New report ‘Inside the Mind of a 16-year-old’, speaks to 700 of Britain’s newest teen voters – and finds Tate’s influence is ‘dead’
On International Men’s Day this week, the Prime Minister read out a moving letter to his teenage son. “I do know it’s not easy growing up in this day and age,” Keir Starmer said. “I know there are pressures on young men that are difficult to talk about and questions that, frankly, are difficult to answer. Questions about mental health, masculinity and social media.”
Then he spoke about Stephen Graham‘s Netflix series about a 13-year-old boy arrested for murder. “I remember when we watched Adolescence together,” the PM said. “As a dad it was tough to see at times. But if there is one hope I have it’s that we keep talking, keep learning from each other.”
Since Adolescence debuted in March, our national story around young people has become a one-shot narrative leading directly to Andrew Tate, and one of moral panic about young men. But a new report – ‘Inside the Mind of a 16-year-old’– has found something more complex.
“Young people are far better at navigating the online world than people give them credit for,” the report’s co-author Peter Hyman, a former headteacher and advisor to Sir Keir and Tony Blair told me, ‘They are good at checking what they read, if they don’t believe it. And skilled at getting a range of inputs.” Young men, he says, are not all being corrupted online. “Far from it. They were mostly trying to get on in life, and learn how to be more resilient, become fitter, and learn how to make money.”
When Hyman and co-author Shuab Gamote interviewed over 700 young people to find out what makes Britain’s newest voters tick, it was a real world – not virtual – issue that followed them around the country, “Very quickly,” the authors write, “we realised something important. Tate is dead. Not literally, of course. But in the way young people use the term “dead”, meaning irrelevant.”
On the other hand, “knife crime came up in nearly every session we ran – often unprompted… It was personal. It was close. In some cases, it was routine. Politicians’ failure to act on it, is a symbol for young people that they don’t care – or if they do care they don’t deliver.” Both authors were struck by the “scale” of sexual harassment and misogyny faced by teenage girls. One girl told them: “Not a single one of the men I know have ever been sexually assaulted but every single girl I know, including myself, has been. That goes to show a lot.”
A girl from Sheffield complained about a boy “you’d almost consider a friend” sharing unwanted intimate images. “It’s not nice to see… it makes you feel like I don’t ever want to see you again after you think that’s appropriate.” In Oldham, one male student said that TikTok “builds this idea that to be a man you have to dominate.”
This is the same cohort we followed during the last election for our Daily Mirror ‘If Year 9 were in No 10‘ project. Young people who will take part in the next elections, if new legislation is completed in time. Hyman, who quit as Tony Blair’s strategist and chief speechwriter to become a teacher, eventually co-founding School 21 and speaking skills charity Voice 21, and Gamote, a former scholar at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, want these new voters to be heard.
“We expected politics to come up,” they write. “But, maybe naively, we didn’t expect how often young people told us they simply didn’t feel safe. From Bristol to Oldham to Sunderland, young people talked about carrying a sense of anxiety of looking over their shoulder on the way home, of knowing which streets to avoid, of having fewer and fewer places to go where they could relax without worry…
“We are quick to criticise young people for being glued to their phones, for living in algorithmic bubbles or idolising influencers but we have systematically removed the spaces where they once built friendships, learned trust and figured themselves out. If you take away the youth club and the sports hall and the community centre, you shouldn’t be surprised when the online world from the safety of your bedroom becomes the default option.
“Knife crime is part of a deeper social pattern. It’s not just about weapons or gangs. It’s about what happens when public spaces shrink and young people are left to navigate their world without guidance, protection or belonging. The solution won’t come from tougher sentencing alone. It will come from rebuilding trust and that means rebuilding space. Offline, open and safe.”
The authors found schools struggling to keep up. “We’ve had the Andrew Tate assembly,” as one young person told them, wearily. They say: “Some students rolled their eyes. Others described him as ‘just a meme now’.” But the researchers did find a new landscape heavily divided by gender. “Boys get all the grindset, masculinity content,” one young person told them. “Girls get beauty and self-care. No wonder we don’t understand each other.”
Boys were far more likely to mention influencers such as Tate, American YouTubers I ShowSpeed (Darren Jason Watkins Jr) and MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson), while girls were more likely to namecheck American artists Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez or US model Bella Hadid.
Meanwhile, the authors say young men are as influenced by Only Fans creator Bonnie Blue and 62-year-old ‘anti-woke’ Canadian Professor Jordan Peterson as they are by Tate. A girl in Bristol told them: “You know when guys watch Peterson because suddenly they’re talking about feminism like it’s ruining their lives.” A boy from Birmingham said: “he tells you to sort your life out.. clean your room, be disciplined. That’s attractive when nobody else is really talking to you.”
Meanwhile the report reveals the grim grip of porn creators on young people’s lives. “Many creators slip easily between everyday vlogging and explicit adult material,” the report says. “This is reshaping how young people think about sex, intimacy and their own self-worth.”
A student in Sheffield said: “It’s literally everywhere now. You can be scrolling on Instagram and suddenly you’re watching someone who’s basically an OnlyFans model. It’s not even something you choose.” Another participant from Sheffield said: “It’s weird, because you don’t go looking for it, it’s just there, linked in everyone’s bio, like everyone’s doing it.”
This is the first generation who will vote at 16, and although the remain stubbornly optimistic about their futures, their political disillusionment is writ large. “I’ve seen three Prime Ministers in a year and none of them seemed to care about what we care about,” a Sunderland student sad. Another said: “I’m proud to be British. But I don’t think Britain is proud of us.”
The authors have an urgent message. “16-year-olds are about to enter the electorate,” Hyman and Gamote say. “We can either talk at them, or work with them to build a lasting and meaningful dialogue… This report is an invitation to choose the second path… to do the patient work that helps young people become the citizens they are already trying to be.”