A new resource has been created to provide guidance to schools, teachers and parents about online influencers promoting traditional models of masculinity.

The guide has been created by Dr Darragh McCashin and Dr Catherine Baker from Dublin City University, alongside Dr Fiona O’Rourke.

Dr McCashin said there has been “a rise in traditional masculinity attitudes in the classroom” and, he cited reports in Australia and the UK, that this has coincided with “an uptick in misogynistic and sexist attitudes and behaviours, particularly from pre-teen boys”.

“Higher levels are being observed, and this chimes with the recent Women’s Aid report on younger men exhibiting much higher levels of traditionalist masculinity than other generations, which is something that hasn’t really been observed before.

“Normally, it’s older generations that endorse kind of very traditional views of masculinity as it relates to attitudes about women, sex, sexuality, the role of men in the home.

“All of that kind of points to the fact that the manosphere online content might be having an adverse impact on boys and men in terms of their progression to very traditionalist notions of what it is to be a man, what masculinity actually means.