According to New York University professor Scott Galloway, “Young American men have fallen further, ... [+]
Young men are falling behind. They are more likely, compared to women, to sit in their parents’ basement playing video games, watching television and abusing drugs. Up until a few decades ago, men with a high school diploma could get well-paying jobs in factories and other various menial types of labor roles.
With the deterioration of the Rust Belt, the United States offshoring manufacturing jobs to China and a college degree serving as a barrier to entry to well-paying jobs, modern men are falling out of the workforce. It's a cascading catastrophe as they lose social skills and self-confidence by sitting home alone, opting out of dating as college-educated women are not likely to engage with unemployed men without any signs of growth potential.
Corecore is a fast-growing trend on TikTok with around 600 million views, primarily focusing on the plight of men. This social media niche opens the curtain on the current state of mental health in the U.S.
The Corecore Trend
Corecore offers short-form bursts of videos highlighting the angst, sadness and loneliness of young men. The term “Corecore” started on Tumblr in 2020 and then moved onto TikTok around July 2022. The videos evoke Dadaism art forms, a movement inspired by the horrors of World War I that included visual, literary, collages, poetry, cut-up writing and sculpture paintings, creating a surreal world careening out of control.
The video clips juxtapose unrelated vignettes pulled from films, news footage, social media, interviews, live streams and memes to evoke emotions. The videos are accompanied by haunting, carefully picked music to amplify feelings of loss and sadness. The people, mostly young men, share their intimate feelings of disappointment with their lives and the absence of romantic partners and love. Feeling lost and adrift, they are filled with the existential dread of life.
A typical video will splice cuts from a young boy who is asked by an interviewer about what he wants to do when he grows up. He says he wants to be a doctor. When asked the follow-up question of how much he wants to make, the boy says, “I’m gonna make people feel okay.” Before you can process the sweetness of the moment, jarring clips show senior citizens playing slot machines in a crowded casino, sporting events, eerie, deserted city streets, Family Guy, Blade Runner 2049 and Jake Gyllenhaal screaming, accompanied by melancholic music scored by Aphex Twin.
The Fallen Men
According to New York University professor Scott Galloway, “Young American men have fallen further, faster than any other cohort in America.” Galloway warned, “A large and growing cohort of bored, lonely, poorly educated men is a malevolent force in any society, but it’s a truly terrifying one in a society addicted to social media and awash in coarseness and guns.” The professor said, “We're producing too many of the most dangerous persons in the world, and that is a bunch of lonely, broke men.”
Galloway points out that men are more likely than women to adopt conspiracy theories, nihilist politics and radicalization. They have growing frustrations over their perceived absence of life choices. Their self-esteem is harmed as they see others succeed on social media, while they’re stuck living in their parents’ basement.
The Wall Street Journal reported in a piece starkly entitled, “A Generation of American Men Give Up on College: ‘I Just Feel Lost,’” “Men are abandoning higher education in such numbers that they now trail female college students by record levels.” Women composed nearly 60% of college students in the 2020 to 2021 semester. Colleges had 1.5 million fewer students compared to five years ago. The 71% decline in enrollment is due to the absence of men.
The share of men in the workforce has seen a steady decline since the 1960s. Sixty years ago, close to 97% of men in their prime-working age—25 to 54—were either working or seeking out a new job. Since then, there has been a rapid decline. Now, 40% of women earn more than the average man and are the primary breadwinner, NPR reported.
Why Are Men Leaving The Labor Force?
According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, men without college degrees have exited the workforce in greater numbers as they saw their wages drop. From 1980 to 2019, their median weekly earnings declined 17% after adjusting for inflation, while pay for college-educated men saw a 20% increase.
The Boston Fed attributes this exodus to low self-esteem from a descending socioeconomic class.
Additionally, fewer men are participating in the labor force as the U.S. continues to offshore manufacturing jobs—a male-dominated sector—to China. This trend saw an uptick after China joined the World Trade Organization.
Since 1997, more than 91,000 manufacturing plants have shuttered. Employment in this sector reached an all-time high of 19.6 million in June 1979. Forty years later, manufacturing employment was down 35%—6.7 million jobs. Since its all-time peak, employment fell during each subsequent recession and never fully recovered.
A 2021 Male Labor Force Participation: Patterns and Trends study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond cited an upswing in substance abuse and excessive video game use amongst men.
According to the research, “nearly three-quarters of the decline in hours worked by men in the 21-to 30-year-old age group, relative to older men, can be explained by the technological improvements in video games and computer-based leisure.”
