Being a Young Man Online: Tensions, complexities and possibilities

In 2023, eSafety collaborated with researchers from Deakin University and the Queensland University of Technology to conduct a qualitative study into the online experiences of young men. The project explores the influences and motivations that shape and inform young men’s online experiences. The discussions and stories of young men in this study reveal that there are complex tensions when they describe their online experiences between freedom and anxiety, intimacy and caution, and connection and harm. In navigating these tensions, the young men we spoke to grapple with what it means to be a man in the digital age – sometimes conforming with harmful beliefs about manhood and masculinity, and at other times rejecting them.