The Margins (3/15/2026)

where we think about male teachers, weapons, and snacks

Mar 16, 2026

What does AI mean for masculinity?

There’s been a lot of recent media coverage about masculinity and adolescent development. Multiple media features have brought the dangers of echo chambers and exploitative content that are geared towards teenage boys to the mainstream conversation, and much of it focuses on the role that technology plays in this crisis.

This is a topic I’ll dig deeper into in a future post, but this week I spent time thinking about what role AI will play in making this crisis worse. I’m not so much questioning whether AI will worsen it (that seems obvious to me) but I do wonder just how much faster it will worsen things.

AI is already showing up across several dimensions of this problem. A few weeks ago, I commented on Claude’s Super Bowl ad, and how it perpetuated stereotypes of male bodies. We’ve also seen the rise of deepfakes being used to bully and harm women, especially on X with the use of Grok to make nonconsensual explicit pictures of any woman. And, Vox recently ran a feature on how teenagers are using AI to ask questions about love and dating.

At the same time, we continue to see more evidence that young boys need more healthy male role models. Even as some schools continue to increase screen time and reduce human interaction, other schools are attempting to recruit more male teachers from their community to build those healthier bonds.

I worry that the combination of an existing crisis of identity combined with further echo chambering, limitless tools to modify your own image (and your victim’s), sycophancy from chatbots, and further isolation from human relationships will all converge. I’m hoping there’s a role that schools can play in mitigating this, and more responsible tech usage is probably one good starting point.

A fictional normative case study based on current events:

You are Dr. Boris, a superintendent of a large public school system in the United States. Over the last few years, you have focused on helping individual schools navigate how to respond to AI’s growing impact on education. You’ve tried everything from fully banning it on school computers to purchasing a teacher-facing platform and offering a guardrailed student-facing tool.

Recently, the parents in your district are speaking out against more screen time in schools. They are frustrated with how much time students report spending on computers and tablets at schools, and then the time they are expected to spend at home for assignments. They point to the growing number of studies that show the negative developmental impacts of technology on children. Your individual schools are handling responding to the parent feedback to incorporate as much as possible.

At the same time, you have been working with donors, local policymakers, and a nonprofit organization to design an AI-first high school in your district. After seeing national moves to build more tech-savvy school programs, you want to make sure your district doesn’t fall behind and with the support of your task force, you feel prepared to keep up with the progress.

The nonprofit is providing substantial evidence of academic gains from other schools they’ve helped design in the suburbs outside your district. In just one year, more students are coming to school, are reading closer to grade level, and are appearing engaged in curricular/co-curricular activities during the day.

But now, with the parent backlash you are worried about launching something new that might attract further backlash. The initial board reveal was mixed with many board members concerned about the lack of concrete definition around what technology-forward schooling meant. They are concerned that the district still doesn’t have a unified response to how to adapt their schools to the threats of AI. Others were excited to provide a direct path to higher-earning jobs for students in a traditionally resource-deprived area of the city. They also pointed out that this could provide an opportunity to learn lessons that might apply to the rest of the city.

You have enough votes to pass the resolution, and you worry about donors and external partners losing interest if you wait too long to act on the program. You also don’t want to cause a public scandal or rush your decisions.

What would you do and how would you explain it?

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