There is an epidemic of dysfunction brewing amongst our young men. A particularly articulate young man, recently returning from college for the Thanksgiving break, poignantly put it this way. “Boys are being absolutely smoked at school by the girls now. They know what they’re doing socially, there’s way more girls with higher grades, and a lot of my friends are just lost“.
Boys and young men are in deep trouble today. If you haven’t felt it already, you soon will. Where will the fathers, the husbands, the innovators, and the leaders of the next generation come from if our boys are dysfunctional? This is a serious issue that first impacts boys, but soon also future spouses, their future children, and our progress as a society. The struggle of our boys affects everybody.
Although I have changed the identity of Nathan, and a few non-salient details for confidentiality reasons, Nathan represents many of the young men who are being referred to me.
Nathan lives in the basement of his parents’ home in an upper-middle-class suburb. He doesn’t eat with his family but instead relies on DoorDash or, occasionally, has his mother deliver him food if she is home. He gets upset when his parents try to encourage him to eat.
He creates and records music in his bedroom and surfs websites and social media. His room looks like a high-tech studio. He spends his days alone, immersed in video games, the Internet, and music. He is torn between wanting to be a hip-hop artist or a sound engineer, but accomplishes very little.
When he starts to pursue these things he is quickly drawn into porn. He switches to Only-Fans when he is on a porn website. Then, when that is no longer enough, he creates virtual girlfriends with the help of AI, who will speak to him in a sexualized way while he masturbates.
He is also addicted to marijuana. He has been hospitalized twice for psychosis caused by cannabis. He manages to spend his “allowance” on stronger dabs. His parents sent him to rehab for weed before he turned 18, but his addiction persists.
He has lost all of his friends except for two online players with whom he plays video games occasionally. He seldom ventures out. He is completely dependent on his family and shows no ambition. However, he isolates himself during the day. His only contact with them is to ask for money and favors. Nathan’s dad has tried to set rules, expectations, and boundaries for him, encouraging him to go to school or earn money. He resists all rules. Nathan’s mom will always get involved in these conflicts, either during the fight or afterward, because she “feels bad for Nathan”. She believes that he must be depressed and suffer from a “serotonin deficit”. She allows him to use her credit card to buy more music, play online games, watch porn and message his “girlfriend”.
Nathan throws tantrums when he feels threatened, doesn’t get what he wants, or when his parents refuse to meet his demands. He accuses them of undermining his future successes.
Nathan lives a disembodied life. He neglects his personal care, does not exercise, eats poorly, and pays no attention to his hygiene. He has separated his brain from his body, and his entire life is now mediated by his computer.
He came to see me with the strong encouragement of his parents. Nathan appears small, pale and thin. It is easy for him to be friendly and polite on the surface. However, I am mindful that he is seeing me in order to please his parents. I suspect he is trying to manipulate them by pretending to seek help. He’s very difficult to relate to. It is difficult to get him focused on his thoughts, feelings and state of mind. He doesn’t seem to have much of an inner life. He does not communicate much, if anything, of what he is feeling or thinking. I have the impression that I’m speaking to a robotic but polite disembodied figure.
Nathan’s parents hope that he will “find motivation” and “turn his life around” by going to a therapist.
Nathan’s story cannot be generalized, but there are common themes among young men I see in my office: young men stuck. They have disembodied themselves, physically separating from their online life. They use weed in significant amounts. They have lost the sense of being a man and a human. They lack the ability to function in “the real world” or get ahead. I sense his mixture of fear of living in a real world, and a lack of knowledge or skills to do so. The virtual world is replacing the real world.
Nathan story describes many of the boys and young men that are stuck and struggling. They share many common themes. They live life in a type of media matrix, separated from their own bodies and the physical presence of others. When they do get together with friends, each one is often on their own phone. Without connection to others and to their physical selves, an inner life is not possible. If we can’t feel what’s in our bodies, how do we even begin to feel our emotions. How do we understand the mind of someone else. Communication becomes impossible.
I feel all of this when I sit with Nathan. He talks, but he doesn’t feel. He speaks, but he cannot identify any emotion. He does not seem to be able to pick up on anything that I might be feeling, such as an openness, hope, a kindness, and a willingness to listen. My attempts to talk to him, to connect with him, feel like I am speaking into a vacuum. Distant rote sentences may come back, but they are empty and devoid of meaning. Interestingly, I am left, feeling alone with Nathan, and as much as I try to use these alone feelings to understand Nathan‘s deeper experience, it feels rather chilling. I imagine that the chill I feel is only a very small reflection of the deep inner coldness of his own world.
He is unable to define himself, let alone define what it means to be a man, or a young man, in the world. Without any of these strengths, he remains floundering, and helpless to move his life forward. Young men like Nathan are terrified by the prospect of moving out and moving on. They seem to lack the basic strengths necessary for an independent life. They feel rejected by girls and their self-esteem is flattened.
Ironically, it is often their mothers who bring them to therapy in hopes that “they will find motivation“. Yet more often than not, mothers succumb to feelings of needing to “take care of them”, providing room and board, shelter, and credit cards.
In summary, I see this group of themes. I will unpack each of them along the way, but after countless young men coming into my office, these distinct characteristic struggles exist.
- A powerful pull to bury themselves in the Internet, porn, and weed.
- A sense of helpless emptiness underneath, that evokes genuine pain in waking up every morning and lasting until sleep at night.
- Disconnection: from their bodies, their friends, and their identity.
- Anxious attachments. They are fearful, even terrified, of leaving their primary figures of attachment – their mothers – to form new attachments in the world.
- A lack of role models.
- A lack of definition of what it means to be a male.
- A lack of overall identity, and therefore sense of purpose.
I will address all of these in much more detail in coming blog posts. I will also talk about how I personally work with these young men and offer insights that I have learned by working with them. Finally, I will address exactly how this happened.
Boys and young men are failing in the world. We must not fail them, or ultimately, we fail ourselves.
– Michael J. Miletic, M.D., Board Certified in Psychiatry, Neurology and Metabolic Medicine