Harger: Washington men are never alone on their phones. 60% say they’re lonely anyway

A new survey says 60% of Washington men feel lonely on a regular basis.

That’s the guy who fixes your furnace. The one three cubicles over who’s always the last to leave. Your brother. Maybe you.

The survey comes from AMFM, a company that sells mental health treatment, so I’d take the exact number with a grain of salt. The trend doesn’t need it. One in five men told the surveyors they had nobody to turn to. A quarter hadn’t had a real conversation about how they were feeling in more than six months, or couldn’t remember the last one.

Something’s come loose for a lot of guys, and most of them won’t say a word about it. The smartphone made it easier to hide. The rules for being a guy got harder to read. And somewhere in the middle, a lot of dads started wondering what to tell their sons.

Washington men traded friends for phones

Men used to have places to go. The lodge. The bowling league. The union hall. Many of those closed up over the years, and the pandemic scattered whoever was left. The phone did the most damage, because it lets a guy feel connected without risking a thing.

Calling a buddy to say you’re struggling takes guts. Scrolling takes none. You can burn three hours on your phone and never once tell another human being how you’re really doing. You’re never alone, and you’re never really connected, either.

For most guys, the scrolling is harmless. Dog pictures, box scores, a forum where grown men argue about old trucks. For some, it goes darker. There’s a corner of the internet where grown men tell lonely young guys that women are the enemy and anger is the answer. You don’t have to look hard to find it.

Anand Mehta, AMFM’s executive director, said the men in the survey kept describing the same hesitation: “not wanting to burden anyone.” These are guys who care so much about other people, they won’t ask for help.

Washington’s good guys are getting mixed signals

Make the first move, but don’t be a creep. Lead, but know when to step back.

Each one makes sense on its own. Put them together, and a lot of men freeze.

A frozen guy pulls back. He doesn’t want to give the wrong impression. He doesn’t want anybody thinking he’s that guy. So he plays it safe, and playing it safe makes him lonelier. The same decency that ought to connect him ends up isolating him.

Therapist Robert Glover has a name for the extreme version: nice guy syndrome. In his book “No More Mr. Nice Guy,” he describes men so busy pleasing everyone, and so afraid of wanting anything, that nobody actually knows them. They’re pleasant to everyone and close to no one.

The same freeze shows up in friendship. Making new friends gets hard after a certain age, and after years of living on our phones, real connection can feel strange.

Not long ago, it was perfectly normal to call somebody up just to chat. Now calling has given way to texting, especially for younger people, and plenty of them think it’s rude to call without texting first. A text can’t carry tone. You can’t kick an idea around or hear how somebody’s really doing.

This is a fraught time for many men. Plenty of good guys aren’t sure of the rules anymore, and not knowing is pushing them to pull back.

The American Psychological Association took aim at masculinity

Some of the confusion came from the top. In 2018, the American Psychological Association released its first guidelines for treating boys and men. Its own magazine summed up decades of research this way: traditional masculinity, marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance, and aggression, is “on the whole, harmful.”

And I guess some of that made sense. Boys taught to bottle everything up pay for it later. The APA even followed up with a piece about the healthy sides of masculinity.

But what a lot of men heard was that they were the problem. For thousands of years, men were raised to be strong, steady, and reliable. That’s worth keeping. Courage, loyalty, and a willingness to carry the heavy stuff aren’t problems to fix.

None of this is on women. Women spent generations being kept out of jobs they could do just as well as any man. Fixing that was the right call. It asked something of men, too, and most of them rose to it.

Washington fathers want to know what to tell their sons

At my house, nobody had to shrink so somebody else could grow. My wife works in an industry that’s almost all men, and she’s great at it. I’m proud of the woman my daughter is becoming, and of the man my son is becoming. When the women in your life do well, nobody’s taking anything from you. A good man is proud of them.

So what message are we supposed to send our sons?

Being a man still means something. It means being brave enough to show up, to reach out, and to risk hearing no. Fortune favors the brave. The roles are being redrawn, and their job is to find theirs instead of waiting for someone to hand it to them.

If you’re one of those lonely guys, call one friend this week. Text them first if you have to. But actually speak to them. And if you’re worried about a guy in your life, Mehta’s advice is simple: Invite them to do something, and make the invitation specific. A walk. A coffee. A ballgame.

Some of the rules on the surface changed for men, and some of them needed to. The core of it never did. Protect the people you love. Show up for them. Our grandfathers carried the heavy stuff alone. Our sons don’t have to.

Charlie Harger is the host of “Seattle’s Morning News” on KIRO Newsradio. You can read more of his stories and commentaries here. Follow Charlie on X and email him here. 

Follow @https://twitter.com/kirocharlie