A new survey from the Institute for Family Studies asks why so many young men are adrift, disconnected and disengaged from today’s world.
The study, conducted by YouGov between April 7 and 15, 2025, surveys a representative sample of 2000 American young men, ages 18 to 29 and living in the United States. It asks how young men are doing in their lives now and why so many of them are facing the challenges they do.
What did it find? The survey final report lists there of the most common findings:
Structural Changes. A sizable literature highlights the role of “structural” changes as the most important contributing factors. The struggles of young men are symptoms of wider economic and educational alterations, such as the off shoring of manufacturing and unfavorable school policies that have weakened the opportunity structure for men.
Idle Young Men. Some accounts, making little reference to political economy, focus their explanations on deficiencies in young men themselves. Caught up in self-indulgence, a substantial number of young men have become resigned to idleness—addicted to screens and filling their hours with virtual distractions. Their failings reflect passivity, lack of ambition, poor work ethic, and a “purpose void.”
Failed Socialization. Another school of interpretation centers on failed socialization. Brought up under the old, rigid masculinity norms, young men have not learned emotional openness or to express vulnerability. Now lonely and isolated, they have withdrawn into a kind of antagonistic reclusion and increasingly come under the sway of the “toxic masculinity” promoted in the online manosphere. From this poisoned well, many are imbibing resentment, nihilism, and misogynistic attitudes toward women.
What does it mean? In a recent article on the study, Samuel Abrams, of the American Enterprise Institute, provides insightful analysis of the results and the growing gap between young men’s aspirations and attainment.
It is tempting to interpret this gap as evidence of disengagement. But consider what the data actually show. Young men who say they want marriage, who define manhood as responsibility and sacrifice, who express a desire to provide for others—and yet are not marrying, not advancing economically, not building the lives they describe—are not exhibiting the signature of opt-out. They are exhibiting the signature of obstruction. Men who had truly checked out would not report these aspirations at all. The gap between what they want and what they have achieved is precisely the evidence that the problem lies elsewhere.
This is not a story about young men changing. It is a story about institutions changing around them.
What has changed is not their aspirations, but the structures that once made those aspirations achievable.
For much of the 20th century, the transition to adulthood was guided by clear institutional pathways. Stable employment, often accessible without a degree, provided the foundation for marriage and family formation. Community institutions—religious congregations, civic associations, fraternal organizations—offered mentorship and a sense of belonging.
Those pathways have narrowed or disappeared.
Abrams continues:
Meanwhile, the institutions that once provided moral formation have weakened. As Yuval Levin has argued, American life has shifted from treating institutions as formative to treating them as mere platforms for performance—spaces that amplify expression but rarely demand commitment. The result is a society rich in voice but thin in structure.
Young men feel that absence.
The consequences are not merely economic. They are civic and cultural. To become an adult, particularly as men themselves still define it, is to take responsibility for others, to enter durable commitments, and to see oneself as part of something larger. When the pathways to those commitments are unclear, the effects ripple outward: delayed family formation, declining community engagement, and isolation.
Young men today are telling us, in their own words, that they still want lives defined by responsibility, purpose, and connection. They are not asking for a redefinition of manhood. They are asking for a way into it.
The policy implications are straightforward. We need to take seriously alternative pathways into work, including vocational education and apprenticeships. We need to restore the dignity of work that sustains families. And we need to rebuild institutions that do more than connect individuals—they must form them.
That means investing in organizations that provide mentorship and structure: community groups, religious institutions, and the kinds of fraternal organizations that once played a quiet but essential role in shaping young men’s lives.
Young men are not lost. They are not checked out. But they are, increasingly, without a map.
The results are instructive and sobering. We need a culture that creates vigorous, healthy and committed men. We ignore the challenge at our own peril.
