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- Hacker News
- The increase in the visibility of mental health issues could either be an increase in the instance of mental health issues or a decrease in the concealment of mental health issues, or indeed both.
If there is any correlation between the wider perception of the state of the world and the instance of mental health issues then the only meaningful claim you could be making about any subgroup is the deviation from that correlation.
Talking about single instances and absolute numbers disregards those nuances.
by Lerc - The issue is systemic. These young men were raised in a system where the messaging was “the future is female”, “women in STEM”, “teach men not to rape”, or “would you rather be in the woods with a bear or a man.” All of this, all of it, impressed upon them that there is a future out there they aren’t invited to. That they are monsters through the sheer happenstance of having been born male. They are to be feared, they aren’t to be trusted, and there is no need to provide them with any help or hope because they are hopeless.
They spend the first 17-18 years of their lives in a public education that is largely gynocentric. It caters to better outcomes for women and has become a zero sum game engineered by women and for girls.
If there was an issue of black folks having poorer and poorer outcomes, and those largely overseeing their education openly joked, “would you rather be in the woods with a bear, or a black person”, the issue would be instantly recognizable and suddenly problematic. It would be immediately understood that bigotry was disenfranchising that segment of the student body and those in charge carried a significant share of the blame. But that conversation isn’t happening.
Instead we get more messaging on how it’s these toxic boys with their toxic masculinity that is driving the issue. That patriarchy has tainted these defective boys and that is the root of their problems. That without addressing their toxicity and broken social conditioning they can’t be fixed. What about those with the toxic messaging? The hate directed towards minors by bitter adults with an axe to grind?
So, seeing the writing on the walls, they retreat to spaces that are unapologetically pro boy, pro male. These spaces don’t exist in public spheres because pro male spaces that exclude women are discouraged. They don’t even have Boy Scouts anymore as a space for just them. It’s not inclusive enough.
To the Internet they go. Chat rooms, message boards, YouTube, TikTok, where there are no real adults in the room but there are opportunists. People like Andrew Tate who are only too happy to welcome them with open arms and tell them they’re awesome. They have power. They can have the future they want. If only they had places to go with reasonable adults in charge, proper male role models who could help them better understand themselves and the world they live in, but that space doesn’t exist. It’s not given space to exist.
The lack of introspection is troubling and this problem isn’t likely to get better without it. So, those in charge will just double down and then double down again instead of looking in the mirror. Adults blaming children for the outcomes they helped engineer in the first place.
by dudebroheim - > Oliffe said that in the last decade, there has been "low government investment in men's mental health."
When has it ever been otherwise? Was there some past time I've forgotten about where government spending on men's mental health was high?
I'm just not convinced by this article. Male teens are moody and anxious? Seems pretty normal. That was me in the 1980s for sure. We had no idea what the future held, other than we'd probably all be nuked at some point pretty soon.
by SoftTalker - The job market has collapsed, graduates are moving back in with their parents, dating is a non-starter for most, nobody born after the 2000s can afford homes, the future looks bleak
- One thing I've noticed: the amount of gambling ads targeted towards young males; kinda wild. I'm glad that I'm not growing up in this era.
- I wonder if some of it is a sort of parallel to the self-image issues called out for young women on social media. In the same way that it used to be easier to be happy about your appearance when you didn't see the genetically gifted on your feed every day, it was easier to feel proud about being good at $job/$hobby/etc when you only had to be better than anyone within 100 miles rather than competing with that one guy who lives 3,713 miles away who hasn't done anything but eat, sleep and blacksmith (or whatever) since he was 3.
Even as an adult, I feel it a bit. You see somebody on YouTube and think the hobby looks intriguing, but feel discouraged because you'll never be as good as someone who made a "make it or break it" bet on the hobby at 12 years old with a parent who was famous in the field.
It seems hard to feel proud of yourself these days in a world where everything you do is judged on a national or global scale instead of your city or county.
by everforward - In a supposedly very conservative red state, Arkansas, the recent TV ad message run by the GOP candidate was “young men who are gaming at home and eating Cheetos all day are why we had to implement work requirements for welfare”; it was a very negative ad that made young men look like slackers, layabouts etc.
Of course, only about one percent of welfare recipients are young men; single moms in middle age are the ones who are a large percentage of those receiving the benefits, for very different reasons than Cheetos consumption.
But it shows how attacking young men when they aren’t even the crux of the problem is en vogue.
BTW House Speaker Johnson has said the same thing on TV about young men.
by shrubble - I already knew what angle the article would take before I started reading. It’s the same political bullshit that they’ve been saying for decades:
‘The emphasis on women's parity in the labour force and society, as well as a greater acceptance of non-traditional gender identities, has upended expectations.’
"At one point we knew we were supposed to be the provider and protector, and the idea of ‘toxic masculinity’ wasn’t a thing," he said. "I think men are really trying to figure out what it means to be a man in today’s world."
It just shows how much of a crap they give about men’s mental health that this viewpoint is constantly regurgitated instead of addressing the real problems.
The jobs market is horrendous, especially for the young. Everything is super expensive too. Young men generally desire independence, so finding a job to excel at, buying a house, starting a life… these are what is desired and also what is now out of reach.
Dating and marriage have been completed destroyed by modern society. Blaming goons like Andrew Tate avoids addressing the real issues.
I have family members who work in mental health, and they say that young women are having a worse time than young men.
Women, on average, have higher recorded rates of nonfatal suicidal behavior and attempts. Men, on average, use methods that are more immediately lethal, so there is less opportunity for rescue or medical treatment.
What pisses me off is the subtext of these articles that basically says ‘men can’t handle women succeeding in the workplace’. Mocking pain and suffering and suicide for cheap feminist ‘wins’ is par the course for these people. Yet, where are the articles addressing the decline in mental health of young women and how the loss of their traditional roles as wives and mothers has led them there?
by xvxvx