Misogyny isn’t new, but the way children and young people encounter it is.
For children and young people, online and offline life are one and the same; and harmful misogynistic content is everywhere. Many face a constant stream of extreme, degrading messages about women and girls, alongside damaging myths about masculinity. Algorithms amplify it, influencers glamorise it, and emerging technologies like AI worsen it further.
For some children, it’s background noise in their daily lives, shaping how they perceive themselves and the world around them.
It’s not ‘just locker room talk’ and it’s not banter – these are quietly normalised, harmful attitudes and behaviours that no child should ever learn to accept. We need to name what the problems are to find real solutions that work. That’s why it’s time to call it what it is.
Introducing the Changing Attitudes Group
We have recruited a group of 12 young people, representing all four nations, who want to make a difference. We'll be working alongside them to make sure that young people’s views are heard by government to help drive the change that will keep children and young people safer and healthier.
This will include helping to challenge misinformation and harmful content online, offline behaviour, and also hearing from children and young people to influence how we deliver our own services at Barnardo’s.
When young people speak out, challenge harmful behaviour, and model respect, it can shift what’s considered normal within our own spaces and work towards changing attitudes on a community level.
Hannah
Call It What It Is campaigner
Misogyny hurts boys and girls
We’ve supported children and young people facing all forms of harm for decades. Again and again, misogyny sits at the root of what they experience—not just in visible behaviours, but also in the constant, often nameless and insidious behaviours that shape their lives. These harms affect girls and boys alike, from humiliating and sexist comments, through to feelings of loneliness and isolation that many boys face. As online spaces become more chaotic and less safe, these harms are escalating and becoming harder for young people themselves to recognise or escape.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Children and young people’s voices and experiences must be at the heart of conversations about online misogyny. If adults only talk to other adults, the solutions will never reflect what children and young people are actually facing - or what they urgently need.
That's why we’re working alongside children and young people from across all four nations to help counter dangerous narratives about misogyny and harmful notions of masculinity. Despite all the focus on this issue, young people’s voices are too often missing from the debate, and without them, we won’t make the progress we know we need.
We'll help to make sure that their views on one of the biggest problems facing young people today are heard by government to help drive the change we need to keep children and young people safer and healthier – from helping to spotlight misinformation and harmful content online and challenge offline behaviour, to hearing from children and young people about how we should deliver our own services.
The scale of the problem we're facing
We commissioned CensusWide to poll 4,000 young people aged 13-20, across all four nations. The findings were stark and paint a picture of a distressing online environment for young people.
- Around six in ten young people (59%) report experiencing or witnessing harmful gender expectations online.
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One in four girls (25%) report being called degrading names online, with over a third of 13‑year‑olds (34%) encountering such content on their social media feeds.
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Nearly one in five girls (18%) report receiving repeated unwanted messages after asking the sender to stop or ignoring them.
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One in seven young people aged 13–15 (15%) have been asked to send a nude image of themselves, and one in ten girls (11%) report being threatened with the sharing of nude images.
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A quarter of respondents (25%) report seeing nude images that were originally shared privately being redistributed without consent.
This situation is unacceptable - children and young people are being negatively shaped by exposure to harmful online content, with clear consequences for their attitudes and behaviour.
The impact of misogyny broken down by gender
Girl’s experiences
Girls are disproportionately exposed to harassment, sexualised abuse, and victim‑blaming narratives online.
Our data shows that:
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26% of young people believe that a girl’s sexual reputation makes her less credible if she reports unwanted sexual contact.
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Nearly one third (30%) believe girls make false accusations against boys, a view shared by 23% of girls themselves and 37% of boys.
These beliefs risk undermining safeguarding systems and discouraging disclosure of harm.
Boy’s experiences
And for boys, the findings show that boys experience significant peer pressure to conform to narrow, stereotypical models of masculinity:
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59% of boys believe they are expected to act tough and suppress emotion.
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57% report that failure to join in with peer behaviour risks social exclusion.
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21% say their friends would not support them if they challenged sexist comments.
This culture discourages empathy, emotional expression, and bystander intervention.
This situation is unacceptable - children and young people are being negatively shaped by exposure to harmful online content, with clear consequences for their attitudes and behaviour.
Your misogyny isn’t a joke to me
Constant exposure to sexist jokes, harassment, or degrading online content has slowly started to normalise toxic behaviour. It shapes how people think, how they treat others, how safe women and girls feel in everyday life, and how men and boys believe they should act to meet society’s standards.
Hannah, one of our young Call It What It Is campaigners, explains how misogyny is shaping how she’s growing up and what she thinks we need to do about it.
The impact of online misogyny on children and young people's attitudes and behaviours
Despite conversations about misogyny playing out in the media and Parliament, children and young people’s voices are too often missing from the debate. Without them, we cannot address the problems as children and young people experience them.
We commissioned Censuswide to poll 4,000 young people aged 13-20, across all four nations of the UK. The findings were stark and paint a picture of a distressing online environment for young people.
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