I’ll start this off with a confession. My kids truly, madly, deeply, love their screens. It’s bad. Pre-Covid we were pretty good at limiting screen time, but we fell off the wagon and I’m sorry to say we are almost in 2027 and we still haven’t really gained control over the situation. We go through phases of what I think is reasonable screen use, to way too much screen use, but unfortunately in our house, screens are the number one thing my kids get in trouble for. For me, YouTube is the absolute worst. Especially with the rise of YouTube shorts. I felt like a real baller the day I blocked YouTube from our router. It only took about three days before my oldest realised he could switch off Wi-Fi, connect through cellular data, and access YouTube again. It’s like living whack-a-mole!
Not only do we know screens are addictive, but they’re linked to academic decline. As I write this article, the PISA study was released. The findings were not good across the globe. The results concluded that 15 year olds now are not as strong in reading, maths, and science as they were a decade ago. And, by the way, Luxembourg scored slightly below average compared to other OECD countries.
In addition to being addictive, causing academic decline, and increasing anxiety and depression, they also can expose your kids to things that you’d probably really rather not have them exposed to. No, not just porn. Today we’re talking about Bodymaxxing and the Manosphere.
To discuss this and more, I invited Jon Adams, International School of Luxembourg’s Lower School Principal, and Alex Rakochy, International School of Luxembourg’s Upper School Principal, to join me on the show.
If you’re not familiar, Bodymaxxing, according to the Child Mind Institute is a slang term, popular with young men and boys "that refers to the extreme pursuit of optimizing one’s physical appearance, muscularity, and fitness. It is a subcategory of the broader 'looksmaxxing' internet trend, which revolves around maximizing every aspect of one's physical attractiveness". It gets its roots from the Manosphere.
As a modern woman raising three boys, the Manosphere really freaks me out. The Manosphere is built on a rejection of feminism and is all about subjugating women. If you haven’t seen the documentary Manosphere on Netflix, check it out. And if you want to be really scared, check out the movie Adolescence. At least that last one is fiction!
According to Jon Adams, if you set up a profile on any social media as a young boy, within something like 15-20 videos it will serve you up some misogynistic content. And if you interact with it in any way, you’ll get served more. One of Jon and Alex’s points was that it’s not that boys set out to become misogynistic and bodymaxxers, it’s that they become exposed to this stuff almost by default, and then the adults are tasked with combatting it.
Jon and Alex talk about what this looks like in practice at school in both the older and the younger students. They touch on what red or yellow flags to watch out for at home, and what they think responsible screen usage is. This conversation is based on research, and it’s sobering. If you are raising boys, this is one you don’t want to miss!
Tune in to this episode of Mom Life in Luxembourg wherever you listen to podcasts, on RTL Radio Sunday’s at 5, and follow @momlifeinluxembourg for more.
