About Workplace Mental Health
This one might be uncomfortable. But I think it’s important.
Over the past few years, a loosely connected network of online communities — often grouped under the term “the manosphere” — has grown significantly in reach and influence. These spaces include figures promoting self-improvement alongside others pushing more extreme views about gender, relationships, masculinity, and emotional expression. The content ranges from motivational advice to outright hostility towards vulnerability, empathy, and mental health support.
And it’s not just a fringe internet phenomenon. It’s showing up in workplaces.
What is the manosphere?
For those unfamiliar, the manosphere is a broad term covering a range of online communities: various influencer-led movements that promote a particular version of masculinity — typically one that equates emotional restraint with strength, dismisses vulnerability as weakness, and frames mental health support as something for people who aren’t resilient enough.
Some of it is relatively harmless — advice about fitness, discipline, or financial independence. But much of it carries an undercurrent that directly contradicts what we know about psychological health: that talking helps, that connection is protective, and that seeking support is a sign of strength, not failure.
The audience is predominantly young men. And many of those young men are in your workforce.
Why this matters at work
Workplace mental health strategies are built on a set of assumptions: that people will feel able to seek help, that peer support is valued, that psychological safety can be created through open dialogue. The manosphere actively undermines several of those assumptions.
When a young man has spent hours absorbing content that tells him vulnerability is weakness, that therapy is a scam, that “real men” handle their problems alone — the poster in the break room about your Employee Assistance Programme isn’t going to land. The wellbeing webinar isn’t going to connect. The invitation to “talk to someone” is going to feel, at best, irrelevant and, at worst, threatening to his sense of identity.
This isn’t about blaming individuals for what they consume online. It’s about recognising that the cultural context in which your employees exist outside of work shapes how they respond to what you offer inside it.
The signs in the workplace
You might not see someone openly quoting manosphere content at work. But you might notice attitudes that reflect its influence: dismissiveness towards mental health initiatives, reluctance to engage with wellbeing programmes, scepticism about psychological safety, or a general hardening of language around emotions and vulnerability.
You might also see it in how people treat colleagues. If the prevailing culture in a team says that toughness is valued and openness is mocked, that’s a psychosocial hazard. It doesn’t matter where it originated. The effect is the same.
What workplaces can do
This isn’t a problem you can solve with a policy or a one-off training session. But there are practical steps that help.
Don’t dismiss the influence. If you work with young men — in any sector — it’s worth understanding what they’re being exposed to. Not to police their media consumption, but to appreciate why your wellbeing messaging might not be landing.
Rethink how you talk about mental health. If your approach relies heavily on emotional language, self-referral, and therapeutic framing, you may inadvertently be excluding the people who need it most. Language matters. Framing mental health as a performance issue, a resilience issue, or a practical workplace issue can reach people that softer messaging doesn’t.
Invest in male role models. When men in leadership positions talk openly about pressure, difficulty, or their own mental health — in their own language, not in corporate-speak — it challenges this narrative more effectively than any campaign. It says: you can be strong and honest at the same time.
Address it through psychosocial risk management. Under ISO 45003, organisations are expected to identify and manage psychosocial hazards. A team culture that punishes vulnerability or ridicules emotional expression is a hazard. Treat it as one.
Create spaces that work for everyone. Peer support, buddy systems, side-by-side working, practical problem-solving groups — these formats tend to engage men who wouldn’t attend a formal wellbeing session. Meet people where they are, not where you wish they were.
This is a workplace issue
It would be easy to file this under “social media problems” or “something for parents and schools to worry about.” But the manosphere isn’t just shaping teenagers. It’s shaping employees. It’s shaping attitudes in your teams, on your sites, in your offices.
If we’re serious about creating psychologically safe workplaces, we need to understand the forces working against that — including the ones that follow people through the door every morning on their phones.
This isn’t about taking a political position. It’s about being realistic. The cultural landscape around masculinity, vulnerability, and mental health is shifting — and not always in a helpful direction. Workplaces that understand that shift will be far better placed to support the people navigating it.
Being Real works with organisations to build evidence-informed approaches to workplace mental health, including psychosocial risk management under ISO 45003. If you’d like to discuss how these issues might be affecting your workforce, we’re here to help.