The other day I was talking to someone about their kids, and they remarked upon the fact that their teenage sons were lacking direction and motivation. They seemingly spend much of their time locked away in their bedrooms, playing video games and not interacting with the real world. It got me thinking about the journey to manhood and the difficulties facing young men today.
While I absolutely recognise the perils that body-image issues, online abuse and the rest have on all sexes, there is something particular occurring with young men. In a world where we have (quite appropriately, might I say) given young women the fervent instruction to break glass ceilings, bring down the patriarchy and strive in life, young men lack these motivators. Instead, they constantly hear the stories of men behaving badly and, in some way, I’d suggest they internalise these narratives, leading to bad impacts.
I was noodling about this over quite a few pints of lager last week while visiting London. The location for this cogitation was The Lock Tavern, a Camden institution and my local 30 years ago when I lived in London. My tablemates were a bunch of guys who I worked with back at that time at the long-gone, but not forgotten, Yellow Jersey bicycle shop. Looking around the table at my buddies, I started to think about the connection between what we were sharing (including, but not limited to, the beer) and the journey young men are on.
The Cycling Besties, as our group calls ourselves, is a collection of individuals who share little other than a decades-old vocational history and a fascination with bicycles. Over the past decade or two, and enabled by Facebook, WhatsApp and other such platforms, we have stayed in contact. The London-based members of the group obviously have the ability to interact in person, but in my case, I have seen the Besties a sum total of three times in the 30 years since I worked with them.
And yet, despite the distance and the infrequent meetings, we readily slip back into the same conversations, albeit ones which are now peppered with comments about creaky joints and the difficulties of ensuring our kids make their way in the world as good human beings.
Which is a nice, albeit circuitous, route back to my primary topic, that of young men and their difficulties making their way in the world. It struck me, as I was chatting with this group of gents with a plethora of life experiences, vocational, relational, and philosophical, that here was the key to giving young men more direction in life.
Young men, by and large, don’t listen to their fathers. And fair enough. When you’re sixteen, your dad seems like a relic from another age, muttering about responsibility and hard work while you’re just trying to get through life, experience the other sex and steal his booze. Teenage boys have an uncanny ability to dismiss any advice from the man who changed their nappies, paid their school fees and ferried them to rugby training for years. It’s not malice, it’s biology, ego and the messy process of individuation.
But what teenage boys do respond to is other men. Not necessarily the ones in authority, teachers, coaches, or the local cop, but those who they see as having lived a bit, made a few mistakes, and somehow still found their way through. Men who are neither parents nor peers, but somewhere in between: old enough to command respect, but still relatable.
We used to get this naturally. Apprenticeships, team sports, even local communities used to provide young men with a network of uncles and mentors, men who didn’t lecture, but rather modelled behaviour. You’d watch how they handled pressure, how they treated people, how they picked themselves up when things went wrong. But as society’s structure has changed, so too has that fabric. Workplaces are more transient, sports clubs are struggling for volunteers, and online life has replaced the messy, rewarding business of intergenerational community.
Into that vacuum have stepped the so-called “male influencers” – a mixed bag of fitness bros, pseudo-philosophers and self-styled alpha males. For a young bloke feeling adrift, they can seem like beacons of certainty. The problem, of course, is that the certainty they sell is often built on sand: all swagger, no substance. Strength without empathy. Success without service. It’s the fast food of masculinity, tasty in the short term, hollow in the long run.
The antidote isn’t to lecture young men about how wrong those messages are, but to provide better role models in the real world. Men who show up, not to preach, but to walk alongside. Mentorship doesn’t need to be formal or structured, it can be as simple as a conversation, an invitation, a bit of time spent doing something shoulder-to-shoulder rather than face-to-face. Whether it’s fixing a bike, tramping in the bush or mucking about in a garage, those moments build trust, and from trust comes the opportunity to guide.
Which brings me back to The Lock Tavern and that table of greying blokes swapping stories. Each of us, in our own way, is now in a position to fulfil this tole. We’ve made enough mistakes to be honest about what we don’t know, and enough progress to offer a bit of perspective. Maybe that’s the real task for men of a certain vintage, to step up, not as experts or heroes, but as examples of persistence, humility and decency.
If young men aren’t listening to their fathers, maybe they’ll listen to their father’s mates, or their coach, or the guy down the road who takes the time to notice them. Because somewhere between the noise of TikTok and the silence of their bedrooms, what they’re really craving isn’t validation or status, it’s direction. And that, more than anything, comes from seeing the kind of man they might one day become.
As we drained our pints and reminisced about the good old days of steel frames and missions on The Heath, I couldn’t help thinking that maybe the most valuable legacy any of us can leave isn’t a business, a house or a title, it’s the quiet influence we have on the next generation. A nudge here, a conversation there. Just enough to help a young bloke believe he’s got something to offer the world.
Nice blog thanks Ben. And as father to two young fellas some solid food-for-thought.