In 2023, Dr. Vivek Murthy, former Surgeon General, declared a national loneliness epidemic throughout the country, claiming one in two U.S. adults was experiencing it. In the following months, I’ve personally seen an increase in social media posts claiming that this epidemic is women’s fault.
If you’ve been on social media in the last few months, there’s a chance you’ve heard the term “male loneliness epidemic,” but if you haven’t, here’s what it means. This is typically used to describe the recent increase in male isolation and its effects.
Following the last few years, there have been studies reporting that many men simply don’t have close friends anymore. PBS reported in 2024 that 20% of single men don’t have people they deem close friends. There are many potential reasons why this could be the case, especially with the rise of social media and online communities, which can detract from human interaction.
With the global pandemic happening in 2020, it’s expected that people were suffering from isolation, which we’re still dealing with, as many jobs in the United States still offer remote working. Taking my mother, for example, she has the flexibility to work some days from home and some days in the office. Some corporations will claim that allowing workers to remain at home decreases productivity, but others have claimed that it can help increase it.
The issue of toxic masculinity has been a topic for a while, with effects like abuse or misogyny. There’s also the stigma of emotional vulnerability in men, which has resulted in a lot of men not feeling comfortable enough to speak about any issues.
With the popularity of “Alpha Male” content on the internet, it only pushes further on how toxic communities like this can be. Considering the number of listeners to these podcasts or followers of these influencers are impressionable boys, this results in them being unable to properly form relationships because of the harmful things they’re hearing.
When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, many women took to social media to say that they would no longer be entertaining or having intercourse with men as a result, saying they didn’t want to risk conceiving a child. After this happened, men began to claim women and feminism for their dating issues, refusing to take any blame for the issue.
There was a trend on social media where women would post their husbands not being able to complete basic household tasks despite being fully able to. This can be called weaponized incompetence. Why would a woman who was comfortably living by herself want to invite a man into her home and not contribute to it? In a report from the New York Post in 2024, around 73% of users on dating apps have experienced violence, which can easily cause people to not want to date.
To rid the community of the toxicity and find a way to form connections, it’s been suggested that men who are facing mental health issues attend treatments like support or therapy sessions. Getting rid of the toxic mindsets that have been ingrained in society can be a step in the right direction. The more vulnerable we are, the more people might feel comfortable talking about their feelings. Getting help is not embarrassing, but blaming women for your issues is.