Save young men
How are young men doing? Terribly.
We are unemployed, depressed and sexually inactive. We are struggling in education, job placement and social flourishing. We are the perpetrators of our country’s recent mass shootings and political attacks.
After many generations of male dominance in almost every public realm, it can be hard to comprehend that men today are struggling. The collapse of young men’s purpose and role in society is a personal crisis and a civilizational one: When male ambition is left to rot, it ferments violence, despair, and withdrawal. Society must take steps to avoid paying a large price.
In nationwide Department of Education enrollment statistics, women comprise almost 60 percent of university graduating classes. In grade school, girls earn better grades, hold more leadership positions and speak up in class more than boys. Boys are more likely to engage with drugs and alcohol and get in fights and are significantly more likely to be suspended. Female successes in education are hard fought and well deserved yet should not prevent us from addressing struggling men.
Beyond education, young men are struggling in almost every aspect of life. According to the Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative, 28 percent of men younger than 17 experience mental, behavioral, or developmental health challenges, compared with only 23 percent of women. In 2023, men made up half of the population, but comprised 80 percent of suicides recorded by the CDC. A 2024 study by the Survey Center for American Life found that 15 percent of men have no close friendships, a fivefold increase since 1990. Meanwhile, male employment rates are steadily declining, with fewer working-age men participating in the labor force each year.
A new term has arisen to describe these unemployed men: NEETs — or, not in education, employment, or vocational training. In common terms, NEET men are what one may consider “loners” or “lost boys.”
Some of these men graduated college in 2024 or 2025 to a difficult job market and chose to remain jobless after they were unable to place into a job that matched their expectations. Women, experts say, are more likely to be flexible with job offers and accept what positions are available. Broadly, the job market for men and women with advanced degrees has slowed as AI threats loom over white-collar hiring, and tariffs have compressed the outlook of white-shoe corporations. Yale graduates are not shielded from these trends, with the News reporting declining employment rates in some specialties.
Men have the capacity for great evil. More irritable, marginalized and sexually unsatisfied men are not good for society. Look no further than Luigi Mangione.
Jobless for over a year, Mangione isolated himself from the world months prior to shooting United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. His mother reported him missing to the San Francisco Police Department after not hearing from him for months. Like many men, Mangione felt the only way out of our imperfect system was violence. So, allegedly, he chose murder.
Mangione is the extreme of a widespread problem. While some disillusioned men choose murder — like Mangione or the Parkland High School shooter Nicholas Cruz — others turn to the less extreme. Self-destruction is a common outlet — suicide and addiction rates are growing more in young men than in almost any other demographic group. Yet withdrawal may be the most common symptom of the damaged young man. We all know people who have seemingly dropped off the face of Earth to waste away their days watching porn and playing video games in their parents basement. Any version of disenfranchisement sparks the wrong trajectory; for Mangione, it started with withdrawal and ended up deadly.
If you look across history, you’ll notice a trend: large groups of unemployed, underemployed or idle young men have been the catalysts for revolutions. It was underemployed apprentices and journeymen who stormed the Bastille. It was unemployed young men whom Hitler organized to overthrow the Weimar republic and consolidate power in Germany. It was educated but unemployed young men who spearheaded the overthrow of Mubarak and Ben Ali in Egypt and Tunisia during the Arab Spring.
If we want to save young men, we need to start now. Curb pornography and social media for men under 18. Revive vocational training across the country, especially in cities hollowed out by de-industrialization where addiction runs rampant. Teach boys to read and expect them to excel. Stop teaching that masculinity itself is bad. Mandate national service, where men learn respect for something greater than themselves. Restore chivalry as an admired virtue, not a punchline. Remind young men that love, sex, and marriage are still worth fighting for, and that they have responsibilities to their wives and mothers, to their communities and country, and to God.
These solutions are easy to put into words, but hard in practice. The culture awakening required to save young men may only be possible with a strengthening of male employment opportunities, which seems unlikely as AI takes jobs.
Male idleness does not only threaten the individual flourishing of those becoming “couch potatoes,” “lost boys” and NEETs. Historical context shows us that idle men threaten the fabric of our society, and perhaps our republic. For the first time in history, the question is not how to restrain male ambition, but how to reignite it.
Joshua Danziger is a student at Yale University. This article was originally published in The Yale Daily News and is posted here with permission from Joshua Danziger.
Like most of the pictures on TeensParentsTeachers, the picture posted with this article is courtesy of a free download from Pixabay.com.