Every day, we see more grown men and young boys dropping out of school, dropping out of work and choosing to drop out of society entirely. They're getting lost in distractions, chasing comfort and losing the sense of purpose that used to drive men to live with meaning and ambition.
We need to turn this around.
In 1998, I started the heavy metal ban All That Remains, and in the past 25 years, I’ve performed for hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. Most of them are young men. I’ve had countless conversations with them and often their stories are devastating. With no purpose and a society that doesn’t significantly value boys and men, many are simply self-selecting out of society altogether.
I hear about addiction, depression and a feeling that there is no hope. Some of them tell me that my music helped them find a little light in the darkness. But while I’m glad I can be that for some, the fact that so many feel this way is a massive problem.
The foundation of any strong society is built on family, faith and community. And without strong male figures and role models, these foundations start to crack.
I consider myself lucky I had a dad who showed me what being a man is all about.
He was a blue-collar guy from western Massachusetts. He was a machinist, a construction worker, an entrepreneur, and a business owner.
While we didn’t do the same type of work, he was and has always been the type of man I aspire to be. So many young men today don’t have that, and it's showing.
The National Fatherhood Initiative reports that 17.5 million children, nearly 1 in 4, are growing up without a father at home. That’s a huge number. Their research also shows that children raised in a home without fathers result in a greater likelihood of poverty, drug use and prison.
But it’s not just about absent fathers. We’re also seeing fewer and fewer spaces that exist exclusively for men and boys to connect with each other. This trend is problematic for several reasons.
First, it reflects the lack of value we place on men – which can be viewed as an outright hostility to men and boys by society.
Second, because of that lack of value we place on men, they no longer feel their own value in society and choose to opt out altogether.
One of the areas we’re seeing this play out is education, where boys and men are falling behind. College enrollment among young Americans has been declining gradually over the past decade. According to the Pew Research Center, young men now make up only 44% of young college students, down from 47% in 2011.
And this gap in education is spilling downstream into the job market. As Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., noted in his report "The State of the Working and Non-Working Man," men are decreasingly participating in traditionally male jobs.
Rubio notes, "In 1985, the median male wage was sufficient to provide comprehensive health insurance, reliable transportation, good housing, a healthy diet, and college tuition, with 20% left over for other consumption and saving. The same man in 2022 could work the whole year to pay for middle-class essentials, and still come up 10 weeks short."
It’s not just about money either. According to data from the National Institute of Mental Health, men in the United States die by suicide at a rate four times higher than women. Additionally, men are more likely to engage in illicit drug use and to begin using alcohol or drugs at a younger age, and drug use is more likely to result in a visit to the emergency room or in death for men than in women, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
With no purpose and a society that doesn’t significantly value boys and men, many are simply self-selecting out of society altogether.
These issues hit close to home for me because I get it. I’ve been there; had things gone differently for me, I could be in the same place as many other men are today, struggling with addiction, loneliness and depression.
I believe we are at a turning point, and while I’m not the first to say it – and won’t be the last – if we don’t take these issues seriously, we’re going to lose a whole generation of men and the families they’d help build. That’s something society can’t afford to lose.
by Philip Labonte, founder and lead singer of the heavy metal band All That Remains and a contributor to Timcast IRL. He has been an outspoken advocate for issues facing boys and men.
