Sir Gareth Southgate has made a resounding plea to save a generation of boys and young men from online “callous, manipulative and toxic influencers” who he says have taken the place of positive real-life role models.
Delivering the Richard Dimbleby Lecture on BBC 1, the former England manager touched upon his own missed penalty in the semi-final of Euro ’96, the challenges his players faced during his eight years as manager and also his recent experiences which he says have persuaded him there is a “crisis” facing young men and boys.
During his time as England manager, Southgate encouraged his players to discuss their emotions and share their own personal stories. He admitted that there were times when some of them wept as they talked about their past and growing up.
Speaking this month, Southgate said that: “Young men are suffering. They are feeling isolated. They’re grappling with their masculinity and with their broader place in society.” He said that he had spent time visiting schools, and also a prison, since he stepped down from the England job after defeat in the final of Euro 2024 last year and wondered whether the opportunity to develop the sense of resilience he came to as a young man was still there now.
Southgate said that the unrelenting pressure of social media on smartphones, where a teenage mistake could go round the world, and the bombardment of images of the perfect body and the perfect lifestyle, meant that modern day challenges were “unique”. He said that developing resilience meant that parents could not shield their children from failure in the real world, and that the greatest dangers were online.
Southgate said: “As one mother told me recently: ‘One of the most impactful things we can do for women is to focus on improving young men.’ So why is this happening? Why do so many young men feel lost, isolated, or without hope?
“From an early age, young boys need to fail often and learn fast. Falling off a bike, splitting up with friends, messing up exams and maybe even missing a penalty. These are the moments that test belief and build resilience. It’s a paradox that all parents face. And as a parent myself, I get it. Do we protect them from failure – out of love and support, or expose them to risks that may challenge their resolve?
‘Parents are losing control in the virtual world’
“In my opinion, if we make life too easy for young boys now we will inevitably make life harder when they grow up to be young men. Ironically, parents know exactly what their children are doing in the physical world, but they are losing control in the virtual world where young people are exposed to far more danger and failure is something that is shared with the world.
“The result is that too many young men are at risk of fearing failure, precisely because they’ve had so few opportunities to experience and overcome it. They fail to try rather than try and fail.”
Past Dimbleby Lectures have been given by computer scientist and father of the internet, Tim Berners-Lee; Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates; author Sir Terry Pratchett; and Prince William.
He quoted the Centre for Social Justice findings that 2.5 million children in Britain have no father figure at home, “an epidemic of fatherlessness”, compounded by a fall in access to father figures at sport clubs and community centres. Southgate noted that the chief cause of death for males under the age of 50 in Britain was suicide.
‘Callous, manipulative and toxic influencers’
Southgate said: “As real-world communities and mentorship declines, young men end up withdrawing, reluctant to talk or express their emotions. They spend more time online searching for direction and are falling into unhealthy alternatives like gaming, gambling and pornography. And this void is filled by a new kind of role model who does not have their best interest at heart.
“These are callous, manipulative and toxic influencers, whose sole drive is for their own gain. They willingly trick young men into believing that success is measured by money or dominance, never showing emotion, and that the world, including women, is against them.”
Southgate said that a key part of his approach as England manager, during which the team reached a World Cup semi-final and two Euros finals, was “owning your own story”, was about the players understanding their place in a tradition as old as the national team. During his time in charge Southgate introduced the legacy number tradition which assigns each new cap – and every player going back to 1872 – his own chronological number in the sequence of men who have been capped by England.
He said: “I wanted to really get to know my players, and spent a lot of time talking to each of them about their lives, their hopes, and their fears. They were happy to talk to me and they were happy to talk to each other.
“Players looked forward to meeting up. We had fun. We laughed together and at times even these strong powerful men, opened up to me about their feelings and cried on my shoulder. And that’s fine by the way. I think it’s an important message for young men today. It was these connections and relationships that created the belief and resilience that carried us beyond where we might have gone when times got really tough. We weren’t just playing for the badge, we were playing for each other.
Southgate said that as a society, Britain needed to do more to help young people in “a culture that doesn’t judge them only by how well they succeed, but by how much they grow, by the effort they put in and the character they develop.” He added that he looked forward to playing a role in that too.
Richard Dimbleby Lecture with Sir Gareth Southgate is available now on BBC iPlayer and on BBC One at 10:40pm on Wednesday, March 19
