Connection matters: helping boys find healthier ways to belong 

For #SHW26 we’re exploring how we can champion connection in an increasingly individualised world. In this blog, Holly Green, Head of Impact, Quality and Learning at Beyond Equality, discusses the role that gender can play in connection, and how we can better support boys and young men.

Connection is fundamental to young people’s wellbeing. Young people need relationships in which they feel seen, valued and able to ask for help. They need friendships and communities where they can experience belonging. They also need to develop a connection with themselves: an ability to notice what they’re feeling, understand what they need and respond to themselves with care. But gender can shape how available these forms of connection feel.

Boys continue to grow up surrounded by messages about what it means to be a man: be strong, be independent, stay in control. Keep your problems to yourself, admit no weakness, never rely on other people. Above all, never let anyone – not even yourself – witness you doing anything that might be considered ‘feminine’.

These messages vary between communities and individuals, and there is no single experience of boyhood or masculinity. Race, class, sexuality and disability, amongst other things, all shape how masculinity is experienced and what is expected of particular boys.

But across these different experiences, rigid masculine gender norms can encourage boys into a performance of invulnerability. They may feel pressure to ignore, deny or minimise their own suffering. They may not feel socially allowed to ask for help. They may be ignored or shamed if they do share distress, or ridiculed for being ‘too feminine’.

The consequences aren’t only about whether boys feel able to talk about their feelings. Rigid masculine norms can restrict some of the relationships through which care and connection happen.

Boys’ relationships with one another can be marred by pressure to compete, dominate and perform. Their ability to develop meaningful friendships with girls can be hampered by unchecked sexism and misogyny. The expectation that they should handle problems alone can make reciprocal care – depending on others and allowing others to depend on you – more difficult.

If vulnerability threatens your sense of yourself as a boy or man, letting other people really know you can become risky.

When boys look for connection elsewhere

Boys still need belonging, recognition and support, whether or not they have the language to describe those needs – and somebody else may be ready to offer it to them.

If boys can’t access community in real life, they may look for it online. There, groups and individuals operating within or adjacent to the manosphere can offer them the semblance of community whilst also exposing them to misogynistic ideas.

If boys can’t talk to someone about feelings of worthlessness, loneliness or insecurity, they may encounter grievance narratives offering them a simple explanation: you feel this way because of women, feminism, immigrants, LGBTQ+ people or some other group supposedly responsible for taking something away from you.

If boys feel badly about themselves, appearance-focused communities and influencers may offer another answer: the problem is your body, and changing it will finally make you worthy. Some ‘looksmaxxing’ practices are relatively mundane, while others can encourage obsessive behaviour or carry significant physical risks.

We should be careful about presenting this as a simple causal pathway. Most boys who feel lonely, insecure or experience poor mental health will not be drawn into misogynistic communities. But vulnerability and loneliness can be exploited by bad-faith actors looking to derive profit, status or influence from boys who are desperate to belong.

What makes these spaces appealing is worth understanding. They don’t necessarily announce themselves as ‘misogynistic ideology’: they may first appear as advice, motivation, humour, friendship, fitness, dating tips or an explanation for why life feels difficult. What’s particularly notable is that many of these spaces and narratives offer something particularly potent: actions boys can take that offer them apparent solutions to painful problems.

Go to the gym. Improve your appearance. Work harder. Make money. Become disciplined. ‘Get’ women.

Some of these activities are not inherently harmful. Exercise, developing skills, setting goals or taking care of your appearance can all be positive parts of somebody’s life. The problem is the worldview into which they can become packaged: one in which worth depends on status, wealth, dominance or attractiveness; relationships between men and women are adversarial and transactional; vulnerability is weakness; and other people become responsible for your pain.

If harmful influencers are offering boys routines, goals, community, recognition and a vision of the person they could become, our alternative has to offer more than simply telling them that those influencers are wrong. We need to offer healthier ways to connect and belong.

Connection starts with ourselves

Being connected to other people also requires some ability to connect with ourselves. This is where self-care has a role.

Self-care can help young people recognise what they are feeling, identify what they need and find ways of supporting their own wellbeing. But public discourse about self-care can unintentionally exclude some young people.

Self-care approaches that prioritise buying and consuming are inaccessible to young people growing up in poverty. Advice that doesn’t account for racism, disability or other forms of marginalisation may have little relevance to young people’s actual lives.

And self-care can be gendered. Lots of advice presupposes that young people are comfortable admitting they’re struggling and responding by looking after themselves. But if a boy has learnt that vulnerability is shameful, how does he decide that he deserves care in the first place, even from himself?

A gender-sensitive approach needs to be bigger than repackaging familiar wellbeing activities to make them appear more masculine. We don’t need “self-care for boys” to mean replacing face masks with protein shakes. Instead, we can expand everyone’s options.

We can teach that self-care might mean talking through a difficult day with a friend, going for a run, making something, listening to music, getting outside, cooking, switching off a phone, sleeping properly or noticing what happens in your body when you’re angry or anxious.

It might mean recognising that comparing your appearance to other people online is making you miserable, leaving a group chat that makes you feel worse about yourself, or understanding when an algorithm is repeatedly feeding you content that causes distress.

And self-care doesn’t have to begin with a problem. Friendship, sport, creativity, music, rest, humour, nature and movement can give us pleasure, purpose and connection every day.

Connection cannot be an individual responsibility

There is a danger in placing all of this responsibility on boys themselves. When we individualise wellbeing, we risk asking young people to become better at tolerating circumstances that adults and institutions have a responsibility to change. Instead, we must also teach boys that caring for yourself doesn’t mean caring for yourself by yourself.

So we need connection at several levels.

We need connection with ourselves: helping young people develop emotional literacy, self-compassion and practical ways to support their wellbeing.

We need connection with others: friendships, families and relationships in which young people can depend on other people, care for others and experience belonging.

We need connection with community: schools, youth groups, sports, creative spaces and online and offline communities where young people can find purpose, positive role models and acceptance without having to prove their masculinity.

And we need systems that care: properly resourced services, safe schools and communities, economic security, and institutions willing to address the inequalities that affect young people’s lives.

What can adults do?

For teachers, parents, carers, youth workers and others supporting boys and young men, building connection can be part of our everyday practice.

We can help boys develop the emotional literacy and self-compassion that make connection and help-seeking easier.

We can create opportunities for boys to experience friendship, cooperation and reciprocal care without having to perform invulnerability or constantly compete.

We can make sure boys have trusted adults who take their feelings seriously and whom they can approach before they reach crisis point.

We can help boys find age-appropriate, healthy communities where they can experience connection, enjoyment and purpose.

And because so much of young people’s identity formation now happens online, we can develop emotional and critical media literacy together. Boys need tools for recognising when somebody is manipulating their insecurity, selling them a grievance narrative, encouraging harmful behaviour or presenting misogyny as the solution to their problems.

Adults need tools too. We need confidence to have non-judgmental, supportive conversations about what boys encounter online: conversations that take their feelings seriously without validating harmful beliefs, and that challenge misogyny while offering credible alternatives.

If we want boys to reject people who tell them that dominance will make them powerful, misogyny will explain their pain or changing themselves beyond recognition will finally make them worthy, they need other places to turn – and other ways to understand who they can become.

Helping boys build connection with themselves, with other people and with communities of care can improve their wellbeing.

It can give them greater freedom to shape masculinity for themselves. And it can help them build ways of living and relating that allow them to belong in a gender-equal world. In turn, this work benefits everybody. When gender stereotypes are challenged, all people of all genders can live free from harmful and restrictive expectations. When men and boys are better able to connect with and communicate their emotions, they’re more resourced to nurture healthy, respectful relationships of all kinds, including with women and girls. And when men and boys are able to give and receive care, they can participate in mutual caregiving and support their loved ones more equitably.

References and further reading

Office for National Statistics, Suicides in England and Wales. Annual statistics on suicide registrations, including differences by sex and age.

Samaritans, Gender and suicide. Research and analysis exploring relationships between masculinity, social expectations, help-seeking and suicide risk.

Mental Health Foundation, Men and mental health. An accessible overview of men’s mental health, including barriers to seeking support and the influence of traditional gender expectations.

Children’s Commissioner for England (2025), “I’d rather be myself”: The lives and experiences of teenage boys. Research with teenage boys in England examining their experiences, relationships, influences and views of masculinity.

Ofcom, Children and parents: media use and attitudes. Research on children’s online lives and their use of social media and other digital platforms.

Internet Matters, The New Face of Digital Masculinity. Research examining boys’ and young men’s exposure to online content relating to masculinity, including misogynistic and appearance-focused content.

YoungMinds, Deconstructing the System: Mental Health Services. Young people’s perspectives on mental health support and the need for earlier, more accessible and holistic approaches.