They Didn’t Ask for It—But It’s Finding Them Anyway

This report from Common Sense Media was first brought to my attention by my colleague Christopher Pepper, and later again by my friend Dennis Barbour in his Partnership for Male Youth newsletter.

But this slide right here stopped me cold.

68% of boys report seeing masculinity content in their feeds without searching for it.
Algorithms—not curiosity—are driving the exposure.

That stat hit me because it exposes something I know I forget sometimes: Our young people are living in an environment of constant, unfiltered input. They’re being taught—by feeds, not by mentors—what it means to be a man.

Think about that number in your world. If you’ve got 20 in your locker room, 80 on your football field, or 12 on your bench, how many of them are getting masculinity messaging every single day that they didn’t choose?

Now imagine if seven out of ten of your players were being fed clips that taught them to run a pick-off play the exact wrong way. You’d be panicking, right? You’d immediately feel the urgency to reteach and correct before it destroyed your system.

That same urgency should apply here.

Because while we can’t control the algorithms, we can compete with them. We can fill our own team rooms, our own feeds, and our own conversations with stronger, healthier, more grounded messages about manhood.

If you’re serious about your players learning how to win in life—not just on the court—then this report isn’t optional reading. It’s required.

📘 Full Common Sense Media Report →

Coach Prompts

• How are you addressing what your players see online when you’re not in the room?

• What’s your system for teaching them how to question and filter that input?

• If their feeds are forming their definitions of manhood, how are you countering it?

Player Prompts

• When you scroll, who’s really in control—you or the algorithm?

• What kind of content about “manhood” shows up in your feed—and how does it make you feel?

• When’s the last time you stopped scrolling to ask, “Who benefits from me believing this?”