2025 PROGRAM
Boys, Masculinity and the Online World
DATE:
Friday 20 March, 2026
LOCATION:
Manly Life Saving Club
COST:
$25.00
Educational outcomes for boys are declining, while online culture increasingly shapes how young men understand power, success, gender and identity. This session brings together a crime writer exploring violence and alienation (Blunt), a researcher examining boys’ education (James) and a journalist/writer navigating these pressures first-hand (Toohey). From influencers and algorithms to fiction that explores violence, alienation and belonging, the panel examines how digital spaces are reshaping masculinity, how schools and families are struggling to keep up, and what more honest conversations with boys might look like.
A challenging yet grounded conversation.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY
The Manly Writers' Festival acknowledges and thanks the original storytellers on the lands on which our events take place, the Gameraygal people of the Eora Nation. We acknowledge and respect their continuing connection and culture, and we pay our respects to ancestors and Elders, past and present, as well as emerging leaders.