wanted to write about Mr. Tate.
“The amount of knowledge we have access to is both amazing and overwhelming,” said a secondary school teacher in South Wales, who asked not to be named.
“These kids go to the wrong corner of the internet and all of a sudden they’re in a very, very radical place. They read it as gospel.”
Another South Wales teacher has also had experience of boys echoing Mr Tate’s views, saying they engage with his content because of his “image” of a “self-made millionaire”.
“That’s what attracts the boys first of all,” added the high school teacher, who also did not want to be named.
“They aspired to be a millionaire, with lots of cars and [who] has an aura of authority that they wish they had.
“It was only later that the content they interacted with gradually evolved into his more extreme views.
“That’s when we started to see that his content was actually radicalizing these boys into adopting similar views.”
A third teacher also witnessed students at his secondary school repeating Mr Tate’s views.
“It’s not a school problem, it’s a general problem in teacher training, where you’re not being taught how to deal with sexism in the classroom,” said the South Wales-based teacher, who also declined to be named.
They worry that because the comments are “subordinate” and “generally non-threatening,” they “are not necessarily taken seriously, not just in schools but in society in general.”
The psychologist Dr. Nia Williams added that Mr Tate’s views could make boys and young men feel disenfranchised and unfairly treated by the rest of society.
“During your teenage years, you find yourself, develop who you are, your morals and what you stand for,” said Dr. Williams, an associate professor at Bangor University’s School of Education and Human Development.
“He’s on the social media pages that target these young people. However, the messages he spreads are having a detrimental effect on today’s youth. It can have a lifelong impact on the kind of person you become.”
dr Williams is concerned that the boys who share extreme views “are not thinking about the consequences and implications” for others or their future careers.
However, she warned that equality is crucial not only for women but also for men as “it’s still biased towards women”, which could “brainwash” frustrated young men.
“I think it’s really important that we get the message across that society is equal,” she said.
“It’s important for men to feel protected and we may still be working on that equality for young men.”
The NSPCC said the self-regulation of social media and online content platforms had “completely failed” and called on the UK government to “protect” people.
“These people are failing in their responsibility to protect users from harm online, so we need government-made legislation,” said Hannah Ruschen, senior policy officer at NSPCC.
“It’s very, very difficult for businesses to keep up with snowball-like content, and we’re seeing videos and images being shared by the millions.
“Companies are finding it very difficult to keep up with this type of reactionary approach to content, removing content after it has been identified as malicious.
“So what we need to see is a proactive approach and understanding of what materials could be harmful and making sure they are actually removing them.”
Leading child protection expert Dai Davies, a former head of Royal Protection, said children should be protected from “that kind of viral aspect of misogyny” and also called for tougher government laws on the internet.
“What worries me about Mr Andrew Tate is that he now seems almost able to print and say things that I would see as misogynist and harmful to women’s safety,” said Mr Davies, a former Met Police Divisional Commander.
“When are we going to realize in this country, politicians and public opinion, unless you stop that kind of attitude, that kind of issue on the internet where young impressionable men can actually think it’s okay to treat women as looking at inferior beings, I don’t think he and that kind of misogyny can be tolerated.
“Where is the moral compass of these companies? Where are the ethics of those who just want to make money? I would have hoped there would be laws.”
Controversial measures that would have forced major tech platforms to remove legal but harmful material were recently removed from the Online Safety Bill currently going through Parliament.
But the UK government said if the bill becomes law tech companies, they must prevent children from being exposed to illegal content and harmful or age-inappropriate material.
“We are putting an end to unregulated social media harming our children,” said a spokesman for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
“Under the Online Safety Act, tech platforms must prevent under-18s from being exposed to illegal content and other harmful or inappropriate materials, including violent content, or face hefty fines.”
If you are affected by any of the issues in this story, the BBC Action Line has links to organizations that can offer support and advice.
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