Daria Gusa was 16 and still at school, when she says she received a private message on Instagram from Andrew Tate, a high-profile influencer almost 20 years older than her.

"It just read 'Romanian girl' and he put some flirty emoji," Daria told me. "I was confused because I [only] had 200 followers, and it was a private account."

She is one of two teenagers who have described to the BBC how Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan approached them online, apparently using a standard formula.

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But assertions that Tate’s rise is a product of today’s young men and their views are wrong. In fact, Tate repeatedly failed to build a personal brand until TikTok gave him the means to saturate news feeds.

Archives of his website show that his business and his pitch to young men was the same four years ago as it is today. As far back as 2019, his website promised courses that would “have your girlfriend obey every command”.

So if Tate’s ambitions and pitch to young men have stayed the same, what changed? The answer lies in how Tate learned to game TikTok’s algorithm, allowing his content to flood millions of news feeds.

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Intelligent, articulate and disciplined - that's how secondary school teacher Charlotte Carson describes Andrew Tate, the online influencer who is a role model to many of the boys at her school in Belfast.

But the problem is, she says, Andrew Tate is also pathetic, insecure, and promotes "Taliban beliefs" about how to treat women.

Schools across the UK are encountering increasing numbers of pupils who admire Tate - and so teachers are having to work out how to respond.

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It is not difficult to imagine harmful or abusive behaviours being present on social media. What can be challenging to deal with is the presence of popular online personalities or influencers who become well-known and even famous for exhibiting this behaviour over online platforms. This is especially concerning when children and young people begin to view this harmful content online.

iNEQE's online safety experts have recently received reports of children as young as 11 quoting online personality Andrew Tate at school, even resulting in acts of violence towards female peers. We have taken a closer look at who Tate is, as well as the behaviours he encourages.

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The clamour for the drink should not be laughed away as the obvious result of scarcity created by a cynical branded content deal between two of the best-known social media influencers – Logan Paul and KSI. Instead, it should be viewed as a wakeup call for parents that monetising misogyny – rather than athleticism, good looks or video game prowess – is only a step removed.

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Before Zara McDermott appeared on the reality show Love Island in 2018, she says she had a healthy relationship with food and exercise - and she’d never even looked at a calorie.

But finding fame on the popular dating show brought online trolls and bullying, with people commenting on her “body, waist, hips and legs” for the first time in her life.

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