What in your opinion, is the leading cause for unhappiness in young men?

35 comments

1. Social media. It’s a highlight reel in every context, and makes the real world seem slow and drab.

2. There’s no need to extrapolate and find things like leading causes or patterns to your unhappiness. Focus on what you need and what you’re lacking. You lack healthy social interaction, so work on that for example. The feeling of happiness will follow as you take steps to improve your life.

3. Sounds to me like you’re realizing some things about yourself. Those people you mentioned; maybe they’re just not the type of people you want to associate with?

   Are you unhappy in general, or more so around social settings and making friends?

4. Straight guys suppress their emotions more and don’t support each other as much

5. I think it’s fair in my case that I was much more judgmental than I thought I was. Life is a lot more interesting when faults don’t have to be overly analyzed.

   For example, I don’t love all my coworkers, but I know at least two things they’re good at (even if it isn’t their job), and I like them just fine as coworkers and casual friends. I don’t think I’d have had those same feelings 20 years ago.

6. There are a plethora of answers but I think a big reason in most western societies is the expectation that men do not emotionally open up to even their closest friends and family members, and there’s still a significant stigma around therapy and mental health. A lot of relationships have been ruined because the man either can’t process or manage his emotions at all or can only do so with his partner, and that’s a lot of pressure to put on one person who has that much invested in you.

7. I *think* (ha) overthinking has a great deal to do with it.

   I’ve come to believe that that predictive / analytical part of our minds – the thing that says “I…”, isn’t supposed to be turned on all the time.

   I’m happiest when I’m fully engaged in something (ideally, with other people). The more of my day I spend either talking to other people or fully focused on some problem or physical activity, the happier I am.

   Conversely the more time I spend analyzing my own behaviour, the behaviours of others, the past, and the future, the more unhappy I become. This isn’t to say that all introspection / analysis is *bad* per se; just that it should be a sparingly used tool.

   A training method for this (whether done deliberately or not – it doesn’t matter) is called mindfulness. For me that can take the form of deliberate meditation, or something more active like riding my motorcycle. Both are useful for snapping out of analysis mode.

   Something guaranteed to make the problem worse is most social/news media. Rumination is also self-destructive. If you realize something, decide whether it needs action, then decide on an action, then let it go. Decisiveness is *highly* conducive to happiness. Making a decision is often more important than making the “right” decision.

   Finally if you’re stuck in rumination, try frantically writing down what you’re thinking as you’re thinking it in a journal or something. Like, just let it flow. Don’t ever read it again – burn it if you want. It helps (I’m not sure what the mechanism is).

8. I think whatever is making it difficult for you to socialize is where you should start. How do you feel when you have to interact with strangers? What about a work Xmas party?

   I don’t get why drinking after work would weird you out. That’s been the norm since before you were born. Is the person driving drunk and you’re concerned?

9. I hate to be so vague but…*gestures widely* have you checked the state of the world? Honestly I think most people should be unhappy with a lot of things.

10. …not having a bad bitch in your life. most men would be happier with one

11. Tolerance, a lot of us are getting brainwashed by the previous generations. If we just accepted people for who they are, life would be far less stressful for everyone.

12. I think young men are in their own head too much. I don’t really have time to ruminate if my life is busy with my hobbies friends and career.

    That said, I also believe men worship the poonani too much. Getting notches will never be as fufilling as a genuine relationship. Don’t go hunting for the One. Love is a choice, you must always choose yourself first.

13. I believe that it is that have to fit is some scheduled plan like women do. The ladies have their future all mapped out at 18. Young men have bought in to this program that is fostered by women teachers in the education system at a young age.

    This is of course all bullshit. Some men can do this but most of us muddle along until we hit our sweet spot in our early thirties when we become competent at our work and the money flows in regularly.

    For women, their 30’s is when many of them discover that their well laid out plans do not always work so they enter their unhappy phase.

14. Social media and smart phones. Facebook came out in 2004 and the iPhone was released in 2007. If you look at the charts of when unhappiness starts to rise it’s around that time.

    Noah Smith has a great post about it:

    https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/honestly-its-probably-the-phones

15. Look dude…I’m a one trick pony with my answers…but this comes from a very personal place and I’m living it right now…not sure if it’s because I’m older or what…but my whole life outlook really improved over the last couple years.

    A lot of it was nature…I had a lot of emotional baggage from shitty marriage and going broke etc… Being out in my forest preserves helped me process it….I had a therapist I was seeing and those two things seemed to go hand in hand. All this was my first step into just learning how to think and slow shit down and accept me for me and think about how to be a good dad…yada yada yada.

    The last couple years as I’ve taken that love I rediscovered for nature…and I applied it to my little yard and I’ve grown native plants…

    I started that because of what I learned about ecology at my forest preserves and I heard a about a grassroots movement to do it…I was curious and I just started….it was so freaking fun to have a slow burn outdoor classroom to take photos of things and look them up and learn about all the bugs that eat those plants, all the birds that need the caterpillars, all the bats that eat the moths from the caterpillars that the birds missed…all the butterflies, and beetles from the decaying material left on the ground from last season…

    I enjoyed all that shit so much that I found a couple local Facebook groups to see what pictures of cool bugs and plants they had…and then I show up to a seed swap and a plant swap…the nicest fucking people I’ve ever met that actually spoke my language. Many are friends now…and we have some plans to help each other out and start a little movement to do more politically….little shit that has to be done, like updating arborist lists to remove tree planting options like the Bradford Pear…we all know it’s invasive now, let’s put a proper option on the list of acceptable trees like some dwarf oaks…

    By the way…cute freaking graduates are volunteering at the preserves all the time now from what I gather…they talk about it at these native garden tours and plant swaps…so if you’re worried about being single, go volunteer at a forest preserve…you’d be out there sweating, saving the planet. Also, when I post my gardens on some of the large FB groups, 90% of the likes and hearts are women. They are crunchy, some of them, so you’d better give up that refined sugar before you meet them…hahaha.

    All of it gives me purpose now…and it even gets my kids off their phones once in a while to come out and look at a cool bug…like a glow worm…they didn’t fucking believe me when I told them we have a glow worm in our garden…I hadn’t seen one since I was a kid and they had never heard of them…two teenage heads exploded that evening and they knew their dad had a good healthy hobby.

    So my immediate advice is get outside, get your hands dirty, give yourself permission to be curious about shit for a few weeks even…then take a little tally and make a list of things that seemed interesting while you gave no fucks about 90% of everything else for those few weeks…then chase one or two of them…do a few quick Google searches…like, I wanted to get good at woodworking…some of the shit posted on that sub is cool…start thinking about a chair to build…and dude, I couldn’t sit through the few 5 to 10 minute videos to even start to figure out what new tools I’d need…PASS…but how about make some cool natural paths for my gardens…let’s head to the net for some ideas…oh shit…I can do that…that looks cool and doable…

    And then I’m off to the races on that project for a few weeks.

    I’m telling you this because being where I’m at now and looking back on my 20s…I was unhappy. I was performing always. For my wife, my friends, my employers, my customers…I didn’t even know how unhappy I was until I got away from all that shit and started doing what I liked…

    And fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how one looks at it, I stopped giving a lot of fucks about a lot of things…I got fired from a job I thought I kicked ass at…I got divorced from a lady I thought I gave everything to, i valued trying to get ahead so much, but I ended up flat broke for a while…my ma had to be my landlord for like almost 4 years from my mid to late 30s…and going through all that terrible shit, made me say fuck it to most of it and now, I work a job that makes enough money to pay my bills and save a little bit…I got remarried to a person that gets me for me, and I work part time to make extra money to follow a passion.

    Go be curious, give no fucks, and fail or pass at a bunch of shit until something piques enough curiosity in you to actually try hard and like it.

16. The internet. From social media to political echo chambers is one big thing. Constant stimuli overload.

    Moving goalposts is the other. (Rising costs, stagnating wages, etc.) A man used to be able to support a family with a rather modest job title. The job title necessary for success is becoming more and more difficult to obtain, impossible in some cases.

17. Not having a skill that’s a part of their identity and career.

18. This is so serendipitous, I am about to write a treatise on modern masculinity for my newsletter and was just sketching it out in my head before I showered and saw this.

    Simply put, you live in an society that does not put any value on real human happiness but can monetize a multitude of needs and desires, so the system you live in is designed to induce want and you’re taught that happiness comes from consumption.

    This is the root cause of all the ails others have mentioned.

    Social media is harmful to you because the system it’s expressed in makes negative feelings and addictive behavior profitable since it’s monetized via ads.

    You’re not socialized or educated well because *neither of those things are valued*, so instead you’re taught how to sit still and do mundane tasks (very valuable).

    As a young man even the very human process of dating has been discarded and commoditized. Instead of taking chances and facing rejection men are being shoved into these dating apps that make the dating market look like our wealth gap.

    [I wrote an article on this, basically the modern condition is designed to make you not feel ok because it drives your consumption.](https://open.substack.com/pub/yearsofgap/p/are-you-supposed-to-be-ok-right-now-5f9?r=yn6n9&utm_medium=ios)
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    Here are some tips.

    1) Understand that what you’re calling happiness is actually a state of mind called “contentment”. Contentment is the result of physical and mental health being aligned. *This means that contentment is a result that comes AFTER a series of good choices are made.

    2) Contentment is not a permanent state – it is a state you will reach and get knocked out of and strive for again. That’s literally life imo, cycles of being content, getting knocked off by lack of discipline or uncontrollable external events and fighting your way back.

    3) There many ways to get to contentment and to stay there, but there are three requirements. Eat right, sleep right, exercise right. If you don’t do these right, don’t expect happiness *even if you have good mental health*

    4) Discipline, patience and organization. These are the golden keys to contentment/happiness as man, and these are the tenants of modern masculinity. In reality it just all comes down to how much suffering can you bear easily and how to direct that talent so you don’t suffer needlessly (boredom is suffering, working out is suffering, eating healthy is suffering…at first. Then it becomes a habit. Breathing is a habit. It is effortless.)

    5) Go find ways to be around people, and if possible ingratiate yourself to a mentor that lives the life you want and has the being/attitude you’d like to become.

19. Access to high speed internet porn

    PC, Console, and Mobile gaming and excessive screen use

    Access and excessive use of weed

    These 3 things fry dopamine and sap young men of all motivation. It pacifies the population.

    Lack of interest in pursuing higher education.

    Lack of interest in trades

    Lack of interest in making money, learning to build things, going out in the world.

    Lack of interest in approaching women

20. Not enough challenges when young, not enough free play when young, not enough physical activity when young, and being told that they’re shit and responsible for every problem out there when they hit 18, despite being on the losing end of basically every metric of well-being and performance for the last 2 decades.

    As for you personally, try BJJ or rock climbing, it’ll put you in a good place mentally, physically and socially.

21. Not having hobbies and interests that cause you to regularly interact with others in person doing something you like

22. Perhaps not the leading cause, but I think the ways boys are socialised from a young age is terrible. They’re mostly left to figure things out for themselves, they’ll stick a bunch of boys in a room or a yard together, it’ll get weird, they’ll develop their own language and norms informed by the dumbest shit in the media, only to receive the occasional lecture or shaming from an adult once they notice the smell. And the only time they’re exposed to any sort of organised social activities, they’re usually *competitive* sports more concerned with “running off boys’ energy” than anything else, can’t imagine how that could go wrong…

    And because they usually get bigger and louder than girls, parents and teachers tend to give up on them earlier, consider them less manageable, or less needy of guidance. Also it’s not just absent fathers but absent mothers now. Forget latchkey kids, now they’re “I’ll hand you my phone if you shut up” kids too.

    The end result is the moment The Track ends, once there’s no longer the rigid and artificial structure of 9-to-3 school days in front of them, there’s no sense of a society or one’s place within it. Plenty of causes and issues and narratives, lots of things to get outraged about this week, but nothing coherent. We used to tell kids what success meant and gave them the customs and economic tools to achieve those ends, it put off the existential crisis until midlife once a lot of them realised it wasn’t for all of them. At the very least it used to be normal and affordable to move out in your late-teens and bum around with friends, develop those skills and one’s sense of place through fucking around. We deconstructed a lot of traditions and norms, which is great, but we forgot to replace them with anything and have chucked future generations into a vague, nihilistic void out of the gate.

    They’re neither well-socialised nor prepared for adulthood. Boys in particular are just expected to bullshit their way out of this. Some will bullshit themselves into going broke or getting arrested. Some will bullshit their way to social and economic success. Some will have no capacity to bullshit and will just hide from the world.

23. Same thing that’s the main reason of unhappiness for all men. A lack of meaning and connection leads us to chasing desires (Women, money, success etc) in the hopes that it will fill the hole (It wont).

24. No misson/ purpose in life. No master (belief in something greater than yourself ala God). Social isolation from a lack of meaningful connection- both in friendships with other males as well as women in dating/ marriage prospects. The age we live in has proliferated these issues, especially the social connections and people being pacified by the internet as a surrogate for real life experiences.

    Those are some aspects that come to mind which often lead to despair.

25. Failure. Failure in employment. Failure in training. Failure in dating.

26. Unwantedness

27. No purpose or responsibility. The purpose or the responsibility doesn’t matter, what matters is that it motivates the person.

28. Comparison is the thief of Joy. Concentrate on what you have, not some bullshit someone else has that you don’t.

29. On the contrary to some of the responses, I find it fruitful to question and ponder on this topic you brought up. Nothing wrong with analyzing your life and where thing could have gone wrong.

    I think in general terms, the reason a lot of people are unhappy is by not knowing themselves. This applies to people who have no cognitive or terminal illnesses that keep them from being an average healthy person. They have far bigger things to worry about. So if you’re a healthy person who generally has everything to success such as good physical, financial, emotional, and spiritual health then this applies to you. Knowing yourself is vital to happiness.

    I used to get myself into relationships or friendships with people that I thought I liked but after years, I realized that they weren’t the people that I wanted to emulate. And this conclusion was only self-evident once I reflected on what i liked and didn’t like about them. It turned out to be something on my side rather than their personalities. I just needed to seek people who had the energy and traits that I admired and wanted to be like.

    Same for career choices, hobbies, etc. You have to ask yourself how you feel about something and be honest with yourself. Then you can go into a deeper analysis of your own persona. The ultimate goal being the improvement of your relationships and your relationship with everything around you. Traffic, work, hobbies, family, neighbors, etc. It’s not to become narcissistic where all you do is over analyze yourself. You just need enough analysis that you find key points about you that can help you improve your life for the better. Then things should fall into the right place like Lego pieces or a cardboard puzzle.

30. Expectations

31. There is not a lot of economic of social mobility anymore. Everything is very hard.

32. Lack of purpose, excessive hedonism like video games & porn

33. Well, what have they got to be happy about? Women and girls are the main characters now, boys are just treated as occasional support and frequent villains.

34. There is a book called “The Art of the Good Life: Clear Thinking for Business and a Better Life” by Rolf Dobelli

    There are a lot of answers in that book.

35. Not doing stuff or not having a purpose. One should constantly be learning something new, building something, creating something, and moving around. I’ve found that if I’m unhappy it’s because I’ve allowed my Mental, Spiritual, Physical, or Skill/Talents to atrophy.

    If you want friends then be interesting. Be someone you’d go out of your way to be friends with. Modern life is way too easy. You have to find ways to make it challenging.