The ‘male loneliness epidemic’ is a social phenomenon in which men have experienced increased loneliness in recent years. While the topic has become prevalent in all types of media, the discourse surrounding it appears to perpetuate loneliness instead of combating it. Articles are depicting men as victims instead of capable people, serving surface-level solutions instead of addressing gender performance as the potential cause.
Contextualization of male loneliness and mankeeping
Mankeeping is the unpaid and invisible labor women perform for the men in their lives. It labels the practice of women not only organizing men’s social lives but also compensating for the absence of men’s own social support systems. As a concept mankeeping has been around for decades, as a practice it has been around for centuries. Thus, women often form a central pillar of men’s social lives. However, according to a recent study, mankeeping is detrimental to women’s health and time. In romantic relationships in particular, men often place the burden of their social fulfillment on women. Unsurprisingly (and now with the ability to), women are opting out of such romantic relationships and are turning towards their female friends for social connections. Examples of this development are the 4B movement that originated in South Korea, where women swear off dating before men evolve into emotionally mature and intelligent people, and the popularization of ‘mommunes’ among single mothers. Coincidentally, men are reporting a surge in male loneliness, coining it a ‘male loneliness epidemic’. It seems that women are adapting to a life without men at the center, while men are struggling to cope with the unpaid service of ‘mankeeping’ slowly disappearing.
The portrayal of the male loneliness epidemic online
So how does the media landscape navigate this delicate matter of disparaging gender expectations and loneliness? Why, with five-point bullet lists!
If you conduct a simple Google search on men’s loneliness, the search engine will yield a multitude of articles on the topic. A good number of those articles do not address how women are becoming increasingly educated and men more conservative. They do address how men tend to lean on romantic partners for support but not how men tend to avoid women with a higher education than themselves. These articles also do not address how one in three Gen Z men expect their partners to adhere to their commands, seemingly turning to covertly sexist expectations, while Gen Z women adopt more and more progressive worldviews. Additionally, they fail to address how academia is finally dedicating studies to women’s realities as well and how the empirical results of those explorations point to a troubling reality. Maintaining men is a difficult yet unacknowledged task affecting women’s health and time substantially. Married men are happier and healthier, fathers of daughters are healthier and live longer, while women sharing a household with men are unhappier and unhealthier. Instead of picking up on any of these substantial issues, the discourse around men’s loneliness appears rather simple. Suggestions such as being apprehensive during conversations, or finding shared interests, and learning empathy are repeated across multiple articles. Men are being taught social skills at the same level of kindergartners, while barely touching upon – or completely disregarding – the big fat misogynistic elephant in the room.
How are men supposed to treat their loneliness without understanding the root causes for their ailment? Why are we treating men like children, spoon feeding bits of empathy to them instead of explaining simple social concepts to them – the ones we have been expecting women to follow to a point that the ensuing behavior has become second nature? If we reduce social skills to a checklist, and if we free men from responsibilities by patronizing them, how do we expect the issue of male loneliness to be solved?
A discourse change is needed
If male loneliness is such a serious issue, then we need to treat it as such in discourse. Instead of lightly touching upon changes men can implement in their lives, men need education. They need to unravel the belief systems that make them shy away from traits perceived as feminine and essential to maintaining social relationships. Discourse needs to address the underlying misogyny of the lack in social skills that have resulted in the male loneliness epidemic. Empathy is the backbone of social relationships and luckily, empathy is not a gendered predisposition, but a question of socialization and individual biology. That means, once men unravel their patriarchal belief systems and stop viewing empathetic people as the opposite “of a cool and popular individual”, men will hold the necessary understanding to solve this epidemic. And therein lies the issue: media hold the power to shape our worldview, and if they do not portray men as capable and responsible, then this issue will remain.