Young men in this country are in crisis. An increasing number are disengaged from work, education and society. An increasing number are being radicalised into the far right through social media. And an increasing number are being signed off on mental health grounds.

There are many factors behind these trends. But there is one that is barely discussed in mainstream politics, one that connects all three. It is a drug. It is not illegal to possess. It can cost as little as £3.50 per week, often purchased through apps such as WhatsApp or Telegram, and posted through Royal Mail. It is incredibly accessible and insanely cheap. It is being promoted to boys as young as 12 by influencers with tens of millions of followers. And almost nobody in our politics is talking about it. That drug is anabolic steroids.

The growth in use is being driven by an online philosophy known as the “blackpill”, promoted through TikTok under terms like “looksmaxing”. This is a part of the wider online manosphere. The blackpill claims that physical appearance is the ultimate form of status, that your looks should be your main, or only, priority, and that your appearance is the reason you lack friends, sexual relationships, financial opportunities and a more fulfilled life. It preys on the insecurities of young men and boys. One of the methods it promotes is anabolic steroids: not just to accelerate muscle growth, but on false claims that artificially elevated testosterone levels can reshape your facial structure. Google searches for “looksmax” are up 300% in the UK since 2023, with steroid-related searches up 30% over the same period.

This is not a niche corner of the internet. The hashtag “looksmax” is associated with over 500,000 videos on TikTok. “Tren” (Trenbolone), one of the most potent compounds, first developed in the 1960s to bulk up cattle, is associated with over 10.3 million videos on TikTok. Arguably the most prominent creator in this space, Clavicular (real name Braden Peters, aged 20), has accumulated 27 million likes on TikTok and earns over $110,000 per month from live streaming alone, before revenue from TikTok, YouTube, sponsorships or his paid looksmaxing course. He says he started injecting testosterone at 14. Any teenager who can navigate social media can source anabolic steroids within minutes.

But steroids are just the entry point. More extreme measures pushed in these communities include encouraging boys aged 16 or under to inject human growth hormone to grow taller before their growth plates close, injectable peptides such as Melanotan-2, used to achieve artificially tanned skin and linked to skin cancer, or “bone-smashing”, the pseudoscientific claim that causing microfractures to your facial bones will make them heal into a more “masculine” shape.

There is also a far-right dimension that should concern us all. These influencers are a pipeline to extremism. Once you begin watching this content, TikTok’s algorithm funnels increasingly extreme material to viewers. Clavicular has streamed and collaborated with the likes of Andrew Tate and Nick Fuentes, a self-confessed white nationalist. In one appearance alongside Fuentes, Clavicular advocated for “saving European culture” by looksmaxing and taking anabolic steroids. You do not have to look far in this online community to find young men sharing Hitler speeches translated to English, often edited with footage of 1930s Germany into cinematic montages, open misogyny, or intense discussion of anti-semitic conspiracies. From my own experience of interacting with these accounts, this content is being routinely pushed to boys as young as 12, 13, 14 years old. The general theme is not just extremism, but withdrawal from society entirely.

The numbers should concern us. An estimated one million men in the UK are using steroids, a figure cited by the UK Anti-Doping Agency six years ago in 2020. A 2023 survey of men in Wales found that 6.2% had used steroids in the last 12 months, with a mean age of just 33. Apply that average rate to the UK’s 3.8 million males aged 16 to 24 and you arrive at around a quarter of a million young men. Factor in that UKAD identifies this age group as being most at risk, and this number could well be considerably higher. Potentially up to 10% of 16 to 24-year-old men are experimenting with their hormones and health, right now.

Unlike most other drugs, anabolic steroids are a varied group of compounds, and young men routinely mix and match several at once, with little or no guidance on how to safely choose which compounds to “run”. Since this small study of fewer than 1,500 people took place in 2023, the problem has almost certainly grown. We do not know the true scale of it. The potential long-term physical health impacts include cardiovascular damage, liver strain and infertility.

These numbers sit alongside a wider crisis of disengagement. There are over 500,000 male NEETs aged 16 to 24, and over 230,000 under-25s on the UC health element, an increasing number signed off on mental health grounds. Not every young man using steroids will develop mental health issues or fall down the far-right rabbit hole. But the increase in use, driven by manosphere influencers, is contributing to the rise in youth unemployment and the youth mental health crisis. There is a widely reported ketamine epidemic among young people, yet only around 120,000 16 to 24-year-olds use ketamine in a year. Anabolic steroid use in the same age group could easily be double or triple that figure, every single week. The truth is we don’t know the full scale of the problem, and that in itself should alarm us.

This is my first article for Liberal Democrat Voice. I am 24 years old, based in Plymouth, and joined the party at the start of the year. I will be attending my first party conference this week and welcome any further discussion on this issue.

* Rees Southern is a member in Plymouth