What’s going on with young American men and how that impacts the rest of America, in five charts
The Ipsos Consumer Tracker asks Americans questions about culture, the economy and the forces that shape our lives. Here's one thing we learned this week.
Why we asked: We got a fortuitously-timed email from a friend of Ipsos’ What the Future magazine, Matthew Ball, asking about video games and more broadly, the online activities of young men. This is a topic we’ve been thinking about a lot. We talked to one of the leading voices in the space, Richard Reeves, founder of the American Institute for Boys and Men for What the Future’s American Dream issue.
Reeves, in turn, has been talking a lot to two other thought leaders in the space, doing joint podcasts with Jonathan Haidt and Scott Galloway, who dropped an instant bestseller, “Notes on Being a Man,” at the end of 2025.
We looped them in and came up with some starter questions for a topic we’ll come back to throughout 2026. Then we got a query about young people, the American Dream and investing, all of which seemed to tie nicely together, so this is a bit of a longer data story.
What we found: In short, a large majority of Americans think screens, how we use them and the attention and money we give them are a problem. A lot of this ties into some youth differences in optimism and their views on America and the American Dream. Further, there are some definite gender differences between young men and women. And helpfully and hopefully we have some broad consensus on some policies that might help. In this wave, we asked three questions, but they tie into some other questions and topics we’ve asked in the past so let’s pull together a more nuanced picture, shall we? [Note: we boosted the sample of younger adults to give us a breakout of 18-24 and 25-34 by gender.]
The broad theory, surrounded by lots of data but also much debate, is that young men are failing to thrive. They’re not doing well in school nor continuing to post-secondary education in the ways young women are. They’re despondent, and there’s some truth to the stereotype that they’re living in their parents’ basements, playing video games and watching porn instead of getting jobs and starting families. Now couple this with all of the demographic changes we’ve seen in recent decades, with the age of first marriage, first childbirth, first homeownership and the portions of the population remaining single all shifting later and later.
Let’s set some baselines
Yes, 18- to 24-year-old men over-index on PC/console games — twice as likely (66%) to play them multiple times a week than average (32%). There is no gender split on playing on mobile devices, which is more interesting.
Yes, young men are three times as likely (16% vs 5%) to pay for creator porn like OnlyFans. They are also three times as likely (22% vs 7%) to be viewing AI-generated porn. And they way over-index on online sports betting, trading cryptocurrencies and using prediction markets. They also way over-index on using AI for chatting or companionship but are relatively average on using AI chatbots/assistants. The entire 18-to-34 cohort over-indexes slightly on the already high prevalence of short-form video watching but the younger females in that group skew further.
BUT, that said, these groups also over-index on saying that they are playing video games less often than they used to, which considering all of these “newer” activities they are spending their time and money on, is worth noting.
We all know it’s a problem for everyone
The bigger headline is how unified we are in thinking all of this is a problem, personally and for society and one that’s hard to control for ourselves.
- Addiction? We think video games (84%), gambling (88%), porn (71%), screens (87%) and phones in general (89%) can all be addicting. There is high agreement among younger Americans and in some cases even higher (the 18- to 24-year-old males are a bit of a mixed bag, but still large majorities agree).
- Note: We dive into sports gambling — a topic very much in the news as more investigations into rigging and corruption come to light — in our latest Ipsos Data Drop, Sports betting and how Americans are feeling about it.
- Four in ten (but two in three 18- to 24-year-old women) find it hard to control how much time they spend online. One in three (but higher in the younger demos) find it hard to control how much MONEY they spend online.
- Six in ten would like to reduce time spent online, and half would like to spend less money — younger folks over-index here, too.
- A large majority think it’s a societal problem — 87% think Americans spend too much time online and three in four think Americans spend too much money online.
How to change the game
Now, if it’s a personal problem and also a societal one, but one we find hard to control ourselves, that’s often where policy needs to come into play. Reeves, Galloway and Haidt have discussed this a couple of times now in Galloway’s Prof G Conversations podcast. You can listen in to see why they propose what they propose. We took some of their suggestions and polled on them. There is high-level and cross-party, cross-gender, cross-age support for most of their suggestions.
- Three in four would like to see policies that encourage more men to become teachers. Almost nine in ten would like to see increased investment in trade schools, apprentices and vocational schools. Two-thirds would support restricting social media to those over 16 and half would be ok expanding that to over 18.
- There is essentially no party split on any of these topics. Let me say that again. Significant majorities in both parties agree on these policy proposals.
- The one proposal, which Reeves especially champions, is having boys start school a year after girls do. Only one in four support that (one in three strongly oppose), though one in three men support it.
Support for each of these proposals are as high or higher among 18- 34-year-olds.
What does this all mean in terms of its impact?
For that, let’s look back at some recent waves of the Tracker and the American Dream and Teen issues of What the Future. The American Dream is a such a powerful force and motivator in our nation, and a powerful narrative used to market the nation and used in advertising within the nation. Just watch all of the “American at 250” content you’re already starting to see.
Overall, today’s younger folks still mostly dream about the Dream. Their life goals and milestones generally align with those in older generations — and where they don’t, the differences are just as likely to be due to their life stage (they’re still teenagers/young adults) vs. any actual generational shift.
The one big difference, however, is a critical one. Gen Z flips the script on homeownership. For older generations, homeownership is one of the top components of achieving the American Dream. For these younger Americans, “freedom” is prized over homeownership 3 to 1.
My hunch is that reflects one thing we see clearly in the data: a gap between what younger Americans dream of, and the degree to which they think they can achieve it.
- The central tension around the American Dream is both the high level of belief in the dream (68%), and the feeling that it’s less attainable than it used to be (80%). For Gen Z, there are signs of slippage in the Ipsos Future of the American Dream survey. Most still believe in some version of the Dream.
- But more Gen Z Americans think that the dream isn’t attainable than in other generations. Fewer think that if you work hard you’ll succeed (49% of Gen Z, compared to 56% across generations). And with that seems to come some degree of acceptance or at least acknowledgement of the reality they see: Fewer think that every generation should have a higher standard of living than the one before it (69% vs. 81%) and more think that it’s OK if some groups have more of a chance to succeed than others (54% vs 45%).
Back to the importance of “freedom.”
- In a previous wave of the Tracker, we gave people a series of words or ideas that could relate to freedom. Things like, "absence of government interference, ability to make personal choices, constitutional rights, ability to succeed on your own merit,” etc. And the word that really resonated for younger folks vs. other generations was “autonomy,” which is a strong unifying value the world over, according to Ipsos Global Trends. They don’t want to be dependent on others, or on the government and systems (likely due to distrust and a belief that the system is rigged.)
Now, what does that mean for finances?
- We recently asked about building wealth in the Tracker. You see a lot of evidence for the idea that younger folks (especially younger men) are looking to get rich quick and also to build “passive wealth” — all of which goes back to the aspiration gap. Many ways of achieving the Dream seem out of reach, like education and home ownership. But if you still want to get there, maybe there are some new approaches.
- There, however, are perhaps troubling signs for the overall economy flashing in the changing ideas of “risk” here. 18- to 34-year-olds are less likely to see owning a home as a good way to build wealth (18% vs 41% of those 55+) but twice as likely as the 35- to 54-year-olds to see being a content creator as being a successful pathway (17% vs 9%).
- Meanwhile, the younger adults are twice as likely as other generations to say that cryptocurrency, sports betting, starting a business and being an influencer are “safe” ways to build wealth.
That was a lot of numbers and a lot of data. What it all boils down to is this: Younger folks, especially younger men, are facing a very different world than their forebearers and reacting to it. One might argue they’re reacting accordingly. It’s not a great picture, but it’s not an unreasonable one.
But there are also several clear policies that would be immensely popular and could help get this generation, and perhaps even the nation’s future, back on track. Unless, of course, AI upends it all. More on that… in the next wave of the Tracker.
More insights from this wave of the Ipsos Consumer Tracker:
People are not fans of dynamic pricing
We’re mostly exhausted, but women really are
One big way this holiday shopping season was different
What do we think 2026 will look like?
What’s changed and what hasn’t in our food habits
The Ipsos Vibe Check: Here's how Americans feel about the government this week
The Ipsos Care-o-Meter: What does America know about vs. what does America care about?
