Young men who get stuck doing nothing...

[Bunny890]

My younger brother is living at home with my parents and I know several other young men who also get 'stuck' at home - endlessly online, alienate friends, not able to even look for employment or engage with healthcare. I realise that there is a mental health element to this, but I can't help but feel frustrated - Mu

Thanks @Bigbadmama . I posted partly for OP re the perils of leaving the family home to such sons. It’s a sensitive topic of course but I think it’s actually better for them not to, as it’s only a matter of time in many cases before said home goes to rack and ruin. My brother would be better off in sheltered accommodation ( less lonely, some structure etc) which he is likely to end up in, but it’s all on me now to make that happen and realistically it’s going to take years.

I think there are different things contributing to this, one being the extension of childhood dependence. Without that these scenarios would not so likely develop.

But the main element IMO is gaming addiction. Social issues and depression may send these boys in that direction, but much more I believe the addiction causes those things to get much worse.

Girls are less prone because they, on average, have always been less prone to withdraw in the teen years. They get into arguments with their parents, have issues with toxic mean girl groups, etc, but for the most part they are interacting with other people. Teen boys stereotypically retire to their rooms.

In the age of gaming that becomes a huge risk factor. They can game all night, watch videos about gaming, talk to people who live in other places about gaming, all without leaving their rooms.

Unfortunatly gaming addiction is extremely difficult to treat, and like other addictions usually requires total abstinance.

Regarding a comment above, isn't it white working class boys who are the lowest achievers at school, rather than white boys?

I think one important reason why this affects men more than women is that you're less likely to retreat to your room and stay there if you have friends. Women tend to have much better support networks than men, in general. I think there has been a lot of research into this.

It's a particularly dangerous situation if you're a young man in your early 20s as that's the time when it's easy, relatively speaking, to make friends. When you hire your 40s (speaking from experience here) it's way way harder.

This has always been the case, but the situation now is exacerbated because there is an outlet for lonely men who lack a few social niceties: cesspool Reddit communities and the like.

In my family it was actually my Dsis who got like this but the key factor is that she had no friends at all, like a lot of men, and much more unusually for women. She had crippling self doubt that took her years to get over. She did eventually manage but she lost out on so many of what could have been her best years.

As an aside my DW has a work colleague who is obsessed with an online game called Stardew Valley and lives with her parents. From what I know about it it's a game at the level of the average 10 year old. But this is a grown woman here with no other interests at all. The game provides her an alternative, safe life. So there's plenty of women too (although perhaps she's a bad example as she does have a job.)

I have a distant relative like this. Really clever and could have done so much with his life but he just stayed home and his mother couldn't find a way to get him to get a job. I recognise similar traits to what previous posters mentioned: poor social skills, no friends as such, into computers ( I have no idea about gaming and porn though)
She ended up buying him his own flat so he would leave hers but it's literally next door to hers and she goes there a lot to support him in there.
I have always wondered if an ultimatum would have done the trick. You have 6 months/a year to sort yourself out. After that, there'll be no roof over your head sort of thing. She could always have come up with am excuse like downsizing if she didn't want it to sound too brutal.

I have no experience if this, but I imagine that ultimatums tend to get ignored as soon as they're said. Actually enforcing one might mean literally forcing someone out the door, leaving them to stand outside like a bewildered farm animal.

This isn't necc applicable to OP but I think covid has had a big impact.
My DSs where in year 10 and 11 in first lock down and it also massively impacted their years 11 and 12. Just at the time they should have been breaking away from home they were unable to. It was so unnatural and infantalised them. They couldn't kick back against us as parents , get these part time jobs lots of posters are talking about.... etc etc
My eldest had always had more issues socially and he didn't retain his friendships through the lockdowns. He struggles with the on line nature of socialising and when physically meeting up disappeared overnight he completely withdrew. His social life was school and club based.
He is away at uni and has not made any friends. He is coping with cooking for himself etc but socially it's not great.
He is a real home body and I could see how he might end up this way if we are not careful. He has never gamed and actually doesn't enjoy on line life.
He however is a perfectionist and has MH issues.
It is a hard line to tread not to be over protective whilst knowing your son is hurting and lonely.
Having friends takes practice and involves the kind of effort and to some extent altering of one's natural personality that he just can't do.

There are more pitfalls for men in these situations that hinder them getting out of it I suspect. As a stuck woman I wasn't going to get into an incel movement for example, I'm far less likely to become porn addicted. Women as a group have different levels of violence so less likely to alienate people that way or get a criminal record.

Women are socialized differently to men, I always felt like I had to work, had to not cause my parents trouble, had to keep sensible hours, had to put money in a savings account. As I man I might have been less bothered about these things and more risk taking.

Also in my experience, might be generalising again here, women seem more able to maintain friendships over distance, which in my case meant I'd have at least some weekends catching up with old friends. Made me feel like I had some link to the real world rather than being in my own little world the whole time.

Such an interesting thread. Thank you OP for starting it.

My brother is like this - got a v good degree and worked in his 20s and 30s in v good jobs but very angry at the world and just completely dropped out. Quit work. Moved to a tiny flat. Spent all his time on the internet reading about conspiracies. Lived like a slob. That was 15 years ago and he is worse than ever.

What I am struck by is how much my parents enabled him by paying for him for the last 15 years - all living expenses, rent etc so there is no motivation for him to get back to work or improve his life. They have also tried to find jobs for him through friends.

But what I'm really struck by is the sexism inherent in their enabling. They seem to feel they can't let down the men in the family, they have to support him because he doesn't have a wife to help him- and of course is he did have a wife then he would have a clean flat (thx to her domestic labour!) and a reason to go out to work.

My parents would never support me in the same way - whether I wanted to take time off to care for children or if I just wanted to drop out. As a woman I am lesser that is clear.... and also as an adult woman I am/should be someone else's problem e.g I should be married to a man who would step in and take on any caring or support role if I was unwell.

I would suggest that the way parents enable these men or let them stall for years is driven by their sexist attitudes about the importance of their boy children, about how their little princes need more support/attention/hand holding/treated with kid gloves because they are boys.

I think males are born more competitive and thrill seeking than females. They learn that the thrills they want to seek are not-that-acceptable in modern societies (fighting, raids, dominance over women) so they seek the same adrenal rush through gaming. They learn, at the same time, that they'll never win at the competition of life. The women around them are more competent, smarter, more sussed. The house they want to buy is financially out of reach and always will be; the women they want to have sex with aren't interested and never will be. So they give up and get it all virtually.

Right, whereas men still just want the average woman do they? Not the porn stars or Instagram models they spend time wanking over. Remind me again, which sex it is that often tries to date someone much younger than themselves?

My son has traits of this. He does work but could find something with more hours. He does a lot of gaming. He doesn’t live with me but is living with family. I think part of the problem is it’s so expensive for young people to move into a place of their own now. He doesn’t want to house share and he can’t get housing support for anything except
a house share so sees no motivation to move from family. Private rentals are far to high for those on younger rate min wage as a single person.

Our education system encourages children to spend way too much time on their own, and at computers, instead of focusing on teamwork. For example it’s well known that the human brain has evolved to do its best problem-solving in teams, but we force children to study solo and they’re assessed on solo work.

I don't think that's true at all (except during lockdown, when it was unavoidable). Kids spend all day in classes full of 30 people. They interact with other students and with teachers, do group and pair work etc. I've been a teacher in a wide variety of different schools for many years. I haven't seen any forcing children to study solo!

So much of it is down to the internet, gaming and porn. So much less effort and lower-stakes to get your entertainment, social interaction, information etc from the comfort and 'safety' of your bedroom, behind a screen where you can pretend that you are whatever virtual version of yourself that you fantasise about being.

Any number of even pretty minor adverse life occurrences, disappointments, problems, MH issues etc can make that virtual life look more appealing than the real one.

White working class boys find it harder to hide in bedrooms into adulthood because they can't afford to.

The white working class boys are more likely to cocklodge with the first woman who will have them.

Mummy's boys locked in bedrooms are much more of a privileged middle class issue.

It makes sense that if you if you aren't getting much out of the real world and you are out of gaming that's where you'll spend most of your free time.

Plus any 30 something year old men now wouldn’t have had the emphasis on IT when they were at school in the 90s/early 2000s

I agree re the pitfalls. I used to play a lot of online games (namely WoW, DotA, and Overwatch), and the one thing I’ve noticed is that the more serious you are about the game and the better you get, the more misogynistic the environment becomes. I’ve been in groups trying to chase rating (these are people that are online for maybe 15 hours a day) and their discord servers are rife with porn, incel ideology, and more porn. It was what turned me off high rated gaming in the first place.

I think a lot of these young men dislike the fact that women are now thoroughly educated.
It is as if they then say, "if I can't win, then I don't want to play the game". So they opt out of education.

My nephew in early 20s is like this, doesn't have a job, living at home with mum and nobody barely sees him as he's shut in his room gaming. Family have tried to help and he did have a job for a short amount of time.

Hell yes. This.

Some statistics here - delamere.com/blog/gaming-addiction-report-2022

‘non-psychotic schizophrenia’ doesn’t exist. The criteria requires different psychosis symptoms to be present, and for some time.

what did the psychiatrist say? @Bunny890

Parents enable this in their teenage sons and by the time they are 20 it's too late the habits are ingrained.

Sorry, posted too soon.

What I mean is that unlimited screen time, allowing teenagers their phones in their rooms at night, not insisting that their 12 y o still comes for a walk on the weekend, not facilitating clubs and sport, not encouraging their sons to organise social events from a younger age. Not turning off the WiFi, confiscation, remote controls etc when rules are broken. Not making them do chores not making sure homework is done first etc These are just some examples. Teens are just huge toddlers and need just as much parenting but so many parents are burnt out by modern life and just leave them to parent themselves. I have lots of gcse age students whose parents say 'what can I do, he just games all the time', they have no stomach for being the bad guy and stopping the gaming.