5 ways to protect your son from online radicalization, according to a therapist

Remember when our biggest parenting worry was whether our kids were getting too much screen time? Those sweet, innocent days when “online safety” meant teaching them not to share their real names in Club Penguin? Yeah, those days are long gone, and frankly, they feel like a different universe now.

I have two biracial teenagers—one boy, one girl—and I’ve had the strange privilege of watching my son’s relationship with the internet evolve from building elaborate Minecraft worlds with elementary school friends to navigating the post-pandemic digital landscape where algorithmic rabbit holes can lead to some truly dark places. His early online years were spent in the safety of Toca Boca apps and supervised gaming sessions. But then high school hit, the pandemic locked everyone inside with their screens, and suddenly the same technology that once entertained my kid was potentially radicalizing other people’s children.

Here’s what keeps me up at night: I’ve spent years worrying about sending my Black son out into a world where kids who look like him get shot for wearing hoodies while holding Skittles. But this particular danger? This one starts at home, in our WiFi networks, through the devices we pay for. And the cruel irony is that while I worry about external threats to my son’s safety, I also know that males of all backgrounds can fall victim to these false narratives of victimhood and rage. Meanwhile, girls like my daughter are left running defense against the toxic masculinity these online spaces cultivate.

Thankfully, there are experts who understand this landscape better than most of us stumbling through modern parenting. Jeff Guenther, LPC—known as @therapyjeff on social media—recently shared five crucial strategies for preventing white boys from online radicalization. His insights aren’t just for white families, though; they’re essential for any parent raising boys in this digital age.

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The victim story trap

“At some point your son may say he feels attacked for just being white or male,” Guenther explains. “Don’t roll your eyes, but also don’t coddle him either.” This is where parental finesse becomes crucial—and honestly, where many of us want to just hide under a blanket and pretend the internet doesn’t exist.

Here’s the thing that makes this so insidious: extremist groups don’t start with hate. They start with empathy. They tell lonely, confused boys that their feelings are valid, that someone finally understands their struggles. It’s emotional grooming disguised as belonging. “Extremist groups that are just a podcast away groom boys by telling them the lie that they’re the real victims of feminism or diversity,” Guenther notes. “That victim story is one of the earliest hooks turning isolation into blame that’s easy to weaponize.”

As a parent watching my own son navigate identity formation in this landscape, I’ve realized we can’t dismiss these feelings as teenage drama. When my son mentioned feeling caught in the middle during heated discussions about race at school—too Black for some conversations, not Black enough for others—my first instinct was to dismiss it as typical teenage identity struggles. But Guenther’s point hit home: we need to acknowledge the discomfort while teaching “the difference between discomfort and oppression and offering healthier narratives about belonging and fairness.”

Translation: We need to have these uncomfortable conversations before Andrew Tate does it for us.

Emotional literacy isn’t optional

Here’s where we often fail our boys spectacularly. “If your son can’t name or regulate his feelings, he’s way more likely to turn rejection into rage,” Guenther notes. “Teach him how to say ‘I feel lonely’ instead of ‘girls are the problem.'”

I think about this every time I watch my son struggle to articulate what he’s feeling. He feels deeply—I can see it in his body language, his sudden quietness, the way he retreats to his room—but getting him to put words to those emotions is like trying to perform surgery with oven mitts. As a writer who prides herself on having more than enough words for any situation, this has been one of our biggest challenges his entire life. He always gets there eventually, but it takes what seems like the perfect barometric pressure and me stepping on the third stair as I’m about to go to bed for him to finally open up about what’s really bothering him.

The scary part is how natural this progression feels. When you’re a teenage boy dealing with complex emotions you can’t name, and someone online tells you that your loneliness is actually girls’ fault, that your academic struggles are due to affirmative action, that your social anxiety is because society has made men the enemy—well, that feels a lot easier than sitting with the messy reality that sometimes life just sucks and feelings are hard.

“Feelings don’t disappear just because you ignore them. They leak out as resentment and contempt and then far worse,” Guenther warns. Those feelings are going somewhere—the question is whether they’re going toward healthy processing or toward online communities that will validate and weaponize that pain.

Healthy masculinity starts at home

“If all he hears is ‘man up’ and ‘don’t cry,‘ he’s going to find belonging in toxic online spaces that reward cruelty,” Guenther warns. The brutal truth? “If you won’t let him be vulnerable, he’ll settle for being violent.”

This one is tricky because we’ve never discouraged emotional expression at home. Just today, a photo from 10 years ago popped up on my phone of my son with his elementary school buddies, embraced in a three-way hug—showing affection has always been natural for him. As he’s gotten older, I’ve watched him sometimes pull back from that openness.

But here’s what I’ve learned: we WANT the world to be one that rewards emotional connectivity and authentic leadership, because ultimately that’s what makes it a better place for everyone. Sadly, that’s not where we’re at right now—but that makes it more important than ever to reward these qualities ourselves and raise the people who can help right the ship. The old model of masculinity isn’t just harmful—it’s actively working against the future we’re trying to build.

“Show him that strength includes kindness, sensitivity, and respect,” Guenther advises, “or Reddit will happily show him the opposite.” And some corners of Reddit’s version of masculinity? They’re built on the lie that cruelty equals strength, that empathy is weakness, that real men take what they want without considering the impact on others.

Digital literacy is parental responsibility

Here’s where many of us are failing hard: “Stop pretending he’s just gaming. He’s also in Discord servers, YouTube rabbit holes, and TikTok feeds being told who to hate.”

This reality check hit me like a truck. While I was celebrating that my son was “just” playing video games instead of getting into trouble, he was simultaneously being exposed to voice chats, recommended videos, and comment sections that I never even knew existed. The gaming lobby where he played Fortnight with friends? Also a space where someone might casually drop racial slurs or misogynistic jokes. That innocent YouTube search for gaming tutorials? It can lead to a pipeline of increasingly extreme content designed to capture and hold teenage male attention.

“Teach him what algorithms are and how propaganda works,” Guenther insists, “or the internet will raise him for you.” This isn’t about becoming surveillance parents or banning technology altogether. It’s about helping our kids develop the same critical thinking skills for digital media that we (hopefully) taught them for traditional media. When my son was younger, we talked about how commercials try to manipulate us into buying things. Now we need to have equally explicit conversations about how online content is designed to manipulate emotions, shape worldviews, and profit from engagement—regardless of whether that engagement is healthy or harmful.

Real-world connection is everything

“Isolation is rocket fuel for radicalization,” Guenther states bluntly. If our kids don’t feel connected in real life, they’ll seek belonging online—and those spaces “will happily hand him an identity built on cruelty.”

This is where the post-pandemic landscape becomes particularly treacherous. My son’s early high school years were marked by lockdowns, canceled activities, and social distancing—exactly when teenagers most need to be figuring out who they are through real-world relationships and experiences. Instead, an entire generation of boys formed their identities primarily through screens, in spaces where the loudest, most extreme voices often get the most attention.

The antidote sounds almost ridiculously simple: “Get your sons off Discord. Don’t give them weapons. Give them belongings.” Band, D&D groups, improv classes, woodworking, archery, volunteering—whatever makes them feel connected and creative. But here’s the catch: this requires us as parents to prioritize and facilitate these connections, even when it’s inconvenient, even when driving to yet another activity feels overwhelming, even when our kids initially resist.

He’s in college now, but over the years I watched my son’s confidence and emotional regulation improve dramatically when he’d engage in activities where he felt competent and valued. The version of himself that emerged from football practice or volunteer work was curious, collaborative, and kind. The version that emerged after hours of isolated gaming was often irritable, defensive, and disconnected. The difference isn’t the technology itself—it’s the human connection.

The bottom line

As Guenther puts it: “Talk to him about the feelings he’s feeling before some manosphere influencer does it for you because if you don’t shape his world, the algorithm will and you’re not going to like the result.”

This isn’t about perfect parenting or having all the answers. It’s about staying engaged, asking hard questions, and refusing to let algorithms do our job for us. Because at the end of the day, our kids are going to get their worldview from somewhere. The question is: will it be from us or from strangers online who profit from their anger?

Jeff Guenther, LPC, is a licensed professional counselor and the founder of TherapyDen, a therapist directory. He shares mental health insights and parenting advice on social media @therapyjeff.