The Lost Boys: Why a Generation of Young Men Is Giving Up in Silence

This reflection draws notably on the Lost Boys Report (Centre for Social Justice, March 2025) and a landmark episode of The Diary Of A CEO podcast featuring Scott Galloway and Logan Ury.

Introduction: a silent shipwreck

There is no cry. No spectacular collapse. No precise moment you can point to and say: "that is where everything tipped." There is just an empty chair in class. A son who no longer answers messages. A twenty-two-year-old who spends ten hours a day in front of a screen, with no job, no plans, no relationship -- and who, when asked how he is doing, answers "I am fine" with disarming conviction.

This is what the Lost Boys Report, published in March 2025 by the Centre for Social Justice, attempts to name. We may be raising a lost generation of young men.

The question is neither ideological nor polemical. It is human, concrete, and urgent.

1. What the numbers say

The trends are clear and converging. Boys are dropping out of the school system at a significantly higher rate than girls. They are overrepresented in statistics on suicide, addiction, incarceration, and homelessness. They are underrepresented in higher education, which is now predominantly female in most OECD countries.

Many leave school prematurely, driven by the pressure to "become men" and earn money, by poor academic results, the absence of mentoring and social support.

What is striking is the invisibility of the phenomenon. These boys do not protest. They do not make demands. They disappear, quietly, into their bedrooms, into their screens, into online communities that offer them what the real world no longer provides: a sense of belonging.

2. How did we get here?

Several structural factors combine.

Deindustrialization. Manual and industrial jobs have largely disappeared. The contemporary job market values communication skills, empathy, collaboration -- skills for which girls are, on average, better prepared by their socialization. The absence of male role models. Boys need to see adult men functioning, loving, working, failing and getting back up. When these models are absent from the home, from school, and from the media, boys look for them elsewhere. An inadequate education system. Teaching methods favor sedentary behavior, patience, long-term work -- all areas where the neurological development of girls is, statistically, ahead during adolescence.

3. Loneliness as the central wound

27% of 19-to-29-year-olds say they feel "very" or "fairly" lonely. Two out of three young Americans aged 18 to 23 say: "Nobody really knows me well."

This loneliness is the product of a socialization that taught boys that vulnerability is dangerous, that emotions are a weakness, and that asking for help is shameful. In cognitive behavioral therapy, we recognize here classic early maladaptive schemas: the belief that "I must be strong," that "others cannot understand me."

The paradox is cruel: the more a boy suffers, the less likely he is to ask for help.

4. The manosphere: a false answer to real pain

The manosphere monetizes male suffering. A lonely young man, failing, wounded by a romantic rejection, finds himself facing a video that tells him: "You are not a loser. The system is against you."

In cognitive psychology, this type of discourse is called an externalization of the locus of control. It is a comfortable position in the short term, but destructive in the long run, because it deprives the person of any sense of agency.

5. Dating and relationships

More and more young men are giving up on romantic relationships. The rise of dating apps has created a generation that knows how to "swipe" but no longer knows how to engage in a real conversation or manage the emotional risk of an actual rejection.

Women are looking for partners capable of genuine emotional reciprocity. Yet young men who grew up without learning to identify their emotions find themselves at a real disadvantage.

6. Men's groups: an underestimated antidote

Quality social relationships are the best predictor of mental health. Men's groups -- whether formal or informal -- create a space where a man can say "I am suffering," "I am lost," "I am afraid" -- without fearing judgment.

7. What parents can do

Talk about emotions from an early age. Value effort rather than performance. Offer diverse male role models. Monitor online content consumption -- and discuss it without judgment. Normalize therapy.

8. To the lost boys

You are not broken. You are not a failure. You are the product of a particular historical moment, of a socialization that poorly equipped you for certain challenges.

Your suffering is real. Asking for help is an act of courage, not of weakness.

Conclusion

The lost boys crisis is a social and psychological emergency. A boy who is truly heard is a man who no longer needs to lose himself to exist.

Are you going through a difficult time and want to understand your thought patterns? Explore our resources on cognitive behavioral therapy, take our psychological tests, or analyze your couple conversations to identify your relational patterns.

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Sources and references

• Lost Boys Report, Centre for Social Justice, March 2025
• The Diary Of A CEO, episode with Scott Galloway and Logan Ury (March 31, 2025) -- watch the episode
• Equimundo, State of American Men (2023) and What is the Manosphere? (2024)

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Gildas Garrec, CBT Psychotherapist in Nantes -- Psychologie et Serenite