What's happening to the young men?

[MrsSchrute]

This post is prompted by an article in the Guardian about the murderer of Amie Grey, who has been sentenced to 39 years.
His psychiatric report said he had: 'repressed socially induced trauma resulting from a combination of real and perceived rejections and social humiliations resulting in him feeling alien from general society, a social misfit, somebody who had hardly any friends at school, had never had a girlfriend and seemed to be avoided”

He came from a loving family and had never been in trouble before.

Now, obviously he should absolutely be in prison for what he did, and there is no excuse.

Why is it that more and more young men seem to be so seperate from society? Has it always been the case? Is it the easy access that the internet allows to extremist material that's the issue? What can we, or society, do to stop this??

Men like Muska and Zuckerberg own these platforms that cause so much damage. They're worth over half a trillion between them. The fact individuals can accumulate such wealth is a big part of the problem.

The wealth disparity has got more and more insane. There were plenty of problems in the 70s of course, but the post-war consensus created a much more equal society which the Boomer generation enjoyed. It was ripped up in the 80s by Thatcher/Reagan and neoliberalism has destroyed society. Social media just accelerated it. The internet was fun before Zuckerberg et al turned up.

Society has spent generations telling young women they are worthless and only good for sex or the kitchen. Not to mention generations degrading and abusing them and women aren’t killing and mutilating others in droves. Why is that?

Competition is a very good point, boys need competition to thrive.

I sick of reading on here how it’s because they can’t get girlfriends. In my parents generation most men never got access to women’s bodies unless they married them. Now they’ve got instant access to women’s bodies and they don’t have to marry even if they have children. They literally get it all on a plate with no work, not even buying you a coffee or getting the door for you. Yet women here still feeling sorry for them and excusing them due to this. Men have no entitlement to women’ bodies. This particular mindset is a new thing.

Another Excuse “They can’t get on the property ladder”. Unless you live in central London there’s government schemes about it’s not completely out of reach with shared equality. I suppose most parent now give some assistance as a deposit but that’s boys and girls. Perhaps men have got so use to doing very little they’re expecting women to house them too in the future?

I can see many more solo Mums in future. Men don’t have a great deal to offer us unless they step up and stop objectifying us. Again they’ll be the female misogynists telling us this is selfish and how they need Dad’s regardless of how they behave. If women cannot find grown up men ready to commit and raise children, it’s logical they’ll be doing it alone. Do we still think poor men then? I can guarantee many women will and that’s the problem.

100% agree.

I think there's something to this. I was bullied constantly through school and into the workplace. It really affects your view of your own self worth.

These days I wouldn't worry too much about a son not dating. If the women are like mumsnet they're worth passing up. Fortunately not all women are like that.

There are 'nice' young men out there and many find a good life partner. Unfortunately many women prefer 'fun' to nice and get upset when the fun partner doesn't see why he should settle down to playing with baby and watching Coronation Street once the children come along.

You'll always get its mens fault but let's face it, it's up to you who you marry. Make a bad choice, don't blame 'men', make another bad choice well obviously your choice in partners is fine it's someone else's fault you got another wrong un. Reality is the 'nice' ones aren't to your taste.

Young women are every bit as out of control as the lads. Perhaps because we have students in the nearby town it's not uncommon to see drunken young women fighting, swearing and even peeing in public.

I can see many more solo Mums in future.

More women are choosing not to have dc so I don't see that.

first post spot on. I read that more than half of boys do not have a father living at home. Sad. Where are these Dads?

But they have competition. From women. And they hate it.

People have stopped enjoying and appreciating each other. There are too many grudge holders, even small grudges when queuing in a shop even, too much anger and not enough time when people just sit, chat and waste time together.

And this I think, on a small level is where it starts, my H can't make a curry anywhere near as well as I can, but then I can't pump up car tyres as well as him, we both totally appreciate the other one's skills, contributions.

The teens have friends over most weekends, we all sit around eating, usually something communal, then play a game together, they ask to do this, they usually go and get the chosen game before we start eating, with it sitting on the side with an unsaid "we're playing this" hanging in the air.

We read out the problem page from the Saturday paper and listen to what a bunch of teen boys think about it. It's fun and enlightening.

If you give them time and space to express themselves they will. And you can challenge any questionable responses, or they bring something to the table. They like it when you say "I totally agree with you there". It gives them confidence to express themselves, even over emotions, it seems to be easier to get them going if it's someone else's, a stranger on the problem page's emotions. But their points of view come from themselves.

We try to be good examples, in that if we didn't have bricklayers and plumbers we wouldn't be sitting in a house with a flushable toilet, and if we didn't have geeks you wouldn't be able to send silly videos to each other privately. It takes all types of jobs and ideas, people male and female, to have a vibrant society one that you want to live and be part of.

What makes a difference is appreciation. I am not going to say "Respect" because respect should be earned and all this "he disrespected me" AT A FUCKING ROUNDABOUT, has changed that word for the time being.

There are some lovely young teen boys out there, that deserved to be listened to and forgiven if they fuck up, they are still teens after all.

Instead of telling them how to be, you show it instead. You love them, enjoy their company, listen to them, offer guidance and opinion, debate and challenge them, make sure their real life expectations of their desires and abilities are within the realm of possible. Let them sort out their own problems if they can but always be there if they feel out of their depth.

Our teens have come to us on occasion because they are "worried" about a friend at school, which usually means they think they are going over to the dark side, or they've changed and seem angry. They as teens themselves need a bit of guidance on what to say or do or not say.

So to write off teen boys, to lump them, or grown men all in together is dangerous. We need good men, boys to help call out the bad apples.

Boys have overtaken girls in STEM subjects at school now, this might be the start of the turn of the tide that more boys are valuing education and want to learn. Who knows?

We all have one short life, you can decide to be angry, cross, resentful, jealous or others, what others have or what you think you are owed or the "respect" you think you are deserved, or you can enjoy whom is around you, support, love, have resilience, a work ethic, like learning and fun, accept defeat or rejection gracefully, be able to say sorry and mean it.

One path is happier than the other. That is what we think you need to teach teens, and some adults actually. And do accept, of course, that we might be wrong, that we might be nurturing male wet socks who get trampled on from the mighty alphas. We might who knows? Only time will tell.

Sadly quite a few single women choose to have children. Personally I'm opposed to single people having access to ivf, it makes babies a commodity. Got the house, got the car, got the job, got the handbag all we need now is the baby, time to go get one.

Yeah. Or abandoning familes to follow their dicks and run off with the easiest option.

Society has done this. The internet has done this.

So life was wonderful before the internet?

So true

I think a lot of men are just showing their true colours. These type of men were protected by the way society operated in the past. They were automatically superior just by being a man, they were legally allowed to rape their wives and hit them. Now they can’t do such things their unrestrained behaviour is emerging in other ways.

Very interesting and important debate. I agree (and disagree) with lots of points raised. It’s complex.

One thing I have noticed that’s different from my childhood is that people who are different no longer have to rub along together in the same way they used to.

When I was a kid, there weren’t many organised activities, and weekends and after school hours were spent playing out with the other kids in the street. Those kids were very varied, in age, personality, background, interests, level of privilege (despite living in the same street), cleverness, athleticism etc etc.

We were a gang because it was who was there. We accepted each other’s differences. Sure, there’d be arguments, flouncing, subgroups, piss taking, low level bullying at times, all the usual childhood stuff. But we were still a gang, and we continued to play together as we grew up.

Being forced to socialise meant that we understood each other. We learnt to take people as they are, and how to tolerate difference. How to deal with people who weren’t always nice, how to disagree whilst remaining friends.

Nowadays, kids are at activities, or visiting distant family, or being driven to friends houses for play dates, with kids who are more like them because they’ve been selected as someone they have stuff in common with. There is much more scope to choose friends. And far less need to rub along with bob from two doors down, who is a bit weird//has a scary Dad/insert undesirable difference of choice. If kids fall out, they don’t need to see each other again.

So the silos and tribalism starts, even before the algorithms of the internet start their work.

I think you have to immerse yourself in a teen boy’s world to really understand them. We have watched Andrew Tate videos as a family - pointing out to our boys how untrue a lot of it is, but also being magnanimous enough to accept that the odd message of his is okay (don’t vape or smoke; work hard). We have to be careful we don’t do a Kamala Harris and resort to ridicule rather than offer solutions because the left / wokeists are burned by this time and time again (Brexit, the ongoing immigration debate, American politics and the rise of the manosphere). We need to know our enemy basically and not resort to taunting but teach ongoing critical thinking. We encourage our boys to look for evidence from a range of reputable sources rather than just one person on YouTube.

That and good male role models - men who treat everyone with respect; men who are different rather than your typical ‘alpha’.

Oh and maths skills. Most men I know my age are married which immediately falsifies the 80/20 theory

There was a very good article on this in the guardian albeit based on Australian research
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/mar/29/the-adolescence-alarm-if-theres-a-problem-with-boys-behaviour-its-because-of-us

“The idea that young men today are more misogynistic than they were 20 or 30 years ago, I don’t see any evidence for this.”
Salter recalls his own primary and high school years, where sexual harassment was rife and normalised. The average age of sexual harassment of girls is prepubescent, he says, and “that’s been the case for decades”.
“I’m not suggesting there’s nothing new about what we’re seeing or experiencing, but I think there is a pronounced tendency to explain the types of violence that we’re seeing from adolescent boys at the moment according to social media, and frankly I think we’re potentially missing the forest for the trees here”

This.

Careful with the good male role models. It depends what aspect you want them to mirror. The men women seem to go for are often not the good role models. If they were we'd have more posts about how good a husband/partner we'd chosen rather than what a nasty narcissistic git we'd married. These seem to be many women's first choice in partners.

Outside marriage and relationships I just think that people in general are more self centered and nasty.

It's nothing new. If you look up the character profiles and childhood behaviours of most murderers they are almost always social outcasts who resent women.

I'm really not part of the problem! He's grown up with a feminist mother and ally father.
By 'not being kind ' I meant 'have taken the piss out of him/ told him he was weird' because he wears his hair long, doesn't play football and argues with the other boys about politics and feminism. No one has to be kind to him; they just don't need to be twats.
He only games with boys he knows.

But it still worries me that he could fit the profile of someone who ends up going down a dark path. And the fact that I even consider he might, makes me wonder if I'm being too down on him or just realistic.

I just find it really interesting that your first point was that you suspect girls are not always kind to him. So what if they aren’t? Boys were not always kind to me. But guess what? It didn’t turn me into a homicidal maniac. Why is that? Because society does not keep telling me that I am owed anything. Society does not tell me that I have a right to the time, energy, body and LIFE of somebody else. This is what men have been told for millennia. It’s sickening.

This is such an interesting thread. I have two male relatives who are disenfranchised, never had a gf, life hasn’t turned out as they expected. They are actually decent kind people, but in later life have turned quite bitter and become loners. It’s sad to see. They just didn’t fit in with society’s norms. One is on the spectrum and the other has a lot of childhood trauma . Amongst people I know, many have sons who have mental health issues, can’t cope with modern life , and are isolated and lonely. Some can’t work either. It’s very sad.

Let’s just remember, shall we, that this extraordinarily male-centred period was extraordinary and historically quite short, being the period after the world war when men came back from war and booted women out of jobs. Women have always worked - prior to the Industrial Revolution women had access to most trades and their work was valued. The further back you go, the more equality women’s work had. Men did not cry about forcing women out of trades and work and into dependency, nor did it cause women to become major social problems in the way it has men.

Im sick of male violence, male entitlement, male domination, and the endless justifications for it.

I view the major problems of our times being the slow, increasing build up of violence through more traditional media first, as the culture became more commercialist and sought increasing shock and ‘usp’ value. Later that went on to the internet and spiralled. At the same time sex started (for men) being pushed for sale more and more through the late 80s then 90s, as a market that will never go away: women were gaslit into believing it to be empowering, and men began to be sold their ‘need’ for sex. Again, once on the internet it has spiralled all as things to sell and now male entitlement is absolute. A gradual increase and spiralling of the trends of desperate commercialism after the wars, fully realised by the unrestrained internet maximising profits on sales for the common denominator, now endlessly justified.

I don’t think it will stop: I think it’ll take us into a second and longer dark age.