Young Men in Crisis: The Absence Nobody Will Admit

60% of young men in America say no one cares whether they are okay.

They are dropping out of college. Leaving the workforce. Disconnecting from relationships at four times the rate of young women. And flooding into the manosphere looking for someone — anyone — who will tell them they still matter.

This episode is not about Andrew Tate. It is about every institution that handed him the audience.

In this solo episode of The NEXT BIG THING, executive advisor and C-suite strategist Keith D. Terry makes three direct accusations — at the American family, the education system, and the church — and builds the case with hard data that the manosphere did not create this crisis. Absence did. And silence is making it worse.

What Keith covers in this episode:

• The real numbers behind the young male crisis — and what the data says happens next
• Why Andrew Tate is a symptom, not the disease
• The three institutions that abandoned young men and what each one must do now
• What Scripture says is the non-negotiable assignment for older men right now
• One specific action you can take before this week is over

This is not a safe conversation. It is a necessary one.

🎙️ Hosted by Keith D. Terry | Executive Advisor | Board Chairman | Strategic Operator 🌐 keithdterry.com 📺 Watch on YouTube: @keithdterry 🎧 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and iHeart Radio

#YoungMen #MaleCrisis #Manosphere #AndrewTate #Fatherhood #Mentorship #ChurchAndMen #ToxicMasculinity #MasculinityMatters #BoysCrisis #FaithAndLeadership #ChristianLeadership #BiblicalMasculinity #ExecutiveLeadership #LeadershipPodcast #TheNextBigThing #KeithDTerry #StrategicLeadership #FaithAndBusiness #LeadershipStrategy #SecondHalf #CareerReinvention #ChicagoLeadership #BlackLeadership #PodcastForMen

Transcript

A Crisis Nobody Names

Keith D. Terry 0:00

America is raising a generation of boys nobody wants, and nobody will say that out loud. Welcome to the podcast, The Next Big Thing. I'm your host, Keith D. Terry, a consultant, a coach, and a serial entrepreneur. The mission here is to teach, inspire, and to motivate. We did not lose a generation of young men to influencers. We lost them to absence. The church left, the father left, the school system decided the way the boys learn, the way boys move, the ways boys compete was a problem to be managed rather than a gift to be directed. And then we were surprised. We were generally surprised when someone else showed up to fill in the space. Here's what I need you to understand before this episode goes any further. I'm not here to defend Andrew Tate. I'm not here to rehabilitate the manosphere. I'm here to tell you the truth that most people in leadership are too afraid to say out loud. That young man who is angry, disconnected, and looking for permission to exist, he did not create this crisis. He's a product of it. And every institution that was supposed to show up for him, the family, the school, the church, needs to look in the mirror before they point a finger at any podcaster, any influencer, or any algorithm. This is the next big thing. And today we're going to be talking about something that very few people in leadership have the courage to directly say. And I'm going to say it. America is raising a generation of boys nobody wants, and nobody will say that out loud. So let me defend what I'm talking about. Today's episode is very personal to me. Not because I have all the answers, but because I'm a father. I'm a man who was shaped by men who showed up for me. I'm a Christian who believes that the church has a specific and an urgent assignment in this moment. I'm a leader who is tired of watching institutions explain away a crisis they help to create. So let me tell you exactly what this episode is and what it is not. This is not an attack on young men. This is not a defense of toxic behavior. This is not a political conversation. I'm not going to use this episode to score points for an ideology. What this is, is an honest, data-grounded examination of what is happening to young men in America right now. And a direct challenge to every institution, every leader, and every adult within reach of a young man is to take responsibility for the absence that was created by this system. You're going to hear data today that will stop you. I hope it does. You're going to hear a perspective that may make you uncomfortable. And you're going to leave this episode with something specific to do, call to action for you. This is the contract I make with every listener of this show. We do not come here to feel informed. We come here to be get equipped. Let's get into it. I want to start with a number that should stop every parent, every pastor, every school administrator, and every employer in their tracks. More than 60% of young men report that no one cares whether they're okay. I would just say 60%. More than half of the young men in this country are walking around with the conviction that the world doesn't know, doesn't care. Let that land on you for a second. Now let us look at what the data shows about where they are going, or rather, where they are not going. Men now earn fewer than 40% of all college degrees awarded in the United States. That number has been trending downward for decades. The gap is widening. In 1970, men earned nearly 60% of their bachelor's degrees. Today, we have inverted the equation, and almost no one in mainstream education is treating as a crisis. If the gender were, if they were reversed, if young women were at 40% and failing, there would be a federal commission, congressional hearings, and media coverage around the clock. But because the group struggling is young men, we have largely decided to categorize it as a correction rather than a catastrophe. It does not stop at education. Young men now, four times more likely than young women to be completely disconnected, meaning not in school, not working, and not in a committed relationship. And that comes from the American Enterprise Institute 2025. These are not men who are choosing leisure. These are men who have disengaged from the primary structures of adult life. And when human beings disengage from structure, they do not float in neutral. They find a structure somewhere else, often the wrong ones. Now, here is the piece of the story that rarely gets told in full. Approximately 70% of young men say they that society consistently betrays young men in negative terms. The phrase they encounter most is one you have certainly heard, and that is toxic masculinity. Toxic masculinity. I'm going to say this. When you tell a young man consistently, repeatedly across every media platform, every classroom, in every cultural institution that his instincts are dangerous, his competitiveness is aggression, his desire to lead is domination, and his strength is a liability, you do not produce a better man. You produce a confused one. And a confused young man is a vulnerable young man. Now I want to share one more data point before we move into my analysis, because this one matters deeply to the argument I'm going to make. When researchers ask young men who their top role models are, not who they follow on social media, not who they watch on YouTube, but who actually shapes how they think about what it means to be a man. The answer was not Andrew Tate. It was not any influencer, podcast host, or online personality. 79% said their mother. Take that, their mother. 69% said their father. Mothers and fathers, present, engaged, consistent parents remain the single most powerful force in shaping how young men understand themselves, which means the crisis is not a content problem. It is not an algorithm problem. The crisis is an absence problem. And now I need to tell you exactly who has been absent. The most dangerous crisis in America today is not the one generating the most outrage. It is the one that has been building quietly for 30 years while the institutions responsible for addressing it were busy explaining why someone else was at fault. I am going to make three direct accusations today, not at young men, at the institutions that were assigned to them and walked away. Did you hear what I said? I'm going to make three direct accusations today, not at young men, at the institutions that were assigned to them and walked away. The first accusation is directly at the family. I am a man who lost a child. I know firsthand what absence costs. Boy, did that hurt to lose my son. And I also know that in the conversation about young men, the single most catastrophic variability is the absence of fathers. Not because mothers are inefficient. We just established that mothers are the most cited role model in this country. But it's because boys who grow up without a consistent, present, invested father are statistically more likely to drop out, to enter the criminal justice system, to struggle with identity, and to be vulnerable to ideology, ideological manipulation. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, approximately 18 million, 18 million children in America live without a father in the home. Nearly one in four, and among those children, boys bear a disproportionate share of the negative outcome. This is not a conversation about blame. This is a conversation about consequences. When a father is absent, whether through abandonment, incarceration, or simply the slow drift of disengagement, boys do not get a map for manhood. They have to find one somewhere else. And the internet is more than willing to provide one. The second accusation is directed at the education system. We have spent the last 30 years designing a school environment that is increasingly inhospitable to the way boys develop. Boys tend to need more movement. They tend to need more competition structured with clear rules and direct feedback. They develop impulse control later than girls on average, which is a developmental reality, not a character flaw. Instead of adapting to that reality, we have systematically stigmatized boys for this. We have dramatically increased the rates at which we diagnose boys with attention deficit and behavioral problems. We've reduced recess, eliminated competitive games, and created a disciplinary culture where young male energy is treated as a disruption. And then we measure the result and express confusion when boys start turning out. The data is not, the data on this is not ambiguous. Boys are more likely to be suspended, more likely to be held back, more likely to drop out than girls at every level of education. And for the first time in American history, women now significantly outnumber men on college campuses. When the school system fails to meet a student where the student is, it does not just lose an enrollment number. It sends a message. And the message that millions of boys have received from American education is this you do not fit in here, and we're not going to change to accommodate you. That message does not disappear when boys log off the school server. It follows him home, it follows him online, and it makes him extraordinarily susceptible to anyone who tells him finally that his instincts are not a defect, that his strength is not something to apologize for, that he has value. Andrew Tate understood this. Whatever you think about his methods and his character, and I have serious concerns about both. He understood that there was an enormous population of young men who had been told by every trusted institution that there was something wrong with being a man. He and he offered them permission to stop apologizing. The tragedy is not that he did. The tragedy is that the church, the family, and the school had the assignment but abandoned the post. Andrew Tate did not create the void. He simply moved into real estate that everyone else had left vacant. The third accusation is directed at the church. This is personal to me, and I'm going to say it with all the love and all the directness that I can bring to this subject. The church in America has, in many expressions, feminized its culture to the point where young men no longer recognize themselves in it. The language of contemporary Christian community has drifted towards emotional expression, communal gentleness, and a theology that rarely calls a man to the kind of dangerous, costly, sacrificial mission that scripture actually commissions. I'm not going to argue against emotional health. That I'm not saying. I'm not arguing against gentleness. I'm arguing that the fullness of biblical manhood includes both the tenderness of Psalms 23 and the ferocity of Nehemiah standing at the wall with a sword in one hand and a trawl in the other. When the church only teaches one half of that portrait, it loses young men. And the data confirms it. Men in America are less likely than women to attend church, less likely to participate in ministry, and the gap has been widening for decades. If the church is the institution with the greatest mandate to shape identity, to speak truth about who men are and what they are called to, and yet young men are leaving in disproportionate numbers. That is not an attendance problem. That's a message problem, in my opinion. Here's the truth I want every leader in this space to hear. Young men are not rejecting challenge. They're running towards it. That is exactly why they're flocking to influencers who demand discipline, who talk about hard work and sacrifice, who tell them that growth requires suffering. The appetite is there. The hunger for mission is real. The question is, who is going to show up with the right framework to direct it? The family can. The school can. The church absolutely can. But only if they are willing to be honest about the vacancy they created and have the courage enough to step back into it. So what can we do about this? I don't plan to leave this episode in despair. That is not what this show is for me. We diagnosed the problem, I gave you my perspective, we identified who bears responsibility. Now let's talk about what we do about it. I'm going to give you three specific actionable things, not concepts, not principles, things you can actually do. The first one, first, if you are a father, present or attempting to become more present, understand that your consistency is more powerful than your words. Research from the Search Institute and multiple other longitudinal studies confirm that the most protective factor in adolescent male development is the sustained presence of a caring adult male. You do not have to be perfect. You do not have to have answers. You have to show up repeatedly and not disappear. That means putting down the phone at dinner. It means going to the game even when you're tired. It means having the uncomfortable conversation about identity and purpose instead of outsourcing it to a screen. Presence is not a grand gesture. It is a daily decision. The second thing you can do, if you lead a school, a ministry, a nonprofit, or any organization that serves young men, audit your environment for hostility, not hostility in the sense of malice or violence, hostility in the sense of design. Ask honestly, does this environment allow boys to move, to compete, to take risks, to fail, recover, and try again? Does our disciplined system treat young male development as a problem? Are we producing young men who know how to lead, endure, or young men who have learned to be invisible? Boy, that's powerful. You do not have to tear down everything you've built, but you do have to be willing to ask that question. And if the honest answer makes you uncomfortable, discomfort is information. Organizations that cannot feel their own dysfunction are the most dangerous ones. Third, if you are a person of faith, and many of you listening to this show are, take seriously the assignment that Scripture gives to the community of believers regarding the formation of men. Titus chapter two speaks directly to the responsibilities of older men to teach younger men. I'll say that again. Titus chapter two speaks directly to the responsibilities that older men, that older men should teach younger men, not to lecture to them, not to manage them, to teach them through relationship, through example, through the costly and inconvenient investment of actual time. The mentorship gap in American church today is a real and measurable crisis. Young men without spiritual mentors are more likely to leave the faith, more likely to struggle with identity, more likely to look for formation in places that do not have their best souls in mind. If you are an older man sitting in a church, sitting in a boardroom, sitting in a position of stability that younger men around you do not have, you have an assignment. It's not optional. It's not a program. It is a direct instruction from the Word of God. Find a young man, invest in him, refuse to let absence win another round. These three things, consistent fatherly presence, an environmentally honest institution, and spiritually committed mentorship will not solve this problem overnight. But they are the beginning of reversal. And every reversal begins with someone deciding to stop leaving. That's my call to action for you today. I want to give you one specific thing you can do by the end of the week. Just one. I want you to think about the young men in your life today, the ones you can reach, not in general. One specific one. A son, a nephew, a neighbor's kid, a young man in your congregation or your office, someone whose face you can see. You can actually see right now. Close your eyes and look at him. I want you to make contact with that person this week. Not to fix him, not to lecture to him, not to deliver a speech about choices or consequences, but just to show up. A text, a phone call, an invitation to sit down and eat something together. The message you are delivering is not in words, it is in the fact that you chose to appear. In a world of absence, presence is a profound statement. Let me say that again, and I hope you listen to me. In a world of absence, presence is a profound statement. We established early in this episode that 79% of young men cite their mothers as a top role model, and 69% cite their fathers. What that debtors me is that biology is not the point. Presence is. It is the adults who are consistently, viably, physically and emotionally present who shape the identity of young men. You do not have to be the biological father to be present. And I hope you heard that. You do not have to be the biological parent to be present. You just have to be willing to show up when it would be easier not to. So that is the action this week. One young man, one point of contact, not to fix, but just to show up. And if you're a young man listening to this right now, I want to speak to you directly for a moment. The world has not done right by you in many ways. The institutions that were supposed to prepare you for life have in many cases failed you. The anger you carry, some of it's legitimate. It really is. But here's what I want you to hear. You are not defined by the absence of what you deserve. You're designed, you're defined by what you choose to do next. Find the men in your life who are worth learning from. Find the community of people who will call you to your best self, not your worst instincts. And do not let anyone, online or offline, convince you that bitterness is the same thing as strength. It's not. Strength is constructive. Strength builds, strength serves. That is the kind of man that we need. And that is my hope for you, young man. That's all I have for you today. I'm Keith D.Terry, and thank you for listening. Have a great day. Thanks for listening to The Next Big Thing. I'm your host, Keith D.Terry. If you've enjoyed this episode and you'd like to support this podcast, please share it with others. Post about it on social media or leave a rating and a review. To catch all the latest from me, you can follow me on my YouTube channel at Keith D.Terry. If you want to recommend a guest, please email me at infoterryperformance group.com. This has been produced by your host and J Productions.