The mental health of young men is declining. Experts warn it could get worse

I already knew what angle the article would take before I started reading. It’s the same political bullshit that they’ve been saying for decades:

‘The emphasis on women's parity in the labour force and society, as well as a greater acceptance of non-traditional gender identities, has upended expectations.’

"At one point we knew we were supposed to be the provider and protector, and the idea of ‘toxic masculinity’ wasn’t a thing," he said. "I think men are really trying to figure out what it means to be a man in today’s world."

It just shows how much of a crap they give about men’s mental health that this viewpoint is constantly regurgitated instead of addressing the real problems.

The jobs market is horrendous, especially for the young. Everything is super expensive too. Young men generally desire independence, so finding a job to excel at, buying a house, starting a life… these are what is desired and also what is now out of reach.

Dating and marriage have been completed destroyed by modern society. Blaming goons like Andrew Tate avoids addressing the real issues.

I have family members who work in mental health, and they say that young women are having a worse time than young men.

Women, on average, have higher recorded rates of nonfatal suicidal behavior and attempts. Men, on average, use methods that are more immediately lethal, so there is less opportunity for rescue or medical treatment.

What pisses me off is the subtext of these articles that basically says ‘men can’t handle women succeeding in the workplace’. Mocking pain and suffering and suicide for cheap feminist ‘wins’ is par the course for these people. Yet, where are the articles addressing the decline in mental health of young women and how the loss of their traditional roles as wives and mothers has led them there?

I wonder if some of it is a sort of parallel to the self-image issues called out for young women on social media. In the same way that it used to be easier to be happy about your appearance when you didn't see the genetically gifted on your feed every day, it was easier to feel proud about being good at $job/$hobby/etc when you only had to be better than anyone within 100 miles rather than competing with that one guy who lives 3,713 miles away who hasn't done anything but eat, sleep and blacksmith (or whatever) since he was 3.

Even as an adult, I feel it a bit. You see somebody on YouTube and think the hobby looks intriguing, but feel discouraged because you'll never be as good as someone who made a "make it or break it" bet on the hobby at 12 years old with a parent who was famous in the field.

It seems hard to feel proud of yourself these days in a world where everything you do is judged on a national or global scale instead of your city or county.

In a supposedly very conservative red state, Arkansas, the recent TV ad message run by the GOP candidate was “young men who are gaming at home and eating Cheetos all day are why we had to implement work requirements for welfare”; it was a very negative ad that made young men look like slackers, layabouts etc.

Of course, only about one percent of welfare recipients are young men; single moms in middle age are the ones who are a large percentage of those receiving the benefits, for very different reasons than Cheetos consumption.

But it shows how attacking young men when they aren’t even the crux of the problem is en vogue.

BTW House Speaker Johnson has said the same thing on TV about young men.

The job market has collapsed, graduates are moving back in with their parents, dating is a non-starter for most, nobody born after the 2000s can afford homes, the future looks bleak

One thing I've noticed: the amount of gambling ads targeted towards young males; kinda wild. I'm glad that I'm not growing up in this era.

> Oliffe said that in the last decade, there has been "low government investment in men's mental health."

When has it ever been otherwise? Was there some past time I've forgotten about where government spending on men's mental health was high?

I'm just not convinced by this article. Male teens are moody and anxious? Seems pretty normal. That was me in the 1980s for sure. We had no idea what the future held, other than we'd probably all be nuked at some point pretty soon.

The increase in the visibility of mental health issues could either be an increase in the instance of mental health issues or a decrease in the concealment of mental health issues, or indeed both.

If there is any correlation between the wider perception of the state of the world and the instance of mental health issues then the only meaningful claim you could be making about any subgroup is the deviation from that correlation.

Talking about single instances and absolute numbers disregards those nuances.

I'm actually writin an article about youth mental health for my substack. I'll post it on HN when it's done, but the tl;dr is that the evidence for the youth mental health crisis is very thin at best. Despite what this article says, the youth suicide rate in Canada is near its all-time low. Self-reported youth distress is up, but our only 2 datapoints are 2012 and 2022 (middle of the pandemic). Every group has also reported worsening mental health, and the adult suicide rate is (and always has been) much worse than the youth suicide rate. I don't think mental health isn't a serious concern, but I don't buy the idea that young people specifically have some major crisis while everybody else is doing fine.

if you only knew how bad things really are https://files.catbox.moe/youqwb.gif

"Data from the Canadian Medical Association Journal shows a huge rise in young men calling helplines with gambling addictions. (Health Canada reports men are three times more likely than women to have a gambling problem.)

Canada legalized single-event sports betting in 2021. In 2022, Ontario became the first province to allow private companies to operate alongside government-regulated industry."

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We've come to recognize "young men" (males aged 15-24) as a "useful" demographic in the sense that they are impulsive, easily coerced, and have access to financial capital. The same things that make this demographic good for fighting wars makes them exploitable by gambling sites and influencers, and their entry into the work-force during this window gives them access to money without the experience needed to hang onto it.

Being specifically targeted by peddlers of scams and addiction is probably about as good for your mental health as being viewed as expendable manpower for war and industry. The fact that there are helplines and young men are actually reaching out to them is a good sign. Perhaps we're finally breaking down the tradition of stoic silence. However, we still need to take steps to protect young people from those who are deliberately exploiting them.

Sports betting and online gambling need to be strictly regulated, and their ads banned. That's something concrete that would leave young men (and some women) with one less problem at absolutely no cost to the rest of society.

It's because they're rational. The American dream is dead, and the Canadian one is too. You can work your entire life with nothing to show for it. Never escaping a landlord. No time or money or third places to have a life. Women don't want children in this environment. The worst people are leading and in control of society. The insatiable greed of billionaires ruined whatever was good about the social compact. Families torn apart by the lies shown to them by Zuckerberg and co. No time for friends. Can't even build a PC because Sam Altman bought all of the compute.

TFA keeps talking about the manosphere as it the relation was causal to the mental health of young men declining but... I think it's backwards: it's because many don't find their place and find no woman that they look into, sadly, frauds like Tate and things like the manosphere. When you've got nothing and think you've got no future, you can invest some time and energy in your body and look in shape, which shall at least spike the interest of some women.

As to why young men feel like they cannot find a mate well... There's an entire generation that's been hammered the notion that all men are oppressors and that masculinity is the root of all evil.

Is it just the young men whose mental health is declining? I'd go a generation earlier and see how things start to get pretty bad. A lot of kids these days don't hang out in person, they are hanging out virtually while laying down in their beds or in comfortable chairs in front of their consoles or computers playing video games online. This is quite unealthy way to grow up. A lot of teenagers, male or female are also undetachable from their cellphones and social media too. This is also a very unhealthy way to grow up.

"experts warn"