Study Finds that 60% of Young Men Are Single (2023 Study) – Many Are Lonely, Not Interested in Dating or Marrying, Articles Say
I first saw headlines about this study a few weeks ago but was too busy to blog about it then.
I don’t find this surprising.
About once every other year the past several years, more articles and studies keep being published about how more people (men and women) are either giving up on sex, not dating, not marrying, or deliberately putting off marriage.
I wouldn’t be surprised that if my fellow conservatives take note of this study and comment on it, hypocritically and infuriatingly, it will be done with the utmost concern – conservative commentators and hosts, such as Matt Walsh, Al Mohler, and Tucker Carlson – will fawn all over today’s single, 20-something men, expressing all sorts of worry for men today.
Why do I say this is hypocritical and infuriating?
Whenever these same conservative groups or persons comment on women being single, they always criticize the hell out of single women for being single (and/or for being childless), all nuance is stripped away, for these conservative commentators to make all sorts of sexist, negative, sometimes simplistic, assumptions about why women are single.
Some women are single by circumstance, not from choice, but that fact is often overlooked by the Tucker Carlsons, Al Mohlers, Abby Johnsons and Matt Walshes, who love to assume all women deliberately choose career over marriage.
The single men won’t get the same insulting, sexist treatment, for the most part for being single. Conservatives like Mohler, Carlson, etc, will actually find a way to blame all women, or blame feminism, for why so many of today’s men are passing up marriage.
Churches Need to Meet the Needs of Adult Singles, Stop Focusing on Dwindling Number of Married Persons with Kids at Home
American churches (as I’ve been saying forever on this blog) need to step up and start offering true community to any and all adults in their areas, including single (never married) or divorced or widowed adults – they need to stop pandering to married couples with children still living at home, which is what they keep doing.
Church attendance is dwindling in the United States. People are losing interest in the Christian faith. Maybe if churches got out of their “Nuclear Family” niche and attempted to meet the needs of single and childless adults, they could increase their numbers.
Some of the following articles say that young, single men today are lonely. Not only do they not have girlfriends or wives, the articles say, but they have little to no friends, either.
Marriage- and Nuclear-Family- obsessed Christians and churches have totally dropped the ball on ministering to single, childless adults.
And you’ll notice that conservatives will NOT mock single men for being single, like they do with single women, when they make their ageist and sexist jokes about single women dying alone in a house full of cats, or saying that single women over 30 have “hit the wall,” or tweeting photos of empty egg cartons.
They won’t tweet parallel, insulting, misandrist or ageist comments about single men dying alone clinging to a life-size anime doll, a toy stuffed shark, while previously having had watched porn on their computer, while having had to urinate 50 times a night due to an enlarging prostate. The effing, sexist hypocrites.
(Link): Study finds more than 60 percent of young men are single: ‘Who are all the young women dating?’
February 23, 2023
Sixty-three percent of men and 34 percent of women under 30 report being single, according to a Pew study
(Link): Most young men are single. Most young women are not.
More than 60 percent of young men are single, nearly twice the rate of unattached young women, signaling a larger breakdown in the social, romantic and sexual life of the American male.
Men in their 20s are more likely than women in their 20s to be romantically uninvolved, sexually dormant, friendless and lonely. They stand at the vanguard of an epidemic of declining marriage, sexuality and relationships that afflicts all of young America.
(Link): Six out of 10 young men are single — the disturbing reasons why
Excerpts:
They’re not getting jerked around by dating anymore.
New Pew Research Center data has found that nowadays, 63% of men under 30 are electively single, up from 51% in 2019 — and experts blame erotic alone time online as a major culprit.
“[Young men] are watching a lot of social media, they’re watching a lot of porn, and I think they’re getting a lot of their needs met without having to go out,” psychologist Fred Rabinowitz told the Hill.
“I think that’s starting to be a habit.”
The new, post-COVID numbers would surely back up previous research that the pandemic has made men prefer an evening alone instead of actually meeting a partner.
Just half of single men as a whole responded that they are “looking for a committed relationship and/or casual dates,” a decrease compared to 61% four years ago.
But these statistics tell a sadder truth about this generation of men, NYU psych professor Niobe Way told the outlet.
“We’re in a crisis of connection,” Way said. “Disconnection from ourselves and disconnection from each other. And it’s getting worse.”
The male numbers come sharply juxtaposed to the 34% of women under 30 who now say they’re single — which has seen only a slight pandemic rise in that age group.
Another factor at play might be the interests of women changing — especially as suitors of the same age are becoming apparently less desirable, experts said.
“[Women would] rather go to brunch with friends than have a horrible date,” LA couples and family psychologist Greg Matos said.
The expectations of American men are also rising in the minds of women, according to masculinity expert and University of Akron professor Ronald Levant, who added that “unfortunately, so many men don’t have more to give.”
But perhaps the largest issue now with young men — one highly impacting their social abilities — is that they are, as a whole, more lonely people than women, a recent study showed.
In the early 1990s, 55% of men were reported to have six or more close friends. That percentage dwindled down to 27 in 2021, according to the American Perspectives Survey. Now, 15% of men say they have no close personal friendships, data compiled by the Survey Center on American Life found.
…Even while not dating, “[women] have girlfriends they spend time with and gain emotional support from.”
(Link): Why the rate of single men in the US looking for dates has declined
by Ronny Reyes
February 22, 2023
Nearly twice as many young men as women are likely to be single in 2022 – and experts are blaming the rise on the end of traditional male roles, porn and the pandemic.
A Pew Research Center survey of more than 6,000 Americans found that 30 percent of the population identified as single.
But when broken down by age group and gender, that number increased to 63 percent among men between the ages of 18 and 29 – a huge 12 percent increase since 2019.
By comparison, only 34 percent of women in that age group said they were single in 2022, a tiny 2 percent rise from the pre-pandemic era.
Experts put the disparity down to some women dating each other – with research suggesting bisexual women make up a large share of the young-adult queer community – as well as many also dating older men.
Meanwhile, according to the latest US Census Bureau report, the average age a man now gets married is 30, a notable increase from just under 24 back in 1950, while the average age a woman now gets married is 28.
The survey also found that, while the average US adult was looking for dates and a relationship less often following the pandemic, women accounted for the least interested group.
According to the data, 49 percent of adults were looking for a committed romantic relationship or casual dates in 2019, but that number fell to 42 percent in 2022.
Men, specifically, made up 61 percent of those looking for love in 2019, and by 2022, only half of men were seeking relationships.
Women, however, only made up 38 percent of the 2019 figure, and in 2022, only 35 percent of women reported that they were looking to date or commit to a relationship.
Experts weighing in on the rise of loneliness among young men said that the trend comes amid changing gender roles in America since the culture revolutions of the 50s and 60s.
Rather than focusing on being homemakers, women are instead continuing to build their careers to close the income gap, said LA family psychologist Greg Matos.
While on average men continue to make more than women in the workplace, women under 30 have closed the gap and actually earn more than their male counterparts in 22 different areas.
Matos, who wrote a viral article about the diminishing opportunities for young men to find dates, said the latest wave of empowered women are not only seeking better wages, but also cutting out men who don’t meet their standards – which often leaves lower-earning young men out in the cold.
‘Women don’t need to be in long-term relationships. They don’t need to be married,’ Matos told The Hill. ‘They’d rather go to brunch with friends than have a horrible date.’
…'[Young men] are watching a lot of social media, they’re watching a lot of porn, and I think they’re getting a lot of their needs met without having to go out. [said Fred Rabinowitz, a professor at the University of Redlands who studies masculinity]
‘I think that’s starting to be a habit,’ he warned.
Ronald Levant, a psychology professor at the University of Akron who has written extensively on masculinity, suggested that the trend of lonelier young men ultimately comes from women being more selective about whom they date.
While previous generations of women typically depended on their husbands to make ends meet, Levant said that mindset is gone, and added that women no longer want to lean in to the stereotypical role of only supporting their husband’s needs while ignoring their own.
‘Today in America, women expect more from men,’ Levant told the Hill, ‘and unfortunately, so many men don’t have more to give.’
The Pew Research Center’s findings compound with a 2021 Gallup Poll, which found that American men are experiencing a friendship recession, with nearly one in six not having one close friend.
…Singletons fare the worse, with one in five reporting not having any close friends. The lack of fellowship unsurprisingly has psychological impacts, with more than half of people with three or fewer close friends saying they felt lonely in the last week.
The poll also suggests men find it harder than women to develop strong emotional bonds with their existing friends.
(Link): Why Are So Many Young Men Single And Sexless?
The haunting relationship trends wreaking havoc on 20-somethings.
Feb 24, 2023
by Greg Matos PsyD
A recent Pew Research study suggests a tectonic shift in the dating and sex life of men. The study found that among men under 30 years old, over 60 percent are single, almost double that of women in the same age bracket.
Not only are more young men single but their opportunities for developing a relational and sexual repertoire have all but vanished, as levels of sexual intimacy across genders appear to have hit a 30-year low (Lei & South, 2021).
…As young women continued to pursue intimate relationships less intently post-pandemic, men could have increased their relationship skills to close the effort gap. They could have confronted their relative avoidance and challenged the gender norms that made them so anxious about intimacy.
They appear to have done the opposite, turning even further away from real-life relationships and into the virtual world. …
Young men are, in fact, watching a lot of porn. Data from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and Italy suggest between 76-87 percent of 18- to 29-year-old men are consuming porn regularly.
One notable finding is that men who use porn more often tend to report less satisfaction with real-life sex (Dwulit & Rzymski, 2019). Even more concerning is a rise in psychogenic-related erectile dysfunction, delayed ejaculation, and diminished libido in men under 40 years old associated with frequent porn use (Park et al., 2016).
Faced with the choice between an energy-intensive, highly competitive dating environment and the low-effort rewards of porn, young men appear to be taking the path of least resistance.
These choices will have lasting relational consequences as young men have fewer dating opportunities to develop real-life intimacy skills and competency.
The good news is that all of these young single men can choose differently. They can choose to focus on developing the necessary relationship skills to be more successful in dating. It starts with re-prioritizing the development of close, intimate relationships in their life for their own well-being and as a counterbalance to the shift in priorities for women.
… By no means will dating in 2023 be an emotionally painless process, particularly for heterosexual men who are attempting to date women. Rejection may be a far more common result given competitiveness and higher relationship standards. Therefore, young men must be inoculated to avoidance in their dating life by normalizing women’s selectiveness.
Related:
(Link): The Myth of the Career Woman by M. Notkin – Why Women Are Still Single in Their 30s and Older
(Link): Single Men Just Don’t Care About Sex Anymore, Study Says (2021)
(Link): The Many Reasons That People Are Having Less Sex (2017 article via BBC News)
(Link): The Biggest Threat To Middle-Aged Men: Loneliness
(Link): Thoughts Regarding ‘Crisis in the Christian Church: A Lack of Young, Single Men’ Essay by S. Green
(Link): Men Who Pose Shirtless on Dating Apps are Unappealing and Slutty: Study
(Link): Theme Park Bans Single Adults For Fear They Are All Pedophiles
(Link): The Study of Why Men Stay Single: What No One Is Telling You by B. DePaulo
(Link): Middle Aged, Single Christian Guy’s Long, Picky Girlfriend Wanted Ad on Craig’s List
(Link): Men with ‘Golden Penis Syndrome’ Are Ruining Sex and Dating for Women
(Link): 25 Women Reveal Their Biggest Dating Profile Dealbreakers
(Link): Double Standard by Many Single Men: Single Men Too Entitled, Picky About Dating Criteria
(Link): Fewer Americans See Their Romantic Partners As a Source of Life’s Meaning
(Link): The Loneliness of American Society
(Link): Man Who Lost His Wife Puts Sign in Window Asking for Friends: ‘It’s My Last Resort’
(Link): You Will Be Ignored After Your Spouse Dies
(Link): Why is it So Hard For Women to Make New Friends? by G. Kovanis
(Link): Married Woman Says She’s Lonely Because Her Husband Works All The Time
(Link): Inside Secret World of Incels Who Turn To Murder Because They’ve Never Had Sex by J. Lavender
(Link): Really, It’s Okay To Be Single – In order to protect marriage, we should be careful not to denigrate singleness – by Peter Chin
(Link): The Conservative, Christian Case for Working Women by J. Merritt
(Link): Why We Thought Marriage Made Us Healthier, and Why We Were Wrong by Bella DePaulo
(Link): Why Are Young People Having So Little Sex? America is in a Sex Recession – by K. Jullian – via The Atlantic
(Link): Young Adults Are Having Less Casual Sex. A New Study Found 3 Reasons Why by Ross Pomeroy
(Link): Young, Attractive, and Totally Not Into Having Sex by K McGowan
(Link): Teens Too Busy Playing Video Games to Have Sex
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