Men are struggling to make connections platonically or romantically, lacking an emotional
connection with someone or a community as a whole. The male loneliness epidemic has been treated as a buzzword of sorts when discussing men’s mental health, referring to the idea that men are isolated in society due to a lack of connection with society itself.
In the discussions I have seen online, men blame this phenomenon on a variety of factors, ranging from women and the economy to a lack of third spaces to go to. This has caused
a surge in online communities reigning supreme, seeing men in Reddit threads, posting on X, or in a TikTok comment section connecting with one another on the fact they’re lonely.
That’s without even mentioning dating apps like Hinge, Tinder, and Bumble. These applications provide men with the solution they’re seeking: an opportunity to connect with someone.
This conversation revolves around men and their actions, with people weighing in on all sides. Women are saying it’s because men aren’t what they want anymore, or men aren’t kind or humorous in the right ways, refusing to do the smallest things like opening car doors and buying flowers.
This is also credited to the growing gender divide politically, with men and women on almost opposite ends of the spectrum.
As a woman myself, I can sympathize with this perspective. In my experience, men don’t want to hear the perspective I bring to the table. In conversation with friends, they have had similar experiences.
It is no secret that men have an immense amount of pressure to provide for themselves and their families. With the current economy, this is becoming more difficult to accomplish for men and creates a mountain for young men to climb.
Asking young men to accomplish that is nearly impossible, and as they see their female peers being equally successful, it brings up a complex range of emotions. These emotions
can include insecurity, anger, fear, and even disappointment in themselves.
A lack of third spaces is another contributing factor to this epidemic in my opinion. Third spaces are social spaces that are separate from the home and the workplace. This is one the entirety of Generation Z can understand, particularly after the COVID-19 pandemic, which took out a lot of third spaces.
However, it seems as though women are able to connect with one another and build strong friendships even amidst this lack of third spaces.
The issue I have observed with men is they are scared to go outside. I had a conversation with a guy earlier this year, who complained about not having friends. I asked him what he did for fun, and he said he enjoyed video games, and he turned down every idea I offered to
him to go meet people.
This fear of being rejected and of socializing with anyone else is heavily contributing to this
loneliness epidemic. To go meet people and make friends, one must go where the people are.
The concept of a male loneliness epidemic has a lot of factors at play, and the conversation surrounding it is interesting to me as a young woman. Seeing men complain about being lonely while women are thriving in this area had me asking questions.
Younger men are predisposed to receiving right-wing content, consuming the ideas of creators like Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate. Both creators encourage men to be individualistic alpha-males who dominate a room while demeaning women.
As younger men consume and internalize these ideas, most doom themselves to a life without connection to others. Incorporating the ideas that the patriarchy, in the form of creators like Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate, shoves down their throats forces them to refuse a deep emotional connection with anyone else, even other men.
The lack of deep, emotional connection in men’s lives is a serious issue, and the hole left there because of it is not an easy one to fill.