The men's loneliness epidemic might not exist
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What is the men's loneliness epidemic?
Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. Do you relate? Well, you may be lonely, but you're not alone. One third of Americans report feeling lonely at least once a week. And 16% of Americans report feeling lonely all or most of the time. It's hard to say definitively if loneliness has gotten worse, but what we do know is that a significant amount of people are feeling it. And we also know that chronic loneliness is really bad for us. Studies show loneliness is associated with a higher risk for heart disease, dementia, stroke, even premature death. But who is at greater risk for loneliness?
Why are men reported to be lonely?
And for those of us stuck in the loneliness loop, how do we get ourselves out? I'm Brittany Luce, and for the next few weeks on It's Been a Minute, we're launching a series called All the Lonely People. We're diving deep into how loneliness shows up in our lives and how our culture shapes it. This week, we're talking about men. Outside of the general loneliness epidemic, there's also been a lot of discussion about a men's loneliness epidemic. Study after study is showing that loneliness is on the rise and men are being hit especially hard. It's called the male loneliness epidemic, where men tend to be more isolated than women. And a lot of men are lonely. About one in seven say they're lonely all or most of the time.
We asked our listeners what that looks like. And here's what a few of them had to say.
What do men think about their loneliness?
I'm a 63-year-old lonely man. I think the loneliness is a result of a divorce of five years ago.
I guess I'm trying to make sense. sense of what someone is supposed to do in their 40s. I can't help but think about the community and the sense of togetherness and unity that I experienced earlier in life. And it's left me with a great sense of loneliness.
Loneliness to me is more about the day in and day out with no one else. I try so hard to make friends. I have altered work schedules to try to make myself available. And it doesn't seem that anything really works. Going on nine years with no friends.
That was Rick Klebanow, Jonathan Ellis, and Devin Burns. You'll hear more from them throughout the episode. But while a lot of men are lonely, some surveys suggest that they aren't actually more likely to be lonely than women are. But if that's true, then why has there been so much attention on men's loneliness?
How did the narrative about men's loneliness spread?
And if the problems men are having don't boil down to loneliness, what do they boil down to? I'm joined today by Allie Volpe, senior reporter at Vox. Thanks so much. And Harris Sockle. He's a writer and content lead at Medium. Thanks. To break it all down. According to Pew, there's only a 1% difference in reported loneliness between men and women. How did the narrative about a men's loneliness epidemic spread anyway?
I wrote a little bit about this. And I think the male loneliness epidemic conversation kind of, it spread because it became a conversation kind of about dating. That's how I first heard about it. And that's, I think, why this traveled so far. And I think they were conflating a conversation about singleness with a conversation about being lonely when actually they're kind of two different things.
Yeah, I think it just sort of neatly folds in with all of the headlines I've been seeing that basically just scream like there's something going on with men. Like men are having a problem. You know, fewer men are enrolling in college. Gen Z men are dating less. And perhaps most concerningly, men made up nearly 80% of the suicide rate in 2022. So there's a lot of really big problems happening here. And I think all of this stuff is like very woven together under just like the big umbrella of like men are going through it. There's something happening here. Yeah.
What are the underlying issues beyond loneliness?
Yeah, it's interesting. It's like we got all these different threads, isolation, lack of friends, you know, perhaps less dating or increased celibacy, combined with some of these other things that you mentioned, Ali, like taking up the majority of the suicide rate, unemployment, under education, some of those things might be correlated with each other.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the men's loneliness epidemic?
0:02–1:07
2
Why are men reported to be lonely?
1:07–1:58
3
What do men think about their loneliness?
1:58–3:18
4
How did the narrative about men's loneliness spread?
3:18–4:46
5
What are the underlying issues beyond loneliness?
4:46–7:55
6
Why are men less likely to seek emotional support?
7:55–9:29
7
How do societal norms affect men's friendships?
9:29–19:11