Historians and sociologists have long noted that the most unstable societies share a common feature: a large population of young men with no meaningful role, no community, and no outlet for their energy except grievance. We used to think this was an artifact of particular political or economic conditions. It turns out it can also be manufactured.
Robert Putnam spent his career documenting the collapse of social capital in America — the slow dismantling of every institution that used to give people a reason to be in the same room. Bowling Alone came out in 2000 and read at the time like a warning. It reads now like a diagnosis that went unheeded. Every trend he identified has accelerated. The smartphone didn’t create the problem. It became the primary delivery mechanism for it.
Pope Leo XIV put it plainly in his early statements on digital culture: “When a tool controls someone, that person becomes a commodity.” He was speaking specifically about social media and young people, and he wasn’t using the language metaphorically. The attention economy is an extractive industry. It extracts your time, your cognitive resources, your emotional energy, and your potential for connection — and returns a product that has been optimized to keep you in the cycle. You are both the resource and the market.
I don’t say any of this from a position of having figured it out. I spent years as exactly the isolated, adrift man this system produces — though the delivery mechanism in my day was alcohol rather than a screen. The mechanism is different. The result is recognizable: a person who has been separated from genuine community, genuine purpose, and genuine self-knowledge, and who fills the void with whatever is most readily available.
The way out that I know is the same one that has always existed, just harder to find now: build something real. Practice presence. Find community that costs you something — time, vulnerability, showing up when you don’t want to. The screen version of connection will never satisfy because it was never designed to. It was designed to keep you wanting.
We are producing millions of lonely men. The production line runs on your attention. The first act of resistance is noticing it’s happening.
