Equimundo — State of American Men 2023

What the study found

Equimundo's State of American Men 2023 report examined how young men in the United States experience connection, work and masculine expectations. It found that two thirds of young men feel that no one really knows them, pointing to the fragility of their friendships and relationships. The report also documented men retreating into underachievement, underemployment and online addiction, and linked these patterns to prevailing masculine norms of toughness, self-sufficiency, dominance and stoicism. ^[1]

Why it matters here

The manosphere often frames young men's difficulties as a distinctly male crisis of loneliness and lost purpose. This report offers survey-based evidence that many young men do report feeling unknown and disconnected, and that rigid masculine norms are associated with withdrawal into underemployment and online spaces. That makes it directly relevant to is there a male loneliness epidemic?, where the question is how widespread and how specifically male such isolation is. The findings describe self-reported experience and correlations rather than proving that masculine norms cause these outcomes.