BOYS BECOMING MEN
Understanding Boys in the Digital Age: Beyond the “Social Media Panic”
A 4-Day Online Clinical Certificate Training
📅 Weekend 1
Saturday 20 June 2026
Sunday 21 June 2026
📅 Weekend 2
Saturday 4 July 2026
Sunday 5 July 2026
🕘 9:30 am – 4:30 pm each day
💻 Live Online Training (Zoom)
All sessions will be fully recorded, allowing participants to revisit material or catch up if they miss a session.
with James Byrne MSc
Psychotherapist • Clinical Supervisor • Educator
Founder of The Threshold Practice & Rainbow Minds Centre
Why This Training Matters
For more than a decade, research and cultural analysis have been raising concerns about the pressures shaping male development.
These include:
• Digital childhoods shaped by smartphones and social media
• Pornography acting as informal sex education
• Loneliness and declining male friendships
• Online communities shaping ideas about masculinity
• Confusion about identity, intimacy and belonging
• Increasing influence of the “manosphere”
Yet professional training programmes still offer very little guidance on how these forces are affecting the emotional lives of boys — and how they influence the transition into young adulthood.
What Is Going Wrong?
Many professionals working with young people sense that something is shifting in the emotional lives of boys.
Across schools, therapy rooms and youth settings we are increasingly seeing boys who feel:
• socially isolated despite constant digital connection
• unsure how to express vulnerability or emotional need
• confused about masculinity and their place in the world
• intensely sensitive to rejection, humiliation and status
• drawn toward online communities that promise belonging and certainty
At the same time, many of the traditional pathways through which boys once developed identity — mentorship, shared activities, and male friendship groups — have weakened or disappeared.
In their place, boys are often turning to digital culture to answer fundamental developmental questions:
What does it mean to be a man?
Where do I belong?
How do relationships work?
What gives me status and value?
Understanding this changing landscape is essential for anyone working with boys today.
Why This Conversation Is Happening Now
In recent years, the emotional lives of boys and young men have increasingly become the focus of public discussion, research and cultural reflection.
Conversations about loneliness, masculinity, technology and identity are appearing across psychology, education, journalism and media. Many professionals are recognising that the developmental environment for boys has changed dramatically within a relatively short period of time.
Smartphones, social media and digital culture have altered how boys experience friendship, status, rejection and belonging. At the same time, many of the traditional pathways through which boys once developed identity — shared activities, mentorship and peer groups — have weakened or disappeared.
In this environment, boys are often left trying to answer complex developmental questions without clear guidance:
How do I become a man?
Where do I belong?
What gives me status and worth?
How do relationships actually work?
Many are turning to online communities and influential voices to find these answers.
For professionals working with young people, understanding this cultural and psychological landscape is becoming increasingly important.
What This Training Explores
This training is not another conversation about “social media being bad for young people.”
Instead, it explores how the developmental environment for boys has fundamentally changed over the past decade — and what that means for those working with them.
Across four intensive days, we will explore:
The changing landscape of boyhood
How technology, smartphones and digital culture are reshaping how boys form identity, relationships and self-worth.
Loneliness and belonging
Why do many boys experience deep social isolation despite being constantly connected through social media and gaming?
Masculinity in the digital age
How online narratives about masculinity, status and success influence boys’ expectations of themselves and their place in the world.
Cultural expectations of boys and men
How societal messages about strength, emotional control, competition and independence shape the way boys understand vulnerability, connection and identity.
Influence of online role models
How high-visibility online personalities and influencers are shaping ideas about masculinity, relationships and status for many young men.
Shame, rejection and male anger
Understanding anger as a response to humiliation, status anxiety and emotional restriction.
How boys communicate
Why humour, teasing, gaming and silence often replace direct emotional expression.
Pornography and intimacy
How online sexual content is shaping expectations about relationships, bodies and sexuality.
Working effectively with boys
Practical ways professionals can engage boys who struggle to articulate their emotional worlds.
Supporting healthy pathways into manhood
Helping boys develop emotional literacy, belonging, responsibility and more grounded models of masculinity.
Who This Training Is For
This training is designed for professionals working with young people:
• Psychotherapists and counsellors
• Clinical psychologists
• Youth workers and social workers
• School counsellors and educators
• Clinical supervisors
• Advanced psychotherapy and counselling students
Training Details
📅 Weekend 1:
Saturday 20 June 2026
Sunday 21 June 2026
📅 Weekend 2:
Saturday 4 July 2026
Sunday 5 July 2026
🕘 9:30 am – 4:30 pm each day
💻 Live Online Training (Zoom)
All sessions are recorded with lifetime access for individual use only.
🎓 Certificate of Completion Provided. Can be used for CPD
Total CPD hours: 24
Investment
Full Course Fee: €575
✔ Payment plans available
✔ €75 non-refundable deposit secures your place, and the remaining balance is due in total two weeks before 1st training weekend
What Participants Will Leave With
By the end of the training, participants will leave with:
• a deeper understanding of the psychological and cultural forces shaping the lives of boys today
• clearer frameworks for understanding shame, anger, belonging and identity in male development
• insight into how technology, social media and online communities influence boys’ emotional worlds
• greater confidence engaging boys who struggle to express vulnerability or articulate their inner experiences
• practical ways of responding to anger, withdrawal, humour and resistance in therapeutic settings
• a broader understanding of how masculinity is being constructed in the digital age
• new perspectives on how professionals can support boys in developing healthier pathways into adulthood
Register
👉 Book your place:
https://forms.gle/pW6j7dR4HWkjxi9a8
About the Facilitator
James Byrne MSc is a psychotherapist, PhD researcher, clinical supervisor and educator specialising in the inner lives of boys and men.
His work explores shame, belonging, masculinity and identity in psychological development, helping professionals better understand the emotional worlds many boys and men struggle to express.