This boy was lying to me. I could tell from the way he swiveled in his chair, fluffing up and then patting down his shaggy hair. I could tell from the rehearsed sentences he fed me, his voice bored and monotone. “I’m a white man,” he stated. “I have a lot of advantages in the world.”

Normally, I would have felt pleased that he acknowledged his privilege. It’s rare for a teenager to admit they are systematically advantaged. But his eyes were glazed over, and he was checking the time on his phone. I knew he wasn’t going to tell me the truth unless I gave him permission.

So I paused the recording I was making and leaned in, telling him I wasn’t trying to cancel him for racist or sexist opinions. I just wanted to hear his perspective. And when I restarted my phone’s voice memo, I was talking to a different person. He knew what he wanted to say; he just didn’t think I wanted to hear it. All it took was permission to shed his progressive facade. This didn’t surprise me because I know he’s not alone.

A survey done in the spring of 2025 showed that only 7% of men ages 18-29 thought that diversity, equity and inclusion programs helped them. This aligns with polling that finds 54% of men in the same age range voted for President Donald Trump. Trump’s approval numbers have declined among young people, but liberalism is still losing boys my age to the ideology of the manosphere — which is exactly what I heard from my classmate when that facade came down.

I knew that boisterous talking heads like Charlie Kirk and Joe Rogan flooded the social media feeds of teenage boys and young men. I wanted to see if this was true even in my own left-leaning high school in New York City. In mid-April, I set out to interview teenage boys in my life. I needed to know if the boys I cared about, that I had hopes for, subscribed to the digital misogyny of the internet.

I suspected that young men, especially white and straight ones, were moving toward the right because they felt unwelcome on the left. The fear of being “canceled” has been ingrained in many teenagers — boys in particular — who attend liberal schools since 2020, when many came to see cancel culture as a life-ruining threat. It was a small step from fearing cancel culture to hating “wokeism.”

To start one interview, I opened my laptop and pulled up four videos: two of Joe Rogan from his podcast, the first talking about open borders and immigration and the second on transgender athletes. One of Andrew Tate ranting about the evils of wokeism and one of Charlie Kirk arguing about systemic racism with a Black college student. In between the clips, I asked my male classmates why they thought these would be enticing or persuasive to young men.

The first response I got was about aesthetics. “You can see in the video he’s built,” said a senior, who had to cram in the interview right before a baseball game. “Athletes are some of the biggest role models for teenage boys.” The mention of appearance reared its head again when a sophomore described Rogan as “very masculine.” The interviewee, sporting a mullet and a white tank top undershirt, explained that “a bald guy with a deep voice” is more appealing than “a woke 25-year-old.”

The other recurring theme was that these high school boys spotted the powerful rhetoric and fearmongering they saw on my computer screen. Rogan’s views on immigration “connect to this idea of being under attack,” said one junior boy. White men are “under siege,” he added. Is this true? I asked. Doesn’t matter, he answered: Extreme rhetoric like that “makes everything just kind of simple and quotable.”

It was only when I asked these boys if they were liberal that I got any indication they didn’t actually support the men from the videos. Almost all of these teens told me they were liberal, and yet they could see the manosphere’s appeal.

The rest of us can’t afford to stand by. This half of the population needs to feel at home on the left. Democrats should be mindful to welcome young white men who don’t agree with every progressive policy, ensuring they are still offered a seat at the table to help create a fairer, more equitable country.

The divisive appeal from the other side has proved to be powerful. “From what I’ve seen,” one of my classmates told me, the liberals “say all these [negative] things about young white men and Trump doesn’t. … Why would we get behind ill fortune to ourselves?” The president seems to be the champion of a group that will outlast him: young white men who feel that the liberals have made them the enemy.

The Democratic Party isn’t actually antiwhite or antimale, of course, but it’s not enough to say that. Democrats need to make clear that they welcome the support of people who may not agree with every aspect of the left’s agenda. Relatability is important as well: Leaders should go where young people are and be likable. “Going on podcasts can help,” said one junior boy when asked what Democrats can be doing to reach out to younger audiences. “They need to get views.”

These classmates of mine are a few years away from voting. It’s their responsibility to fight for healthy discourse, for spaces outside of Instagram and TikTok to talk about politics. Don’t consider disagreement the foe of unity, consider it the necessary stepping stone. Demand a space from the left. There is work to be done — so much work. But I have faith that my peers will vote in the future with their mothers and sisters in mind. I just hope I’m not naive to think that.

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Naomi Beinart is a high school student in New York.

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