For junior Grant Mu, creating high school friendships with other teenage guys often means engaging in surface-level conversations that never evolve into deeper connections.

“In high school I have a lot of superficial relationships, and that’s unlike the friendships I’ve had for like a long time,” Mu said. 

Mu said pressure to conform to rigid social standards set for men and the evolving social pressures of a high school setting often inhibited him from establishing the meaningful connections he sought.

“When you grow up with somebody from a really early age, I think it’s easier to open up and talk about your feelings more,” Mu said. “I think that for guys it’s definitely a lot harder to find that sort of relationship compared to girls.”

Mu’s experience is not unique; in fact, his experience mirrors a decline in meaningful male friendships across the United States, which is harming male mental health. Today, one in four men from ages 15 to 35 report feeling lonely, which is considerably higher than the national average of 18%. These feeling of isolation and lacking purpose are also evident in more alarming statistics: suicide rates in men have risen by 33%, and the share of men attending college has dropped by 41%, which is lower than womens’ enrollment in 1970. 

Michael O’Toole, sociology and psychology teacher, said he has witnessed this isolation first-hand.

O’Toole said, “I’ve had conversations where they (students) talk about their friends, and I get to know the student pretty well. Eventually I found out their friends are all online. I realize things are changing the way we interact with each other, but to have no one in your current present life that you can turn to in a physical aspect is not a healthy thing.”

Mu said the stress of high school further exacerbated difficulty establishing substantive connections.

“I think the main thing is just that all of us are going through so much stress and pressure,” Mu said. “I feel like if you don’t talk about the things that are bothering you, it can really kind of avalanche down a bad path if you keep boiling up everything inside of you. We’re not really raised with the idea that we’re supposed to talk about this sort of thing.”

Junior Atharva Sahu echoed this perspective, and said, “You can study super hard, live in isolation, but I feel like at some point you’re going to burn out. You’re going to be sad even if you’ve achieved your goals. I think a lot of the joy of life comes from being connected to people and enjoying the social aspect of life.” 

O’Toole said current internal conflicts in men are a result of clashes between traditional expectations and societal progress.

“Especially in this society, for most of its existence, it’s almost as if (men) are the default,” O’Toole said. “Certain things are supposed to be given to them and they’re supposed to be at the top of the hierarchy. Others are supposed to be subservient to them and follow certain rules. When other marginalized groups are starting to gain a voice and more power, they see that as a challenge.”

What is Masculinity?

O’Toole said there is no universal definition of what masculinity is or the correct way it should manifest itself, despite constant pressure to adhere to a certain standard by a substantial number of people. 

Not only that but, “For a long time males and females are given certain pressures of what is acceptable behavior and expectations for them,” he said. 

Junior Lily Jacobson, said, as a woman, “I think there is a double standard on how men should act,” she said, “I’ve noticed that men that act more feminine tend to be made fun of more, especially by other guys.” 

Interestingly, she said social normalities are less rigid for women, “I’ve also noticed that when women act more masculine. It’s seen more as cool and appealing to people.”


Mu said he agrees with the idea that men are held to an unreasonable standard in terms of how they are expected to act in public, with harsh restrictions on behavior that could be perceived as feminine. He said for men, expressing a vulnerable side of yourself in “inappropriate” settings leads to a feeling of shame and guilt that he himself had been affected by. 

He said, “I definitely have times if something really bad happens to me and I’m in a public space, I feel like I really want to cry, but I purposely withhold my tears because it’s a standard that guys don’t really cry in front of other people.”

Sahu said, “It’s a huge stereotype that people expect men to be super strong, stoic, not really caring. But it’s really important to know that we also have emotions.”

O’Toole said at different points of time, and most notably right now, certain men claim that masculinity is under attack.

“Masculinity, it’s such a spectrum of what that can be, but (certain men) have this singular view of what it must be because they’ve been told this message over and over again– rather than being given a spectrum of what masculinity can be,” he said.

O’Toole said to believe a significant contributing factor to an isolated perspective of the “correct” manifestation of masculinity is the fact that the large majority of men aren’t exposed to critical lessons in behavioral sciences, or simply nuanced ideas expressed in the humanities.

According to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as of 2022, women earned about 63% of all masters degrees in humanities and 56% of all degrees of all doctoral degrees in the field. 

Echoing this conclusion, O’Toole said, “At this big school with over 5,000 students, there are two sections of sociology and they are heavily attended by female students, so that also becomes kind of an echo chamber so males are not even being introduced to a breadth of these important facts and perspectives.”

Online Influences

With the recent significant lean toward more men affiliating with the Republican Party and a general trend within the nation with more men gravitating toward more traditional roles, O’Toole said he doesn’t believe this new pushback amounts to any legitimate or positive change. 

“It doesn’t seem like these are actual grievances or things that can be solved by either political party,” he said. “To be honest, it does draw into the idea that we need to do a better job with education; so many men believe that they are owed certain things, certain positions in society.”

Jacobson said that social media heavily influences political affiliation, particularly in terms of the younger generation. 

She said, “I do think there are people out there who spread radical and unreasonable opinions solely for the purpose of gaining traction on social media.”

Mu said many men don’t feel comfortable necessarily discussing radical ideologies with people during day-to-day conversion, instead they resort to using social media as an outlet. 

“A lot of guys resort to things that are like online and a lot of the times the stuff that is online is pretty toxic, because they just want a lot of attention rather than maybe telling the truth about things.They just want like clicks and views, so they say a lot of pretty crazy things that And a lot of guys still gravitate towards,” he said, “I feel like all teenage guys, they get pushed that sort of content one time or another. Whenever I’m online, I keep the mindset that I shouldn’t take the stuff, the information they say online at face value, and I should always have my own opinions.”

Solution

Amid a flood of new research and notable changes in a significant number of young men, O’Toole said, “Outside of the realm of loneliness, it a trend of anti-intellectual movement, and that’s always been there, always will, but this might exponentially move it forward if some of these young men do end up in positions of power. I don’t believe those ideas are going to be left behind.”

However, in the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges, Mu said the first step in resolving the male mental health crisis is raising awareness.

Mu said, “I don’t think I’ve really had a teacher ever talk about guys’ mental health ever. So I think having a period of time where you are educated on that (male mental health) shows that it’s OK to talk about your feelings in front of other people and not just keep letting it build up.”

Mu also said that as societal expectations shift, he would need to normalize vulnerability on an individual level. 

Mu said, “I think I would start incorporating that (vulnerability) into my friendships and start making it like a normal thing, rather than kind of like a negative stigma towards talking about your feelings.”

Speaking to a broader issue, O’Toole said breaking down barriers in terms of political, economic, and gender separation, is the best way toward maintaining a healthy society. 

“If (everybody) all joined together and realized (hostile polarity between different groups of people) is a concerted effort by people of power, I think they would realize they have much more in common with these people that they allegedly hate them than they don’t.”