The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness

by Jonathan Haidt

In 2000, 28% of 12th-grade boys reported that they often feel lonely. By 2019, that had risen to 35%. This is symptomatic of a broader “friendship recession” among men in the United States. In the 1990s, only 3% of American men reported having no close friends. By 2021, that number had risen fivefold, to 15%. A different survey in 2021 asked Americans whether there was “someone you talked to within the last six months about an important personal matter.” Young men fared the worst on this question: 28% of them said no.[67] Of course, these survey questions can’t prove that the arrival of online gaming in the 2000s caused the national increase in male loneliness, but they cast doubt on any suggestion that when boys and young men entrusted their social lives to video game companies, they entered a golden age of social connection.