Young men are playing "Call of Duty stoned" instead of working
On an episode of Free Expression, Wall Street Journal Editor at Large Gerry Baker speaks with economist Nicholas Eberstadt about why men are leaving the workforce in greater numbers and what these men are doing with their time while not employed.
Gerard Baker
The most interesting part of the interview was when Nicholas Eberstadt talked about what these young men were doing. Here's what he said:
The difference between the Depression era and now is that if you didn't have a job back in 1940, it was because you were looking for one and you couldn't find it.
If you are a guy who doesn't have work today, the odds are it's because you've dropped out of the workforce all together. You're neither working nor looking for work. For every prime age guy who's unemployed, there are over four who are neither working nor looking for work. We have this unworking army of over 7 million prime age men in the United States....
And we can parse that out a little bit. So about a 10th maybe, a little bit more than a 10th of this, not in labor force group, some of my (inaudible) nerds call them NILFs, about a 10th of them are full-time students who are getting ready to go back into the labor force to get better jobs with better skills.
But almost nine tenths of that group are what I believe on the other side of the ocean, you used to call them NEET, Neither Employed nor in Education or Training. It's a group that has basically dropped out from the labor economy.
And how these men subsist and what they do with their time, I think are pretty important questions for humanitarian reasons, but also for public policy.
According to their self reported data, according to Time Use Surveys that the government submits to people who have all different walks of life for The Bureau of Labor statistics, these labor force dropouts basically don't do civil society.
Let's read that last line one more time.
these labor force dropouts basically don't do civil society.
Amazing... okay, let's continue
They don't do worship.
They don't do charity.
They don't do volunteering work.
Although they've got, you'd think almost nothing but time on their hands, they don't do much help around the house with other people or housework.
They don't get out of the house that much, they say. What they say they do is to watch screens. Now surveys don't tell us what screens they're watching or what's on them exactly.
But they report clocking in about 2,000 hours a year in front of screens as if this were their full-time job.
And other information says about half of these guys report using some sort of pain medication every day.
So it's not just playing Call of Duty.
It's playing Call of Duty stoned.
Young men, you will not be happy if this article describes you.
- Video games
- Porn
- Social media
- etc.
are designed to keep your attention and never let let go of your life.
You will be consumed by depression, anxiety, resentfulness, hopelessness, and so on. It is not a matter of if but when you will feel these things – trust me, I know.
And you may I'm a fool, have your friends support your delusion, and you even might trick yourself into believing that it's normal to live like this.
But 5, 10, 20 years from now, I believe with all my heart that we're going to see suicide rates skyrocket, therapy and coaching services grow exponentially (and their costs), marriages continue to decline and the search for meaning and purpose as men to become the number one thing you relentlessly seek out.
Don't wait. Be the man you know you want to be and for your sake, put down the controller.
Forming Fathers is here to help build you, young men, up so you can become a great father. Through the sacrifice gifted in fatherhood, you will find the meaning and purpose you want so badly desire. Join the movement, subscribe to the podcast, and let's man up together.