Sharing – Fewer friends, outlets and direction: Why boys are dying by suicide at an inordinate pace.
The topic of young boys and the epidemic of loneliness has been in the news often lately.
I haven’t watched the Netflix show Adolescence, but I’ve seen a lot of people talking about it. This article addresses the issue from the perspective of suicide prevention, because we know that young men are more likely to die by suicide.
While men make up 50% of the U.S. population, research shows that four out of five suicide deaths from 2023 were men. What’s more, the youngest generations of men, Gen Z (18-23) and Zillennial (24-30), are reporting the highest levels of emotional distress and suicidal thoughts compared to other generations of men.
Surveys also revealed that, compared to men 30 years prior, more than a quarter of young men don’t have meaningful social connections. At the same time, most young men feel misunderstood by women.
As I read those statistics, and the many people offering their perspectives on the issue, and how it makes young men susceptible to conspiracy theories and right-wing misogyny, I think about all the ways society tells young men that being disconnected is the right thing to do.
It’s everywhere. It’s in the many misleading stories about the rugged individualism of successful men. It shows up in the way we tell young men that the worst place you can be is in the “friends zone” with any woman, instead of offering the possibility of having friends who are women, and the way we denigrate close friendships between men as a “gay” thing that should be avoided at all costs.
We’ve made sports the only place where it’s acceptable for men to express emotion and connect, but that environment also exacerbates the view of the world as ‘my team versus your team.’ It also excludes someone who doesn’t happen to like that particular sport.
We know that connection is a key indicator of mental health, and the number of people, not just men, who lack meaningful connections is increasing. Perhaps instead of telling boys all how they shouldn’t connect unless it’s in a very short list of acceptable ways, we should embrace all the ways they can connect.
What I’ve known since I was a child being abused is that boys who are withdrawn and disconnected are easy targets for some evil people. It’s dangerous. Stop limiting the ways they can connect; young men need to stop limiting themselves and find healthy connections.
