In the modern world, who struggles more?

Men or women? Of course, it depends what

we mean by struggle. If by struggle

you're talking about something like

dating apps, then men might have women

beat. But what about the

all-encompassing term of loneliness?

Again, you'll probably say men. We're

constantly hearing about the male

loneliness epidemic plaguing first-world

countries right now and how big of a

problem it is. But what does the data

actually say? This is where things get a

little murkier. One study by the

American Institute for Boys and Men

found that men and women spend a similar

amount of time alone and report similar

levels of loneliness. However, if we

look at young women specifically, that

is women from the eighth grade all the

way to age 29, they actually report

higher rates of loneliness than young

men in most studies. And in another

survey by The Argument, women

self-reported more intense feelings of

both emotional distress and social

isolation across all age ranges. If

that's the case, then why is this crisis

of loneliness so commonly attributed to

men? What deeper truth does this reveal

about how we as men define friendships?

And what kind of damage has this been

causing to society for centuries now?

Let's explore these questions. Quick

disclaimer, throughout this video, I'm

going to be referring to statistics and

insights I first discovered in a

Substack article by Derek Thompson and

expanding upon those ideas. First, let's

give us men a little bit more validation

for our feelings of loneliness because

when it comes to making and keeping

close friends, we are absolute ass at

it. From 1990 to 2021, the percentage of

women who said they had more than 10

close friends fell from 28% to 11%. But

for men in that same time period, the

percentage dropped from 40% to just 15%.

And the size of these social circles do

matter. There is no tangible difference

in feelings of loneliness between

someone who has only one close friend

and someone who has no close friends.

But what do we even mean when we say

close friends, right? Without a

definition, that seems like a pretty

subjective term on the surface. Well, in

this context, when we're talking about

close friends, we mean people you can

reach out to when facing a personal

problem who aren't part of your family

or household. Nearly one in five

Americans reported having no close

social connections, a double-digit

increase from 2013. But for young men

specifically, the decline was much more

pronounced. More than one in four

reported having no close social

connections. Now, at this point, you

might be a little confused. Men are

experiencing greater declines in

friendships, and yet women have higher

rates of loneliness. What exactly is

going on here? In my opinion, it's a mix

of a lot of different things. How men

are up in worse at putting a name to

loneliness, how the activities we choose

slightly exacerbate this, how our

culture has subconsciously pushed us

towards self-reporting those feelings,

and the types of media men now consume.

So, I'm going to do my best to explain

all these different facets and how they

interconnect. It might seem obvious, but

in order to report that you are lonely,

you must recognize the fact that you are

lonely. And if your daily activities

don't give you the space to understand

those feelings, you're probably going to

think of loneliness as this temporary

kind of, "Oh, yeah, I'm sad and

but I'll just get over it and do

something else." Writer Richard Reeves

talks about the distinction between male

and female contexts as face-to-face

versus shoulder-to-shoulder. In short,

women and children are more likely to

meet face-to-face doing things that

don't require a centralizing activity,

while men often require a centralizing

activity as an excuse to hang out. As

Derek Thompson stated, Todd Rogers, a

professor at Harvard Kennedy School, did

a study where he went to the American

Time Use Survey, which looks at how

people spend their time, whether they're

eating, cooking, shopping, playing video

games, and he asked men and women how

likely they'd be to invite somebody to

do each of these things. For women, it

was most categories. "Yeah, I could

invite somebody to go shopping, sit and

have coffee, come over while I'm

cooking." But for guys, it was basically

watch sports or do sports. In the

Substack article, they use this to argue

that this is one of the main reasons why

men have such a tough time making

friends, but I also think it helps

explain why men, despite having fewer

close friends, report lower levels of

loneliness. Women spend more time in

contexts where they are engaging in deep

conversation and emotional disclosure.

As a result, if something feels off

socially, they're more likely to notice

it, discuss it, and label it. Men, on

the other hand, spend more time in

activity-centered environments where

attention is directed towards the task

itself, like sports, games, projects,

work, lifting, or watching a game. So,

when a man's social life deteriorates,

he might not immediately experience that

deterioration as I am lonely. Instead,

it manifests through other negative

outlets like irritability, aimlessness,

mood swings, excessive drinking, gaming,

or of course, fapping a lot. As Derek

puts it, the problem isn't that men are

lonely. The problem is that many men

wouldn't recognize loneliness if it

punched them in the gut and poured a

beer on their head. I mean, I think

loneliness itself is part of the

problem, unlike what he's suggesting

here, but being able to recognize

loneliness when it arises would

certainly help. What's to blame for

this? Well, one aspect that affects both

men and women is how incredibly easy it

is to numb our feelings just to the

point where it feels like we have

satisfied our need for connection. This

is a topic that's been heavily discussed

on the internet by now, and it goes by

different names depending on who is

talking, but the most commonly known one

is friction. In the past, social

friction dominated our lives. If you

wanted to have a social experience with

friends, it required you to walk, get on

your bike, or get in a car, go to a

physical meeting place, and talk with

people face-to-face. Now, it is much

easier to simulate that experience by

DoorDashing an order, hopping on

Discord, and playing video games, or

doing something similar. Now, I'm not

saying this is always a bad thing. The

internet has given us a much greater

opportunity to connect with others

around the world, and has provided some

people who might otherwise always have

had a hard time making friends in real

life, whether due to a disability or

some form of illness, a way of

replicating a similar sort of

connection. But, for a lot of

able-bodied people, it's used as a

suppression tool, one that convinces the

mind that that receiving social

connection for just long enough to

create the illusion of satiety, like a

bag of potato chips that leaves you

full, yet nutritionally deficient. And

in order for someone to realize they

actually crave social connection, not

just when they lay their head on the

pillow at night, it would require them

to sit with the feelings of loneliness

rather than escape into these

frictionless activities. But of course,

technology isn't the whole story. The

internet may be making it easier to

ignore loneliness, but it doesn't

explain why men are now less likely to

rely on their friends in the first

place. Because even when men recognize

something is wrong, fewer of us seem

willing to lean on each other for

support. In 1990, nearly half of young

men reported that when facing a personal

problem, they would reach out to their

friends. Today, only 22% do. This

question of what happens when people

lose the relationships that once gave

their life meaning is something that

I've actually been thinking about over

the past year as I've been writing my

debut novel. Echoes Across Infinity is a

story about a 21-year-old named Elliot

who lives in the modern world, our

post-pandemic world, who through an

unexplainable accident loses his mother.

Through the trauma he endures, he begins

to have uncontrollable visions, which he

soon discovers are glimpses into a

parallel reality he can learn to access.

Throughout the book, Elliot learns how

to express and identify his emotions so

he can strengthen his relationships with

both the men and women in his life. It's

a blend of sci-fi, philosophy, and

psychology, and if you can relate to my

videos, I think that reading this,

temporarily living through the life of

Elliot, will teach you a lot about how

to handle your own struggles in the

modern world. If the themes of

loneliness, grief, identity, and human

connection resonate with you, you can

find Echoes Across Infinity by going to

the first link in the description. So,

where did this idea that men should keep

their emotional distance from each other

and avoid vulnerability whenever

possible come from? Well, this is going

to stun a lot of you guys who have

gotten most of your ideas about

masculinity from internet red pill bros,

but the whole concept of traditional

masculinity is actually quite new in the

entire timeline of humanity. And please

hold your that's gay comments for this

section because I'll soon tell you why

you even think these acts of friendship

are gay. According to historians, many

enlightenment era thinkers did not

automatically assume women were more

emotional than men and gender roles were

not established in the way they later

became in the 19th and 20th centuries.

In fact, when talking about their

friends, men would often speak as if

they were in love with them. An article

in the Atlantic titled how the

passionate male friendship died

describes a monument between two men

that could easily be mistaken for a

memorial to a married couple. Draped in

marble flowers and guarded by fat

cherubs, it features two stone portraits

joined by a knotted cloth and an

inscription describing an intimate bond.

A beautiful and unbroken marriage of

souls and a companionship undivided

during 36 complete years. They who while

living had mingled their interests,

fortunes, counsels, nay rather souls,

reads their tombstone, might in the same

manner in death at last mingle their

sacred ashes. In his book The

Overflowing of Friendship, Richard

Godbeer tells a similar tale, one in

which two Virginians first became

acquainted in 1790 as eager young

lawyers, eventually laying the

foundation for a friendship that lasted

a lifetime. When Dabney penned for him a

rhapsody on life and love and

friendship, William wrote in response,

"How grateful are such effusions? How

grateful to my mind and to my heart?

They make me proud of your friendship.

Ah, my dear Dabney, it is at such

moments that my soul flies out to meet

yours and as they mix and commingle, I

feel myself exalted and refined."

William rejoiced in the intimacy and

consciousness which seemed to subsist

between their hearts and understandings.

His friend's letters, quote, "always

spread such a sweet glow through his

breast." And their relationship, he

declared, was among the purest and

sweetest sources of happiness that he

had upon this earth. French philosopher

Michel de Montaigne also wrote about

this ideal kind of friendship that he

believed he had found in his essay on

friendship. In one of the most quoted

lines in the history of friendship, he

writes, "If you press me to say why I

loved him, I feel that it cannot be

expressed except by replying, because it

was him, because it was me." And you

know what's even crazier? Well, maybe

not that crazy when we think of those

times, is that male intellectuals

actually thought that women were

incapable of reaching this ideal.

Women's brains could not endure this

clasp of a not so lasting and so tightly

drawn, as Montaigne wrote. Sounds like

the exact opposite of how men and women

treat each other today, right? Men bond

by roasting and bullying each other,

while women support each other and are

compassionate to show their love for

each other. This didn't happen by

chance. Starting in the 19th century,

one of the biggest cultural changes was

the rise of the idea that men and women

occupied different social roles. As a

result of creeping industrialization,

women were portrayed as the angel of the

house. In fact, this term was solidified

as a Victorian ideal through the now

famous poem, The Angel in the House, by

Coventry Patmore in 1854. As an excerpt

of the poem reads, "Man must be pleased,

but him to please is woman's pleasure.

Down the gulf of his condoled

necessities, she casts her best, she

flings herself." From that point onward,

the feminine ideal was one of

tenderness, nurturing, submissiveness,

and emotional sensitivity. Conversely,

men were now painted as rational,

competitive, stoic creatures. In a

review of Anthony Rotundo's book,

American Manhood, Kirkus Reviews states,

"America," he says, "was transformed

into a place where a man was an

individual who created his own place and

status. The qualities valued in a man

were likewise transformed from an ideal

that called for the suppression of

aggressive, competitive urges to an

image of manliness that valued little

else." And one of the factors that

reinforced this trend, which I said I

was going to go over, was the emerging

concept of homosexuality and the rise of

gay culture. As the Kirkus Review

states, the 18th century lacked a true

concept of homosexuality, allowing adult

male friends to spend the night in each

other's arms, an act inconceivable to

most contemporary heterosexuals. Of

course, men being sexually attracted to

other men and women being sexually

attracted to other women existed, but

nobody thought of it in the abrasive,

culture-ruining, epidemic-like way that

many homophobic people tend to paint it

today. Sociologist Eric Anderson calls

the fear of being perceived as gay homo

hysteria. One of the biggest turning

points for homo hysteria came in 1948,

when a study revealed that 10% of the

population was homosexual, far more than

people assumed at the time. And although

that finding has never been replicated

by other researchers and other studies

have found a much lower percentage, the

figure has taken on a life of its own.

As a result, there were only more

reasons for men to keep their emotional

and physical distance from one another

so as to not get some gay allegations

thrown their way. As Rhyne Cohen writes

in her Time article on this issue, it

only makes sense for men to adjust their

behavior if homosexuality is not only

stigmatized, but also believed to be

prevalent. Then there's grounds to worry

that other people might think they're

gay and that such a label could carry

consequences. The final nail in the

coffin for male friendships has been

modern forms of media. I could have a

field day going in on these masculinity

influencers that preach that men are

becoming too feminine and that they need

to get back to their roots of stoicism

and strength, roots that are, by the

way, only about 200 years old, but I'd

rather put our attention on the older

forms of media that depict male

friendship to show you just how

different it actually was. In the Iliad,

an ancient Greek poem by Homer from over

2,700 years ago, the ideal warrior

openly mourns his closest friend. When

Patroclus is killed, Achilles' reaction

is far beyond what modern readers

typically expect from a male friendship.

He collapses in grief, weeps openly,

refuses food, embraces Patroclus's body,

and becomes consumed by mourning and

vengeance. At one point, he even says,

"I have lost the man I loved beyond all

other comrades." Far from seeing this

devotion as unmanly, Homer presents

Achilles' love for Patroclus as one of

the defining features of his character.

And perhaps my favorite depiction of

male friendships comes from one of, if

not, the best book trilogy of all time,

which is the Lord of the Rings series. I

mean, these books are just chock-full of

healthy depictions of male friendship.

In the first chapter of The Two Towers,

Aragorn takes Boromir's hand and kisses

his brow after Boromir opens up to him

about being a failure. In the chapter of

herbs and stewed rabbit, as Sam watches

Frodo sleep, Tolkien writes, "Sam had

noticed that at times a light seemed to

be shining faintly within, but now the

light was even clearer and stronger." He

shook his head as if finding the right

words useless and murmured, "I love him.

He's like that, and sometimes it shines

through somehow, but I love him whether

or no." And at the climax of the story,

when all hope seems lost, Sam carries

Frodo up Mount Doom declaring, "I can't

carry it for you, but I can carry you."

Tolkien's men are courageous, competent,

and resilient, but they're also tender,

affectionate, and emotionally

expressive. The story never treats these

qualities as contradictory, and that is

why I believe these books, along with

the films, are some of the greatest

depictions of healthy masculinity and

friendship ever created. So, this is

what has driven male friendships into

murky waters. A combination of recent

gender norms reinforced by our cultural

and economic systems, coupled with a

lack of genuinely good examples of male

friendship in modern media. Of course,

these aren't the only forces at work.

The decline of third places has made

maintaining friendships harder for

everyone. But for men specifically,

these cultural shifts around masculinity

have made these problems even worse. And

the result is men suppressing their

emotions both for themselves and for

each other, treating one another coldly

and often harshly, and never truly

understanding what they feel because it

is far too easy to avoid recognizing

those emotions in the first place. Look,

I'm not here to say that the occasional

chirp, the occasional roast, or some

funny comment to your guy friend isn't

okay, but god damn, man, we are so far

removed from what male friendships used

to be that we're not receiving the same

sort of benefits from friendship

anymore. There is almost nothing as

powerful for the fortification of our

mental and physical well-being as

genuine social connection. In one

meta-analysis of over 300,000 people,

researchers found that individuals with

stronger social relationships had a 50%

greater likelihood of survival than

those with weaker ones. Another review

found that social isolation and

loneliness carry mortality risks

comparable to many of the health factors

we obsess over today. And perhaps most

famously, the Harvard Study of Adult

Development, which has tracked people

for nearly 90 years, found that one of

the strongest predictors of a long,

healthy, and happy life wasn't wealth,

status, or career success. It was the

quality of your relationships. So no,

the problem with modern culture isn't

men becoming weaker or less masculine.

It's our harmful definitions for what

men should do, and more specifically,

how we should act towards one another. I

do not give a if you think it's

gay. Tell your homies you love them. You

don't have to go this far,

but be someone others can rely on. Don't

abandon yourself just to people please

others, but pick up your homies when

they're feeling down. Show them that

you're a guy that they can open up to

about personal problems when they need

to without feeling judged, and be that

guy that others can lean on. Men knew

that close platonic relationships

greatly enhance the quality of their

lives and they weren't afraid to show

their more emotional sides so that they

could develop truly lasting

relationships. We have abandoned that

which has resulted in what I can only

imagine is a significant aspect of why

male rates have increased so rapidly

over like the past decade. You watching

this video are probably going to have to

become the one in your friend circle who

influences your friends to become

comfortable with this kind of

vulnerability. And some of them might

say you're a and call you names.

That's fine. Those are probably the

people who have the deepest issues in

private and you might need to distance

yourself from those kinds of people for

a little bit so you can focus on the

people who genuinely want the best for

you, who want to see you succeed and who

aren't obsessed with competing against

you and trying to be better than you.

The men who want the kinds of

relationships that men had for the

majority of history exist in abundance.

And the more you embody these traits,

the easier it will be to find men

already moving in that direction who you

can influence to become more

well-rounded men in their platonic

relationships. If you want to read a

story set in the modern world that

depicts the male condition and how to

move through it, you should definitely

check out my debut novel Echoes Across

Infinity. Whether you're an avid sci-fi

reader or someone looking to get into

fiction, I think this is the perfect

book for you. You can go to the first

link in my description to find it. And

thank you so much for watching till the

end. I'd love to hear your thoughts

about this in the comments. And if

you're looking for a video similar to

this that I've made, you can watch Why

Gen Z is terrified of intimacy. It

touches upon the similar themes of this

video but for both genders. If you want

to check that out, yeah, you can tap on

it right now and I'm leaving. Goodbye.