New newsletter: THE MONKS IN THE CASINO

Yes, I wrote about the “male loneliness crisis.” Before you chuck your phone into the sea, let me tell you where I’m coming from.

The way I see it, in the last few decades, the life script for young people has turned upside down. The pro-social life script—date, marry, buy a house, have a kid—has gotten more expensive. An anti-social life script—e.g., posting, porn, parlays—has become easier, cheaper, frictionless.

This has created an unusual inversion of risk. Today's young people—and young men, in particular—have become more risk averse in the physical world and risk-seeking in the digital world. They date less, and gamble more. They find intimacy scary and betting exciting. They furnish their rooms like high-tech monasteries and gravitate toward media that works like a slot machine.

I don't think young men suffer from a "loneliness crisis." I think the problem is bigger and stranger than that. They are choosing to be alone, because economics and technology have made aloneness feel easy and togetherness feels anxious. The result: A generation of monks in a casino.