From Adolescence to the manosphere: has 2025 been the year of the boy?
The prime minister said it was a “really hard watch”, while a British police force said it should be a “wake-up call for parents”.The Netflix drama Adolescence – which tells the story of a 13-year-old boy arrested for killing a female classmate – was hailed from the school gates to the Houses of Parliament for shedding a spotlight on the toxic influence of the manosphere.But the national conversation did not end with the final episode of the much-discussed drama.A series of high-profile campaigns, conversations, policy shifts and research have resulted in a sense that 2025 has been the year of the boy.At the start of the year the former England football manager Gareth Southgate warned about the dangers of “callous, manipulative and toxic influencers”, while Lost Boys, a study from the Centre for Social Justice, argued that “boys [were] being left behind” from educational attainment to mental health.
In June was the first ever “Dad strike”, when fathers gathered in London and Edinburgh to protest at pitifully poor paternity leave provision in the UK.By November, the government had produced the first ever Men’s Health Strategy for England, a month later its Violence Against Women and Girls strategy focused on preventing misogynistic behaviour in boys.Warnings about toxic masculinity have been stark.But after a year in which debate about men and boys moved from the fringes of the internet to the mainstream, experts and policy-makers are urging progressive figures to focus less on toxicity and more on positive role models.Among them is a collection of Labour MPs who in March started organising via a ballooning WhatsApp group and have now formed a formal parliamentary group – the Labour group for men and boys.
One member, Natalie Fleet, the MP for Bolsover, spent her allotted time at an International Men’s Day debate in parliament speaking about the amazing men in her community – including her husband, an “actual hero” whom she met aged 16, and helped raise her first child and is now reducing his hours to help look after their grandchildren,She said: “These are men in our communities doing the right thing, who we need to find and amplify, and that’s what we can do through this group,”In 2025, the influence of misogynistic figures such as Andrew Tate showed little sign of abating – despite facing charges, which he denies, in multiple jurisdictions,Tate travelled to the US and cemented his role as a leading figure in Trumpworld,A poll earlier this year found that a fifth of UK males aged 16 to 29 who had heard of Tate had a positive view of him.
But other organisations have parked their tanks on Tate’s lawn.Movember and Equimundo launched the Young Men and Media Collective in October, which funds influencers to deliver a different kind of masculine message.“Policymakers have woken up to the fact that, particularly online, young men are being harmed and their health is suffering by the content they’re seeing,” said Amy O’Connor, policy lead at the charity.“It’s all very well criticising online content, but what are we doing to give our young men an alternative?”The phrase “men’s rights” comes with “a whole bunch of really unpleasant connotations”, said Adam Thompson, MP for Erewash, but there’s also a recognition that from educational attainment to suicide rates, boys and men, as much as girls and women, need targeted policy.“I’m a strong believer that the patriarchy is harmful to both men and women,” he said.
“It’s not a zero-sum game.”It’s right that public discourse is focusing on boys, argues Joeli Brearley, the founder of the campaign group Pregnant Then Screwed.The lack of debate about the challenges boys face led her to launch this year a podcast, To Be a Boy,which she hosts with the fatherhood champion Elliott Rae.Brearley urges caution, however.The rise of the far right, a surge in support for Reform UK and the prospect of baked-in sexism in increasingly pervasive AI tools have left her worried.
“We are having these really fruitful conversations about boys, but I’m also seeing a sea change in the way women talk about their experiences online,” she said.“It’s as if you can’t have both – we’re not allowed now to talk about the fact that women are still experiencing specific challenges because we’re now saying that men have it hard.”The desire to combat a spike in more traditional – and regressive – masculine ideals is also rising exponentially, said George Gabriel, the co-founder of The Dad Shift.“The challenge is real.But I think we can acknowledge that while the situation is dire, we can also have some optimism that we are starting to find a path forward.
That’s where we find ourselves at the end of the year.”
Patriots’ Stefon Diggs faces strangulation and assault charges in Massachusetts
New England Patriots star wide receiver Stefon Diggs is facing strangulation and other criminal charges in connection with a dispute with his former private chef, police said.News of the charges emerged after a court hearing on Tuesday in Dedham, Massachusetts. Diggs is charged with felony strangulation or suffocation and misdemeanor assault and battery.Diggs’s lawyer, David Meier, said in an emailed statement that Diggs “categorically denies these allegations”.Meier said the allegations never occurred, describing them as unsubstantiated and uncorroborated
Travball emerges, athletics surges, Brisbane basks in success: Australia’s biggest sporting moments of 2025
An Ashes-defining intervention, an NRL showstopper, and new hope forced on the AFL are among our writers’ great moments in Australian sports this yearThe highly anticipated Ashes was quickly torn apart by Travis Head’s cameo at the top of the order that has since turned into a much longer stay. The NRL grand final was another scene for an all-time breathtaking display, as the Broncos joined the AFL’s Lions in making Brisbane the epicentre of Australian sport. Here are our writers’ sporting highlights of 2025.It will be a long time before there is an NRL finals campaign like that of Brisbane in 2025. From an unlikely victory over minor premiers Canberra in golden point, through the dramatic second-half turnaround to end Penrith’s dynasty, to the ultimate destination on grand final day
Cameron Green remains Australia’s golden child but the blessing has become a curse | Brendan Foster
Bazball might be dead, or at least on its last legs, but before its demise it appears to have bewitched cricketing prodigy Cameron Green with its high-risk, at times mindless aggression.Some of the young allrounder’s premeditated shots during the Ashes have made England wunderkind Harry Brook look like their unpretentious former opener, Geoff Boycott.In the second Test, Green was promoted to No 5 and powered his way to 45 while belting England’s short-ball barrage to all corners of the Gabba.Even though his regular backing away towards the leg-stump to counter Brydon Carse’s bouncers was becoming a little reckless and predictable, it didn’t matter because Green was striking the ball so cleanly.Then he started telegraphing his attacking philosophy so early that all Carse had to do was aim at the pegs, because despite Green being two metres tall, his outstretched bat was nowhere near the ball when it smashed into his stumps
The Breakdown | ‘There is no ceiling for these players’: Jamaica targeting 2031 Rugby World Cup
Nigerian influence within English rugby union is strong and getting stronger. But could Jamaican rugby, in time, become just as significant?There is no shortage of talent. Jamaica UK Rugby, a club under the umbrella of the Jamaican Rugby Football Union, has 500 members and counting. There are youth sides and international pathways for sevens and 15s and volunteers, on both sides of the Atlantic, working to help their rugby grow.Phil Davis, a London-based youth coach, approached the Jamaican union in 2021 to see if there was a pathway to the 15s game for a promising young prop called Ben Hatfield
Online school and junior tennis: freedom, focus – and a quiet cost
Elite junior tennis players are flocking to online schools. The model offers flexibility and focus – but raises deeper questions about growth, pressure and childhoodIn a major study released recently in Epidemiology, conclusions were drawn – yet again – regarding how shutdowns and online learning were ultimately very damaging to kids’ emotional and mental health (obviously some cohorts of kids were more affected than others with financial security a big part of the calculation). This is no major surprise as parents and students alike weren’t happy with the remote learning environment.Yet despite this general consensus about online schooling not being as healthy as regular school, a new trend has exploded since Covid: the rapid growth of online schooling for tennis players and other athletes. Parents and their junior athletes feel that by being able to play several hours in the day instead of after school it will accelerate their progress in the sport while still leaving room for academics
Five things England must do to make it two Ashes Test wins in a row in Sydney
Keira Knightley may not spring immediately to mind as a source of inspiration for Ben Stokes’s captaincy but her tactics for dealing with the paparazzi at the height of her fame recalled some of Stokes’s early forays with the armband.Knightley recently explained to Graham Norton that she refused to have anyone follow her, so would stand stock still for hours at a time until the photographers got bored or, better, weirded out. “I do think I freaked them out, they were like: ‘I don’t understand what’s happening here.’”When Brydon Carse came out to bat at No 3 in England’s successful chase in Melbourne, it drew gasps from the crowd in the stadium and saw a spike in social media and texts from those watching at home. “That’s not … Is that Brydon Carse?”Carse made only six runs, largely playing like a man at a silent disco who has his headset tuned to thrash metal
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