ALIGN BRIEFING - How does social media influence gender norms among

2 How does social media influence gender norms among adolescent boys? Key evidence and policy implications Key messages • The impact of boys’ social media engagement on their attitudes to gender equality is influenced by a number of factors, including: personal experience and social context, platform design, and the types of social interactions they engage in online. [...] wider social context, platform design) shape the relationship between social media use and adolescent boys’ views on gender norms? Snapshot of the research To help make sense of the evidence about if, how, and to what extent social media affects gender norms among adolescent boys, in 2023, ODI undertook a targeted review and narrative synthesis of published empirical studies, focusing on English,. [...] Many of the quantitative studies explored correlations between social media use and specific outcomes, and tended to assume the direction of influence was from social media to gender norms and attitudes rather than vice versa, or both. [...] 6 7 Evidence on the relationship between social media use and gender norms There has been more attention to analysing the gendered nature of online content and gendered differences in social media use than to examining the relationship between social media use and gender norms. [...] For example, in one of the few studies focusing specifically on views of masculinity, Scharrer and Warren (2022) examined connections between the amount of time spent on television (including streaming services), video games and YouTube, and perceptions of masculine roles and norms in a sample of adolescents in the United States.