# Jobless, isolated, fed misogynistic porn… where is the love for Britain’s lost boys?

Sonia Sodha

T The boys are not all right. That’s the message from a new Centre for Social Justice report, _,_ published last week. It surveys how boys and young men are faring in Britain and finds that in several areas there is now a reverse gender gap, with boys, particularly those from poorer backgrounds, struggling to keep up with girls.

When it comes to education,  at GCSEs and A-levels, and the ratio of women to men at university is . Boys are more than twice as likely to be excluded from school, with rates of exclusion particularly high for those from disadvantaged backgrounds. This is all feeding through into labour market outcomes: in the 00s, women aged 16-24 were more likely to be not in employment, education and training than young men; in recent years, that has flipped, with young men also significantly more likely to be unemployed than young women. The pay gap for young people has also become a more complex story: for 21- to 24-year-olds, median earnings are now higher for women, but this has been driven by a stark drop in earnings for non-graduate young men, with graduates still earning more than their female equivalent. What’s more, boys are more likely to be obese than girls, and rates of suicide are three and a half times higher for boys aged 15-19 than girls of the same age.

None of this is to deny the many inequalities faced by females in a patriarchal society. But neither should a focus on women’s equality crowd out discussion of the problems being experienced by a minority of boys; improving their lot would do a huge amount to make life better for both sexes.

But we have struggled to have a constructive conversation about the specific issues facing boys, with a tendency for all sides to slip into polarised, zero-sum framing. For some on the left, there is an implicit fear that focusing on boys might distract from the challenges facing girls; and certain sections of the right wrongly regard boys falling behind as a product of important feminist wins of recent decades.

This new report is a healthy corrective, and follows similar work in the US by thinkers such as Richard Reeves, who recently set up the . Reeves’ diagnosis of the problem is part institutional, part cultural. We today have an education system better suited to girls, but a labour market still structured around the needs of higher-achieving men. And the positive shifts we have seen in the cultural script about successful womanhood have not been accompanied by changing narratives about what it means to be a flourishing man, a vacuum that has enabled misogynist influencers such as Andrew Tate – the  in the world in 2023 – to seed the idea with some young men that women are to blame for their ills.

Reading _Lost Boys_ made me feel as though there’s a long way to go in properly understanding what’s going on with young men’s wellbeing. Convincing hypotheses abound. Boys get conflicting messages everywhere, from the violent, aggressive pornography to which so many young people are exposed, to important societal conversations about male violence, to the harmful stereotypes found in books and toys and on clothes. Adverse childhood experiences and mental health issues tend to manifest differently in boys.

Men tend to be more socially isolated – data from the US highlights they have  and that young men are  than women. They are also much more likely to %20of%20young%20women). And Laura Bates has documented how social media algorithms target young men with , with increasing numbers suffering from body dysmorphia or eating disorders, and  to bulk up.

Some of the differences between boys and girls will be driven by biology; much will be socially constructed. In terms of the violence gap between the sexes, for example, the average man is not much more violent than the average woman, but there are many more very violent men than women. That is partly a product of higher testosterone levels, but also how some boys react to negative childhood experiences, such as domestic abuse or . On the friendship gap, one ethnographic study has found that in early adolescence, friendships between girls and between boys are not that dissimilar, but in later years boys learn to become more detached .

Nature or nurture, these differences exist, however, and while some solutions, such as improving online safety and tighter  will benefit boys and girls, the former also need solutions tailored to their needs. In the US, Reeves has called for boys to start school a year later, better vocational and technical education, and more male teachers. These are worthy of exploration, but it is striking how little we know about what might work in improving boys’ outcomes.

Redressing this is vital to improving the wellbeing of all young people. Failing to do so could also have political consequences, further opening the door for the far right to play on young men’s grievances, as we have seen across Europe. In the last election, young men were twice as likely to vote for Reform as young women, with the latter twice as likely to vote Green, reflecting a growing attitudinal gap.



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