Common Sense Media surveyed more than 1,000 adolescent boys aged 11 to 17 in the United States on subjects like the material they see online, where they find community, what they do to fit in, and how it all makes them feel. The results are complicated, compelling, and occasionally concerning:
- Adolescent boys live and connect online: 94% use social media or play online games daily, and 60% find influencers “inspirational.”
- Three in four boys age 11 to 17 regularly encounter masculinity-related posts about building muscle, making money, fighting, dating and relationships, or weapons.
- These posts showed up in two in three boys’ feeds without them searching for it.
- Boys who encounter more of these posts are lonelier and less open about their feelings.
- Nearly half of boys believe they must follow “unwritten rules” (like not crying or showing fear) to avoid being teased or picked on.
Common Sense Media engaged SSRS to conduct this study among boys age 11 to 17 living in the United States. SSRS invited the boys to participate in a self-administered online survey through their parents, who were members of the SSRS Opinion Panel. Data collection was conducted from July 9 to 14, 2025, among a sample of n = 1,017 respondents. The survey was conducted via the internet in English (977) and Spanish (40). Data was weighted to represent the target population of boys age 11 to 17. The margin of sampling error for the complete set of weighted data is ± 4.2 percentage points.