Category: Friendships

The more I read Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation, the more concerned I become about the effects of smartphones and social media. As I explained in my last post, No Time for Friends, Haidt believes these have led to a decline in the average daily time we spend with friends; not just young people but everyone. In this post, I present his alarming findings on what is happening specifically to boys as they retreat into a virtual world. This is just another piece of evidence to further my case for 2025 as The Year for Better Male Friendships.  The Harm is Different for Boys than Girls Part 3 of The Anxious Generation is titled “The Great Rewiring: The Rise of The Phone-based Childhood.” Haidt opens that section with a chapter on the Four Foundational Harms of this rewiring (Social Deprivation, Sleep Deprivation, Attention Fragmentation, and Addiction). He then follows with

Since writing my last post, The Life-Stages of Friendships, I stumbled upon some interesting statistics about the amount of time people of all age groups spend with friends. This alarming data about our decline of time with friends and increased levels of anxiety today, is just another reason why I declared 2025 as The Year for Better Male Friendships. In this post, I’ll recap some of this data and why it has led to The Decline of Friendship. In the subsequent post, I’ll suggest the proper amount of time needed for friends as I continue to make my case for better male friendships.  Do Smartphones Cause Social Deprivation? I recently picked up a copy of the New York Times bestseller, The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. It’s a must-read for all parents because it explains how we changed from “play-based childhood” to “phone-based childhood” which is causing an epidemic of

In my last post with Reflections on Year 6 of this blog, I stated that too many men still fail in school, at work, and in their families. The increase in loneliness and isolation has created a culture that enables guys to hide behind a mask, which keeps others from knowing them well enough to know when they struggle. So this year, I want to double down on my theory that men need deeper, authentic friendships. This post kicks off the new year with an interesting video about the decline of friendship in America. It also includes facts about loneliness and why we must help connect young males in relationships with more mature men. With a renewed focus on having better friendships, our boys and men, our girls and women, and our families, can all do better.   Men Struggle with Stress and Loneliness According to recent studies, around 57%