The Crisis of Young Men in 2025

February 2, 2025

I traditionally try to give these things a nifty title because considering myself clever is my #6 favorite pasttime. But tonight I just don’t have it in me. However, we had a great discussion during tonight’s viewing of The Six Triple Eight, even if we all agreed that the movie itself was pretty lacking. But that’s ok. Not all of these films are winners and in some situations, beating the crap out of a bad movie can be a nice little stress relief.

I wanted instead to share a few ideas that have been on my mind, specifically that of young men in our society. When I look around at social media influencers and garbage that people like Joe Rogan are peddling, I am very worried. There were more than a few comments made tonight about the fragility of men these days and I am definitely inclined to agree. So what explains it and where do we go from here?

I’ve been listening to a lot of Scott Galloway these days and I think he makes a lot of sense. So at the risk of sending you to some other podcast, I think this short pod below really gets at a lot of the root causes of what is making men so un-masculine (Galloway gets into why he does not like the term toxic masculinity and I think he’s on point on this too). Galloway’s points on loneliness in young men are especially well considered.

There’s something that he doesn’t talk about (at least in this pod) but I’m thinking on more and more: the abundance and availability of pornography and how it shapes sexual expectations and behaviors for young and older men. Now, I’m writing here not trying to gross anyone out or even sound like a prude because I actually think pornography may be at the center of some pretty important First Amendment debates in the future. So the case is frustratingly complex.

Pornography itself has changed in days when I was a young men (late nineties) and if we are tying this to a film, even more so since the 70s and 80s depicted in Boogie Nights. Like drugs and alcohol, it was always available to young people willing to be creative enough to get it, but there were enough safeguards in place to where getting hold of VHS tapes and later, DVDs, was a rarity. To borrow the slang, it was a score.

Further, pornographic films evolved over time from actual films with plots (flimsy as they were) to essentially quick fantasy scenarios with all sorts of taboos being broken. And certainly the availability of websites like Pornhub and Onlyfans means that the material is there for consumption.

I think that one of the issues here is that it not only enforces really awful conceptions about sexual intercourse where women are turned into sexual props for exploitation but it also reinforces the isolation that Galloway talks about in the podcast. Essentially what I think is happening is that young men who are sexually inactive for any number of reasons begin to withdraw from any attempt at healthy, meaningful engagements with women because through pornography they can at least experience 1) some form of sexuality via 2) a fantasy in which their social standing is inverted and that they are no longer pursuing sex but instead have it at their fingertips. So pornography sort of becomes this mechanism in which young men develop negative attitudes towards women and sexuality, retreat from positive engagments with women, and then their loneliness reinforces those views and actions.¹

So I think that in a lot of ways, pornography is overwhelming bad for society, at least as it is consumed by young people who have lacked the emotional and social maturity to understand that what they are seeing on their screens is not reality and should not be considered as that.

But what to do about it? How do we get young men off the drug that is fully available pornography? Do we illegalize it altogether? Certainly that is the move that many states are attempting by creating roadblocks for access such as demanding sites like pornhub obtain age identifications, know that the sites will resist them. There are other attempts to ban porn altogether.² But then this crosses a legal line doesn’t it? Do we consider this in the same ways as traditional film? Should pornography be considered as guaranteed by the First Amendment?

I don’t have a good answer on how to do this. My personal stance on this is that it’s like marijuana- it’s fine at times for people who are old enough to understand its use. But I also think that this problem is but fragment of what is creating little monsters.

There’s a post on this coming later but it comes with clearly defining what masculinity—real masculinity—is. It’s something to be proud of. And certainly not all traits positive men possess are exclusive to them, but as the father of two teen boys I can tell you what I want them to see in me as a model for their own lives is as follows: discipline, education, curiosity, the ability express their emotions, physical fitness, respect towards others (especially their mother), and most important of all, kindness. Be kind. Be good. Work hard. Laugh. Cry. Experience the world. Be a human that happens to be a man.

Of course, doing all this means selling young men on the benefits of living a noble life. The best way is for good men to be engaged with raising other good men from birth. But that’s not always the case. There’s so many single moms out there doing that labor without men to help them out. So we have to figure out ways to mentor young men as well. To be active in being good men so that other young men see that and want to grow to be that man too.

There are societal factors at play. Most of us are living paycheck to paycheck. We’re raising our own families. Economics don’t allow us to easily check in on other people. But for the good of society, and for the very souls of these young dudes out there, we are going to have to find a way.

This is not a fully formed thought tonight, folks. In fact, I had only planned on writing a quick paragraph, telling y’all to love each other, and then sneaking off to bed. Whoops.

But I do feel called to action. To want to be there for our people. Because I care about these dudes. I care about all y’all. More thoughts to come.

Take care of yourselves.

Jason

1. Bear with me here, I am still working through a lot of these thoughts and how to conceptualize them.

2. https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/politics/state/2025/01/28/oklahoma-senator-proposes-bill-to-ban-pornography-imprison-creators/77931377007/