{"id":664706,"date":"2026-06-29T17:50:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T17:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/664706\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T17:50:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T17:50:08","slug":"what-the-boy-crisis-narrative-gets-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/664706\/","title":{"rendered":"What the “Boy Crisis” Narrative Gets Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

Boys and men are facing real problems. So are girls and women. Talking about a \u201cboy crisis\u201d often obscures more than it explains. It collapses three different problems\u2014school and work outcomes, mental health, and masculine identity\u2014into one emotionally charged story about gender<\/a>. Parents need a clearer map.<\/p>\n

Instead, we should look at these three threads separately. First, on education<\/a> and employment, the \u201cboy problem\u201d is not an across-the-board male deficit; it is more about the disproportionate concentration<\/a> of boys among the students facing the greatest academic and behavioral difficulties. In a study of Florida public-school students (\u201cMales at the Tails\u201d), MIT economist David Autor and colleagues found the female advantage in behavioral and academic outcomes is primarily explained by the large number of boys at the lowest tail of outcomes. When the researchers accounted for boys’ disproportionate representation at the bottom of the distribution, there was \u201conly a small remaining gender gap in high school dropouts.\u201d In their sample, growing up in a low-income, less-stable home negatively impacted boys more than it did girls. <\/p>\n

Second, on mental health: the \u201cmasculinity crisis\u201d narrative points to the recent rise in “deaths of despair” (deaths related to suicide<\/a>, alcohol<\/a>, and drug use) among men. However, the data argue against framing this as a new “masculinity crisis.” While men do die at higher rates from suicide, alcohol-related disease, and overdose, the recent increase in deaths of despair is driven heavily by drug overdoses, not suicide or alcohol. When you set overdose deaths aside, men’s suicide and alcohol mortality falls within the historical range seen over most of the past century (though suicide rates among midlife<\/a> men have climbed to their highest levels in decades, which is a genuine concern). That men’s rates of suicide and alcohol-related death remain elevated compared to women\u2019s likely reflects the longstanding model of masculinity that discourages seeking help. <\/p>\n

If we look at boys specifically, rates of anxiety<\/a> and depression<\/a> have risen over the past 15\u201320 years, but they’ve risen even more sharply for girls. The crisis here is a youth mental health crisis. It’s not uniquely a boy problem.<\/p>\n

Third is the so-called “masculinity crisis.” Are boys and men being told that it’s bad to be male? Social critic Scott Galloway, in particular, points to the concept of “toxic masculinity” and argues that it sends boys the message that masculinity itself is toxic. Some boys do hear derogatory messages about masculinity. However, a 2025 Common Sense Media survey suggests that the better-documented threat to boys’ self-image<\/a> isn’t the “toxic masculinity” discourse; it’s something else entirely. The survey, of over 1,000 adolescent boys ages 11 to 17, found that 69% regularly see content promoting \u201cproblematic gender stereotypes\u201d (Common Sense Media, 2025, p. 2), including claims that girls use looks to get what they want, that boys are treated unfairly, or that girls should focus on home and family.<\/p>\n

Boys don’t go looking for this content, either. The same report found that “for boys who have seen masculinity content online, more than two-thirds (68%) say it just started showing up in their feed without them searching for it” (Common Sense Media, 2025, p. 8). In other words, they’re not typing it into a search bar. Instead, social media<\/a> algorithms push this material into boys\u2019 feeds whether they look for it or not. So it’s less that boys are being told it’s bad to be male, and more that they’re being shown a version of masculinity built around grievance, dominance, emotional restriction, and contempt for women. This can leave boys feeling more insecure, not less.<\/p>\n

This isn’t exclusively a boy problem either. Girls are targeted by the same kinds of algorithms, with content that damages their self-esteem<\/a> in its own ways. Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen\u2019s 2021 disclosures showed that Meta had internal research warning that Instagram could worsen body image<\/a> and mental health concerns for teen<\/a> girls, even as the company continued to optimize products for engagement. Critics have compared social media companies to the tobacco industry: profiting from products marketed to young people despite evidence of harm.<\/p>\n

The story of a “boy crisis” is overly simplistic; these problems have much more complex causes. The narrative also comes with costs. It encourages parents to see problems that aren’t fundamentally about gender as if they were. It’s not that all boys are fine. Many are not. The problem is that the \u201cboy crisis\u201d frame gives parents the wrong map. We have an opportunity crisis for disadvantaged kids. We have a mental health crisis among all our children, one that shows up differently across genders. And we have a self-image crisis amplified by tech companies’ algorithms. Framing all of this as a “masculinity crisis” risks pitting boys and girls against each other, can encourage boys and men to understand their struggles primarily through grievance, and distracts us from addressing the real, serious problems young people actually face.<\/p>\n

For parents, the practical question is not whether boys as a group are winning or losing. The better question is: What is this boy struggling with? Is he behind academically? Lonely<\/a>? Ashamed? Overwhelmed by screens? Cut off from adults who can help? A clearer map leads to better questions and better help.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Boys and men are facing real problems. So are girls and women. Talking about a \u201cboy crisis\u201d often…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":664707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-664706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/664707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}