All across social media, there has been a rise of a new type of influencer: Alpha Males.

Alpha Males are normally characterized by their arrogant and overconfident attitudes, misogynistic views, and their sermon-like dialogue. The most well-known Alpha Male is British-American internet personality, Andrew Tate.

Tate initially rose to fame for his online course, Tate University, which targeted young men and taught them how to make money through stocks, crypto, and bitcoin. At $49.99 per month, many have deemed this course as overpriced or just a straight-up scam. The 35-year-old used this platform to produce content expressing his opinions about women and society and urged his subscribers to do the same, even giving a sum of money to those who did.

In around June of 2022, Tate began to go viral on social platforms such as TikTok, Twitter, Youtube, and Instagram when clips of him on various podcasts began circulating on the internet.

In one clip from the Grilling Podcast (Season 2 Ep. 7), hosted by Chian Reynolds, Tate was quoted as saying, “The masculine perspective is you have to understand that life is war”.

Approaching life with this violent mindset and perpetuating those beliefs online does huge amounts of harm to young viewers, especially to young boys.

One study from ScienceDirect found that, when looking at the general population, “men are reported to commit violent acts significantly more frequently than women.”

Tate’s audience generally falls between ages 13-25 the The frontal cortex, which is the part of the brain that controls judgement, isn’t fully developed until age 25, which puts Andrew Tate in a perfect position for forming a cult-like community. This lack of judgement and critical thinking skills combined with violent attitudes and beliefs, which are mainly geared towards women, lead to assult, bullying, harassment, etc.

Continuing to give Tate a platform allows for more and more young men to fall into his trap. Once these boys get into this way of thinking and become brainwashed by the propaganda, it is extremely hard to change their way of thinking.

Preventative measures like flagging all of his content, even reposts, can really help this issue by stopping it before it even starts.

Tate also stated that, in his opinion, “depression is not real”.

This discrediting of serious mental health issues, especially those of teen and adolescent men, further feeds into the stigmas surrounding men’s mental health. According to Harvard Health Publishing, “10-15% of men will develop major depression at some point in their life”. Still, many men will never seek help because of the “strong man” archetype, which is further perpetuated by influencers like Andrew Tate.

These clips, and many others, caused widespread controversy because many viewed his line of thinking and statements as toxic and harmful.

Tate has claimed that some of what he says is a “character” and that he “plays it up”, but young viewers might look up to Tate and not be able to differentiate between reality and this supposed “character”.

As well as his statements on ‘proper masculinity’, Tate’s personal life has sparked some dispute.

In 2016, Tate was kicked off of the show Big Brother UK when a video of him being abusive towards his then-girlfriend surfaced on the internet. Tate denied that any sort of abuse was going on in the video (his ex backed up his claims as well), but this was questioned when he fled to Romania in 2017 to escape more abuse allegations and a police investigation in the UK.

Despite his problematic attributes, Tate’s accounts have continued to grow. His Instagram had over four million before he got banned on all of his socials. Despite the ban, countless fan accounts have kept his content circulating. The hashtag #andrewtate on TikTok has 16.6 billion views alone.

Tate is impacting millions of young, not fully developed minds with his harmful rhetoric and opinions. A ban on Tate’s accounts won’t be enough; social media platforms need to ban ALL of his content and fan accounts to stop his detrimental harm to society.