'Incel teens can't come back from brink,' campaigner warns as she backs phone ban in schools

7 May 2025, 08:06

Young boys could prevented from becoming incels if they are correctly educated on toxic masculinity from a very early age, a campaigner has told LBC.

Concerns around male toxic masculinity and violence in adolescent boys has surged in recent months and years, with controversial male influencers such as Andrew Tate having a huge impact on this demographic.

Earlier this month, teachers warned social media influencers are fuelling misogyny and sexism across Britain’s schools.

The government has already confirmed Netflix's hit show Adolescence will be made available to all secondary schools across the UK to raise awareness after the four-part drama was praised for its gritty portrayal of this behaviour.

But according to Leslee Udwin, founder of Think Equal, boys must be taught how to switch off from this harmful content long before they reach secondary school.

Think Equal's social and emotional learning programme teaching schools vital skills like empathy, emotional regulation, tolerance and gender equality between there ages of three to six - all while their brains are still being built.

Ms Udwin told LBC: "Education should be helping children understand how to navigate life, how to lead healthy relationships. You cannot reach the age of adolescence and suddenly learn how to be this, that or the other.

Read more: Adolescence leads to almost no change in use of online safety tools

Read more: 'Andrew Tate phenomena' fuelling wave of misogyny in schools, teachers warn

"By then, your brain has already got habitual ways of responding in terms of the neural pathways that have been laid, the repetition of behaviours that have caused you to always behave in a similar way or have similar attitudes.

"If we want children who are healthy, who are happy, who don't grow up to bully one another, who don't grow up to rape, who don't grow up to commit suicide, you've got to put the foundations in."

While Ms Udwin believes if may be too late for young teens to learn the vital skills she says can prevent them from developing toxic masculinity traits, there are some reactive precautions secondary schools can take.

Earlier this month, a national survey of more than 15,000 schools that at least 90% of secondary schools have some form of a mobile phone ban. In primary schools, the figures was 99.8%.

Ms Udwin said: "I think the idea of banning phones from schools is a good one. It's an important one.

"If we know something is harming our children and heaven knows, their reliance on phones and addiction to social media are all bad for them, so at least where we can control that, we should, because we have a duty of care to our children."

But while phone bans can stop children accesses sing harmful materials during school hours, there is nothing to stop them browsing pornographic sites, or finding a toxic influencer on TikTok in their spare time.

"We try to control that, don't we? But we have to start preventing. This is, for me, the main problem. This is what we've ignored," Ms Udwin said.

She added: "How do you bring an incel back from that brink? Well, by definition you can't without armies of psychologist."

"In the case of the culture of incels, not just an individual. It's impossible, the horse has bolted," she later added.

Think Equal has already been rolled out across Manchester and and Glasgow. Now, Ms Udwin is urging the Government to teach the programme in classrooms across the UK.

She added: "We have funding to give this programme for free to every child across the county"